The Princess Bride

An excellent example of meta-fiction. The story itself is of course funny and heartfelt and amazing, but despite what many reviewers below seem to think, the asides and introduction and notes are an important part of the overall story. The Princess Bride is both the adventure story of Westley and Buttercup as well as William Goldman's metafiction about Florin being a real place, this being a real book he's abridging, his stories about his memories of his father and his interactions with other people in the hollywood industry and with his family. It's hard to tell what's reality and what's fiction, but how he felt about it is genuine.

Feels like the author put all of himself into this story as well as the story, in other words.

Did I show more mention this book is hilarious? It is. There's a reason the movie turned out so well (other than Goldman being primarily a screenwriter). show less

William Goldman ya lo dice en la introducción a la edición del 25 aniversario de la publicación: ”Si estás leyendo estas líneas me apuesto dólares contra donuts a que has visto la película.” Este es también mi caso, cuya película de los 80 de Rob Reiner me dejó marcado. Esos personajes maravillosos: la belleza sin igual de Buttercup; el joven Westley, héroe envidiado por todos; el gran corazón del gigante Feezik, amante de las rimas; e Iñigo Montoya, el espachín español que busca vengar a su padre. Y cómo no recordar su memorable frase: ”Hola, me llamo Iñigo Montoya, tú mataste a mi padre, disponte a morir.”

El argumento de ‘La princesa prometida’ es aparentemente sencillo: una historia de amor verdadero, de show more aventura, de venganza, en donde el protagonista ha de salvar a su amor de múltiples peligros, y no dejarla caer en las garras del villano de la novela, el príncipe Humperdinck. William Goldman, bajo la apariencia de S. Morgenstern, nos transcribe el manuscrito de este, en una vuelta de tuerca de la novela clásica de caballeros y princesas, dotando a la narración de un humor muy característico que no desentona en ningún momento. Al contrario, ese sarcasmo le da un toque especial a la historia, junto a los brillantes diálogos y un ritmo imparable.

Es necesario recordar que William Goldman es novelista y un magnífico guionista. Suyos son los guiones de Harper, investigador privado, Dos hombres y un destino (con Oscar incluido), Misery, quizás le mejor adaptación al cine de una novela de Stephen King, Todos los hombres del presidente (que le valió su segundo Oscar), o Marathon Man, adaptación de su novela, entre otros muchos.

La presente edición, la del 25 aniversario, incluye también el relato breve ‘El bebé de Buttercup’, en el que Goldman/Morgenstern nos ofrece la redención de los personajes. No llega a la brillantez de ‘La princesa prometida’, pero resulta interesante, y deja una nota nostálgica.

Así que ya sabéis, el que quiera acercarse a ‘La princesa prometida’, se encontrará: ”Esgrima. Lucha. Torturas. Venenos. Amor verdadero. Odio. Venganzas. Gigantes. Cazadores. Hombres malos. Hombres buenos. Las damas más hermosas. Serpientes. Arañas. Bestias de todas clases y aspectos. Dolor. Muerte. Valientes. Cobardes. Forzudos. Persecuciones. Fugas. Mentiras. Verdades. Pasión. Milagros…” show less

I have always been a bit of a "literal Libby," and subtle (or not-so-subtle) irony and satire has a tendency to fly right over my head... So it is that when I first read Goldman's introduction to The Princess Bride, in which he discusses the difficulties he encountered in procuring and then revising a copy of S. Morgenstern's "old" classic, I believed him implicitly.

The nascent textual scholar in me was agog, and I simply longed to read the "boring" version, complete with all the details of Florin diplomacy, and the catalog of Buttercup's trousseau. I can still recall my sense of disappointment, betrayal even, at discovering that there was no "original" version of this to be had...

Despite the frustration of that childhood fantasy, The show more Princess Bride has always ranked as one of my favorite stories, and I reread the book (and watch the movie) with some regularity. Who wouldn't be charmed by this tongue-in-cheek tale of true love? With pirates, princes, and revenge-obsessed Spaniards, it's hard not to fall under Goldman's spell. I love Westley and Inigo so much, I can even forgive the author for making Buttercup something of a dimwit - and given my somewhat prickly feelings about the portrayal of women in popular culture, that's saying something!

In short: wonderful, marvelous, superb! It is simply inconceivable that there is anyone out there who has not yet enjoyed the delights of this rollicking tale... show less

Buttercup, the most beautiful maiden in Florin, is engaged to Prince Humperdinck. Alas, poor Buttercup still pines for her true love, Westley, who’s been captured at sea by the Dread Pirate Rodgers. When she confesses this to Humperdinck, he nobly offers to search for Westley, and if he’s found, she may marry Westley instead of him. In truth, although the heir to the kingdom is a true born aristocrat, he’s a cad. He loves war and hunting and has no interest in either Buttercup or marriage. He loves hunting and killing so much that he’s built a Zoo of Death, filled with fierce and frightening beasts that he regularly engages with in deadly fights. And it’s always the non-human beast that dies. So, he’s delighted when, just show more before their wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by foreigners, and taken her across the sea to Guilder. He thinks it’s a wonderful excuse to start a war with Guilder!

