Joel's review of The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride
by William Goldman

Joel's review

rating:

status: Read in January, 1987

The naming of this book was unfortunate because it probably keeps a lot of guys from reading it.

I haven't read this since middle school, but I remember liking a lot about it. My 9th grade teacher said that when we read it we will understand why they couldn't make it into a movie. Then the next year they made it into a movie. The movie was actually quite close to the book, but you miss a lot if you skip the book and watch the movie:

1. There is so much wit written by the author that there wasn't time for in the movie.
2. There is an entire inside joke in the book that was not obvious if you read the book. The author claims he is only abridging a longer book written by another author. He says his grandfather read the story to him when he was sick in bed but left out all the boring parts and when the author grew up he gave the book to his son and was surprised to find out his son didn't like the book. He discovered that when Buttercup went for a trip there were several pag...more The naming of this book was unfortunate because it probably keeps a lot of guys from reading it.

I haven't read this since middle school, but I remember liking a lot about it. My 9th grade teacher said that when we read it we will understand why they couldn't make it into a movie. Then the next year they made it into a movie. The movie was actually quite close to the book, but you miss a lot if you skip the book and watch the movie:

1. There is so much wit written by the author that there wasn't time for in the movie.
2. There is an entire inside joke in the book that was not obvious if you read the book. The author claims he is only abridging a longer book written by another author. He says his grandfather read the story to him when he was sick in bed but left out all the boring parts and when the author grew up he gave the book to his son and was surprised to find out his son didn't like the book. He discovered that when Buttercup went for a trip there were several pages that listed the clothing she took on her trip. He makes fun of the author several times. So he calls his abridgement the "good parts version". At one point the two main characters in the novel are reunited and he says that he wanted to write about their romantic reunion but the publisher said that because this was an abridgement he wasn't allowed to change the original story but if you wanted to write the publisher he would have them send you his version of the romantic reunion.
My 9th grade teacher offered us for extra credit to write to the publisher to get this romantic version of their reunion.
A Few years later I met someone who had actually written to the publisher about the alternate romantic version and instead got an apology and an excuse from the author about why he didn't ever write the romantic version.
The whole joke was that the book wasn't really being abridged. The "original author" that the author made fun of never wrote the book but the guy claiming to only be abridging the book actually wrote the book.

Anyway, it sounds cliche but the book was better than the movie.
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message 1: by Stefanie

08/27/2008 12:42AM

when i was younger, i wrote to the publisher, even though i was pretty sure that i wasn't going to get the full romantic version, and that it was a joke. i find the entire thing hilarious, and many kudos to william goldman for coming up with such a scheme. this makes me wonder if he still gets letters from people who read the book....

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Joel's review of The Princess Bride

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