{"id":13924,"date":"2020-07-03T18:21:32","date_gmt":"2020-07-03T22:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13924"},"modified":"2020-07-03T18:21:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T22:21:32","slug":"musing-on-the-princess-bride-by-william-goldman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13924","title":{"rendered":"Musing on ‘The Princess Bride,’ by William Goldman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Look, (Grownups skip this paragraph.) I’m not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there’s a lot of bad stuff coming up, torture you’ve already been prepared for, but there’s worse. There’s death coming up, and you better understand this: some of the wrong people die…. and the reason is this; life is not fair. Forget the garbage your parents put out. Remember Morgenstern. You’ll be a lot happier.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Last night <\/strong>I watched the film, \u201cThe Princess Bride<\/a>\u201d for the umpty-third time. Laughed and cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s not to love? It\u2019s the perfect confection, almost parody but not quite. Self-aware, over the top, but entirely without condescension. Everybody involved seems to be having fun, and they welcome the viewer into the fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first saw the movie in its first theatrical run. It got good reviews at the time, but wasn\u2019t a major hit. Only when home video became available did it find its audience. Now it\u2019s one of the most beloved \u2013 and quotable \u2013 movies in the world. With good reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before I was a fan of the movie, I was a fan of the book<\/a>. It was published in 1973, and I must have picked it up around 1978. Frankly, I bought it out of base motives \u2013 the original cover blurb called it \u201cA Hot Fairy Tale!<\/em>\u201d I found something way better than I expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big difference between the book and the movie is what I guess you\u2019d call the \u201cmetanarrative.\u201d In the movie you having a charming, funny adventure story, framed by a sweet series of vignettes involving a grandfather and his grandson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The frame of the book is much broader and more complex. Goldman fictionalizes his own life, claiming his father was an immigrant from Florin, one of the imagined kingdoms in the book. He presents himself as a screenwriter who\u2019s gone full Hollywood. He\u2019s lost touch with his son (in real life Goldman had two daughters). Out of guilt, he tries to connect with the boy by giving him the book his dad used to read to him, The Princess Bride<\/em>, by S. Morgenstern. Only he discovers that the book isn\u2019t what he thought \u2013 most of it is a long, dull satire on the politics of Florin and Guilder at the time of the book\u2019s writing. The real adventure stuff was just a minor narrative threaded here and there through the text. His dad had only read him the \u201cgood parts.\u201d So Goldman has decided (he claims) to produce a \u201cgood parts\u201d version of The Princess Bride<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he can\u2019t resist adding his own commentary, in pretty large doses, in footnotes and parenthetical interpolations. He talks about his childhood, his dreams, his disappointments. The movies he loves. The movies he wrote, and what he was trying to accomplish with them. How his life has consistently fallen short of the aspirations that romantic books and movies arouse in him. The book ends differently from the movie. The movie\u2019s ending is sweet and heartwarming. The end of the book is ambivalent. They lived happily after\u2026. But.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What The Princess Bride<\/a><\/em> (novel) is about is the tragedy of impossible yearning. Most of us respond to the great stories. Our hearts are moved by the happy ending, the eucatastrophe, the fulfillment of True Love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we live (and who would know this better than a Jewish author?) in a world where True Love doesn\u2019t guarantee that your beloved won\u2019t be killed by a mugger or a pogrom or a stray meteorite. There\u2019s something in our hearts that tells us True Love has to conquer all. Yet all around us we see that it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea what William Goldman\u2019s spiritual beliefs were, if any. If he\u2019d asked, someone could have told him about a True Love that does guarantee a miracle resurrection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look, (Grownups skip this paragraph.) I’m not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there’s a lot of bad stuff coming up, torture you’ve already been prepared for, but there’s worse. There’s death coming … Continue reading Musing on ‘The Princess Bride,’ by William Goldman<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,14,15],"tags":[2995,3359],"class_list":["post-13924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-religion","category-reviews","tag-the-princess-bride","tag-william-goldman"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}