Presented as an abridgement of “my favorite book in all the world” by the author who claims that as a boy, sick in bed with pneumonia, his father read it to him, this is a delightful metafictional romp through the clichés of romantic adventure stories and the author’s own memoirs. The characters are delightful and involved in impossibly tragical situations of danger and despair that are rapidly transformed into scenes of extreme silliness. show less

Ironico, avventuroso, non scontato. La storia è quella di un autore che riprende il libro che lo ha fatto appassionare alla lettura da bambino, rendendosi conto che in realtà la versione dei suoi ricordi era stata tagliata dal padre che glielo aveva letto. Decide di pubblicare una nuova edizione ridotta, ed è questa quella che ci viene raccontata, intervallata dalle motivazioni dei tagli e da altri spunti di riflessione sulla lettura e sulla letteratura.
Mi sono appassionata alla storia e divertita, fermandomi più volte però a riflettere sul mio essere lettore.
Questa edizione però ha una parte finale, aggiunta per i 25 anni della pubblicazione, che è una sorta di “seguito”: è qui le note dolenti, perché non scorre ed è, show more appunto, minestra riscaldata. show less

I've watched The Princess Bride movie many times a year for, quite frankly, as long as I can remember. It's one of those movies I grew up loving and grew fonder of as the years went by. It's so full of quotes, things I use so often even in daily life - as recent as dropping my brother off at his girlfriends (he's 16 and will never read this so I can tell you all) and yelling out, "Have fun storming the castle!" as he made his way up the driveway he refused to have me drive into.

But as much as I love the movie, I hadn't picked up the book until a year or so ago. And then.. then, I felt much as Fred Savage's character must have felt (and much like Goldman describes his own feelings as a boy in the abridged notes) ((If you believe the show more abridged notes I shall giggle at you)), I fell in love with the book.

I mean - the jacket says the following:

So! Are you ready for Fencing and Fighting? True Love, Strong Hate and Harsh Revenge? A Giant, Lots of Bad Men, Lots of Good Men, plus Rodents of Unusual Size? Not to mention Death, Lies, Truth and Miracles? It's all here!

Honestly? How could anyone turn that down?

This isn't a story to take seriously. It isn't heavy literature to be discussed with a glass of port in one hand and your nose turned up in the air. It's a story that thrills and amuses, that has its moments of clarity and moments of confusion. It has everything my inner child craves in a book and it's for that reason it's on my yearly re-read list.

If you haven't read The Princess Bride yet, I encourage you to do so - no I challenge you to. And I dare you not to like it. show less

This was a many times reread for me, this time for book club. The best bits are the frame story parts (and the interruptions). While I love the movie to *bits* (and will always think the book is a very nice piece of kind of friendly postmodernism), the actual story (as opposed to the framing of it) is just shy of compelling enough for me to be fully interested on a third (fourth?) read. ~December 2021

I remember reading this back in high school and being almost--almost--convinced that Goldman was actually abridging a book by a guy named Morgenstern from Florin. I described the book as "the friendliest postmodern novel ever" to my TA and it's quite possibly the only book I've read that employs things like erasure and disruption of reader show more expectation that I love. (Normally that sort of thing just makes me cranky.) Perhaps because I saw the movie (about a thousand times) long before I ever read the book and therefore know "what happens next," I never get frustrated with Goldman when he stops the action just before a climax to wax about something else for eighteen or so pages.

I've also noticed, having just read Born to Kvetch, how very Jewish it is both in mind-set and semantics. Even as a middle-schooler who had nightmares about R.O.U.S.es and The Machine after seeing the movie, I knew that Miracle Max was about as culturally Jewish as you could get, but I had forgotten since my last reading that Goldman-as-abridger/character tells us that his editor, Hiram, thought that the "Miracle Max section was too Jewish in sound, too contemporary." About which "Goldman" says "if Max and Valerie sound Jewish, why shouldn't they? You think a guy named Simon Morgenstern was Irish Catholic?" "Hiram" maybe was sleeping through the rest of novel, yes? When Inigo thinks he's failed at avenging his father's death, he hears his father speaking to him: "'I don't want your 'sorry'! My name is Domingo Montoya and I died for that sword and you can keep your 'sorry.' If you were going to to fail, why didn't you die years ago and let me rest in peace?'" Earlier dialogue from Domingo goes like this: "Why? My fat friend asks why? He sits there on his world-class ass and has the nerve to ask me why? Yeste. Come to me sometime with a challenge." The whole thing is about as Irish Catholic as Morgenstern. That Goldman draws attention to it adds a whole other layer (and a lot more winking) to a book already busting with both. show less