The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Emmuska Orczy
1905
When I was a teenager, I had a soft spot for Harlequin Regency romances. I was a sucker for strong-willed, but prim ladies, who all seemed to fall into some sort of strange, Jane Austen mode, falling madly for inappropriate, rakish men, and running off to elope in Scotland, or getting involved in duels, or perhaps to France. Though France always confused me, because the last place I’d want to be during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was France. But still, there was something to the idea of turn-of-the-19th century romance in England that mixed all the best parts of Jane Austen with good-old-fashioned snogging that titillated by teenaged sensibilities.
Now, when one of my favorite novels is Kushiel’s Dart, I don’t think that the Regency era folk would quite understand my interest in S&M, but I still love the romance of it. The Scarlet Pimpernel is brilliant with the mixture of high romance and intrigue, with much more of the historical accuracy that the good-old Harlequin romances seem to gloss over to get to the snogging bits. The creation of the Hungarian émigré, Baroness Orczy, while she lived with her minister husband in England, the story is a rollicking mix of adventure, intrigue, and suspense, all the while wrapped in the sort of cloak that only Bruce Wayne could truly appreciate.
The story is set during the bloodiest moments of the French Revolution, before King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette lose their heads, but most likely just before. We learn that French nobles are being snuck out of France by a band of English nobles, all young, bored men seeking to have fun and do some good while they are at it. Their leader is a mysterious figure, known simply as the Scarlet Pimpernel, a man shrouded in intrigue, so named because of the tiny scarlet flower he leaves as a signature on all of his notes.
One of the many spies employed by the Scarlet Pimpernel is one Armaund St. Just, a young, French man who had supported the Republic but is horrified by what it has become. His young, brilliant, and beautiful sister, Marguerite, has recently married a British noble, Lord Percy Blakeney, a favorite of His Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales. Marguerite is unhappy in her marriage to her foppish, dull-witted husband because his affections have seemingly left her. He had at one time courted her ardently, but the moment they married, his affections dried completely, and his behavior became idiotic and vacant. While the two are very much devoted to one another, their marriage is not a love marriage, and they are as distant in their worlds and preoccupations as night and day.
Marguerite is loath to see her brother return to France; the one person she feels loves her in the world. Yet, she lets him go, confident he will return soon. Unbeknownst to her, Chauvelin, an old acquaintance from her days in Paris has come to England to ferret out just who this Scarlet Pimpernel is, and to bring him to justice for his assistance of the nobility. Chauvelin believes Marguerite, not the celebrated Lady Blakeney of London, is just the person to help him find the devil. And once he learns of her beloved brother’s involvement in the plot, he believes he can convince her to assist him. Brilliant Marguerite is forced to make a choice to save the brother that she adores, or betray a man she has come to admire. Turning to her idiot of a husband for assistance, Marguerite not only realizes that Lord Percy is not the man that she had assumed him to be all of this time, but that she has been led, unwittingly into the worst possible of situations…to either betray her brother or the man that she loves.
The Scarlet Pimpernel hits the ground running in terms of action and adventure. From the beginning we are brought into the intrigues of the daring hero, all the while kept in the dark about his true identity. The intrigue builds throughout the story, as you wonder who it is that could possibly be their leader, and when it is discovered, you wonder how it is that he will pull off his next mad-caper. Orczy pacing in the story is brilliant, tumbling you along from small inns, to glittering balls, to the most dire, perilous journeys, all the while keeping you on the edge of your seat as to what will happen next. And while some of the twists are a tad predictable to us now, that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable to read about.
Marguerite as a heroin is enjoyable to take the ride with. While she is a vain girl at times, and perhaps a tad foolish, she is particularly smart, and you begin to sympathize with her when you realize that she does have heart and courage, and isn’t just a pretty face. It is heartbreaking to see her confusion as to her husband’s behavior, and to see her slowly catch on to what is going on. And their misunderstanding that separates them, as Lord Percy so aptly puts it later, is truly a case “of the blind leading the lame”, two people who have made a mess of their marriage by being prideful, who have now been given a second chance at love again.
Lord Percy is as fun a character as you will find in literature, a veritable precursor to Bruce Wayne. While he for all appearances comes off as being a nothing better than an idiotic dandy, busy carrying the favor of the Prince Regent, he is a man with hidden depth and a wealth of talent, and a man who wants more than anything to have the love of his wife and to trust her with his deepest secret. In many ways, Percy is what Bruce Wayne can never be, a man who can truly be happy with himself, and with the life he makes for himself.
The book does suffer from many things that I believe are more or less a testament to when it was written than to it being a true problem with the narrative. Much of the language tries to affect the style of Regency Era English, some 100 years before the writing of The Scarlet Pimpernel. The affectation can often be silly at times, making you wonder if they actually said ‘zooks’ every other sentence. It’s hard to tell, Baroness Orczy is writing the story well after anyone who would remember was alive. And it seems silly and fake to modern readers, brought up on Jane Austen and Horatio Hornblower.
In the tradition of many romances of the period, a lot of description is given to the emotional state of our heroine in the book, over her pining, her sorrow, her worry, etc. While Marguerite is hardly some fainting flower, the purple prose is enough to make you wonder if she’ll take to her bed soon in a dead faint. It doesn’t do much for the picture of the strong heroine, but then again that is a much ore modern idea of femininity in literature, and I can’t fault the Baroness for carrying on with it. It’s a book of its time, that of the early 20th century, and it is a book of its time, seen clearly in its portrayal of nationalistic pride and prejudice. Common Englishman thought nothing of calling French, ‘heathens’, while English and French alike thing nothing of kicking about poor Jews and seeing them as nothing more or less than base, sub-humans, worthy of distance at best, scorn and beating at worst. While the events of the book itself happen before the ghettos of Europe are open, the book is written at a time, the author claims, when religious toleration is much better known. However, if that were so, why have the Jew be picked on in the first place…never mind that the Jew isn’t all he seems anyway. But it is a book of its time, and while as a 21st century reader it bothers me, it would have not even been noticed at the time the book was first published.
With many classic stories, it is often difficult to get into them, but The Scarlet Pimpernel was by far the opposite. A spirited story of true love and high adventure, it certainly blows my hot and steamy Harlequin romances out of the water, with their heavy petting and mussed cravats. For all fans of Georgian British history, or anyone who just likes a fun story of intrigue, go grab it and give it a whirl. You won’t be disappointed.
Rate this wormy book: I rate this a MONSTER worm. By far one of the best and most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. I’m voting that PBS or the BBC needs to make a new movie version of it soon for me to swoon over.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Prince
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
I admit it…I’m a rampaging Vampire: The Masquerade player.
I lay the blame fully at the feet of my friends Kari and Patric. They sucked me in with stories of angst-ridden vampires, and I lapped it up like a half-starved kitten let loose in a dairy. My first lessons in real politics were at the feet of maniacal VtM role-players, out to rule our little vampiric domains and plot against one another in never-ending schemes of conquest and total annihilation.
I cut my teeth, (no pun intended), on the complex, Byzantine labyrinth of intrigue that was my old gaming group. Sad as it is to say, it is very true. Which is why, when I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s classic treatise, The Prince, I was blinking at it with the consternated frustration of one who thinks, “Duh, doesn’t everyone know this already?”
And perhaps they don’t….or at least it had never been quantified in one document set firmly in the European mindset. Machiavelli’s most famous work, published in 1532, is more a treatise and entreaty written to Lorenzo de Medici. An outcast from his beloved Florence, and seeking to regain favor with the current powers-that-be in his home city, Machiavelli wrote down his observances on the best way by which to govern and maintain a state as a ruling head. Sometimes using common sense, sometimes using more than a fair dollop of ruthlessness, Machiavelli weaves then current politics amongst the Italian states and Europe, with ancient stories familiar to them from the Greece, Rome, and other periods. He creates a system that he believes will not only effectively help a prince to lead his people, but shows examples of how other leaders of the time are flagging miserably.
There are many themes that Machiavelli picks up on and most of them are common sense to anyone who’s spent even half-a-minute watching History Channel shows on ancient and medieval European history. His antipathy towards mercenaries is a common theme in the annals of ancient history, even my own medieval history professor, Patrick Geary, used to warn loudly, “Don’t let the barbarians come to defend you, else they might get the idea that they like the joint and will want to stay.” Even worse, as was the case in the waning days of the Roman Empire, auxiliary troops, made up of non-Roman, barbarian soldiers would often be so depended on in the outlying regions, the regular army just assumed they would always be there, and always be loyal. Thus one of the many reasons for the Fall of Rome, and countless other nations up to Machiavelli’s time, this isn’t a particularly new idea, but never before had it really been pointed out in literature for everyone to see. It’s one of those common sense things I suspect that many a strong ruler knew, and Machiavelli finally gave voice to for everyone to understand.
Machiavelli’s opinion of rule over the centuries has been noted as being callous, calculated, and amoral, “ruling by any means” in other words. And this has given rise to the modern English word “Machiavellian” to describe anyone who tends to plot in this sort of manner. And yet, when one reads The Prince, one realizes that Machiavelli is less about being a cruel or dispassionate man, as you can tell by his work that he does care very much about a great number of things, Florence in particular. Rather, he is a man who sees the role of a ruler as that of a man who has to balance practicality with sentimentality, and how does one maneuver both in order to not only maintain his throne from those who threaten it within, as well as protecting both his people and his power from enemies without. It’s a fine line that any ruler is asked to tread, even in modern democracies. This theory isn’t so much cruel or manipulative as it is strict politics. It is how one maintains their state.
However, Machiavelli is certainly a man of his time, and writes very much that way. He is focused on the political situation that has been and is ongoing in 14th century Italy, and his observations are very much colored by the city-states and papal empire that existed in the land at the time, not to mention the rising powers of Spain and France to the east. Modern historians and political scientists look back on that with the benefit of hindsight, and wonder what Machiavelli was thinking at times, (medieval and early Renaissance France, straight out of the Hundred Years War, being a good example of strong, central government to anyone was a particular laugh.) But his observations do mark a time when things were changing in Europe, when it was less and less about small, feudal governments, and more about expanding powerbases, when rulers had to care more than about their duties of fief to some overlord, and more about ensuring their lands, people, and power base to create what would, in the next few hundred years, become the nation-states that we have inherited in our own world today.
Much of the advice that Machiavelli gives is very common sense now at days, the sort of thing that we all take for granted in modern politics. Not that we have much in the way of singular ruling princes in modern democracies, but the themes make sense to us even in our current political landscape. And it is hard to tell whether it is because Machiavelli isn’t necessarily inventing the wheel here, or if it is because he had, and its effects on the politics of Western society were forever changed by it. To be sure, it is a seminal work, but it’s hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. At times I sort of shake my head and think, “Why is this book so important? This isn’t anything particularly new or ground breaking?” As this wasn’t particularly a matter of literary discussion before Machiavelli, we will never know, and perhaps that is part of why is work is so seminal in Western literature.
Needless to say, one can not become Prince of a vampiric Camarilla city in Vampire: The Masquerade without employing more than a few of these methods.
A warning, however, as I mentioned this is a text that is from Renaissance Italy, and if you read it in English it is a translation to boot. Also, Machiavelli has the tendency to like to wander in many of his explanations and examples, (oh if I could have gotten away with that when I was in my history classes). Because of this, the reader often wonders why it is he is discussing Cesare Borgia one moment, then Heiro of Syracuse the next, (there is a point, and it takes him a while to get to it). For the historians out there, such as myself, you get giddy when he mentions events and people you learned about in your history classes, (I got excited at the Orsini and Colonna, having stayed at the Colonna Palace in Rome and heard the whole sordid story about those two families). For the person who is simply reading this as a political treatise, you will want to pull your hair out, especially if you know nothing about ancient or Renaissance Italian history.
However, it’s a lot of fun to read about, so go pick up Rome: The History of a City by Christopher Hibbert one of these days. It doesn’t cover Florence, but it does discuss a great many of the events, particularly with the Popes, that Machiavelli brings up.
Rate this wormy book: Machiavelli earns a FAT WORM from me. It’s not that his book isn’t good, (if very convoluted and long winded to those who aren’t used to reading texts from this period), but it’s not as if this is anything the modern reader doesn’t know. The true value in reading it is that it is codified here, complete with Machiavelli’s political thoughts on the matter, which leads you down the train of thought he himself was taking while writing it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
I admit it…I’m a rampaging Vampire: The Masquerade player.
I lay the blame fully at the feet of my friends Kari and Patric. They sucked me in with stories of angst-ridden vampires, and I lapped it up like a half-starved kitten let loose in a dairy. My first lessons in real politics were at the feet of maniacal VtM role-players, out to rule our little vampiric domains and plot against one another in never-ending schemes of conquest and total annihilation.
I cut my teeth, (no pun intended), on the complex, Byzantine labyrinth of intrigue that was my old gaming group. Sad as it is to say, it is very true. Which is why, when I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s classic treatise, The Prince, I was blinking at it with the consternated frustration of one who thinks, “Duh, doesn’t everyone know this already?”
And perhaps they don’t….or at least it had never been quantified in one document set firmly in the European mindset. Machiavelli’s most famous work, published in 1532, is more a treatise and entreaty written to Lorenzo de Medici. An outcast from his beloved Florence, and seeking to regain favor with the current powers-that-be in his home city, Machiavelli wrote down his observances on the best way by which to govern and maintain a state as a ruling head. Sometimes using common sense, sometimes using more than a fair dollop of ruthlessness, Machiavelli weaves then current politics amongst the Italian states and Europe, with ancient stories familiar to them from the Greece, Rome, and other periods. He creates a system that he believes will not only effectively help a prince to lead his people, but shows examples of how other leaders of the time are flagging miserably.
There are many themes that Machiavelli picks up on and most of them are common sense to anyone who’s spent even half-a-minute watching History Channel shows on ancient and medieval European history. His antipathy towards mercenaries is a common theme in the annals of ancient history, even my own medieval history professor, Patrick Geary, used to warn loudly, “Don’t let the barbarians come to defend you, else they might get the idea that they like the joint and will want to stay.” Even worse, as was the case in the waning days of the Roman Empire, auxiliary troops, made up of non-Roman, barbarian soldiers would often be so depended on in the outlying regions, the regular army just assumed they would always be there, and always be loyal. Thus one of the many reasons for the Fall of Rome, and countless other nations up to Machiavelli’s time, this isn’t a particularly new idea, but never before had it really been pointed out in literature for everyone to see. It’s one of those common sense things I suspect that many a strong ruler knew, and Machiavelli finally gave voice to for everyone to understand.
Machiavelli’s opinion of rule over the centuries has been noted as being callous, calculated, and amoral, “ruling by any means” in other words. And this has given rise to the modern English word “Machiavellian” to describe anyone who tends to plot in this sort of manner. And yet, when one reads The Prince, one realizes that Machiavelli is less about being a cruel or dispassionate man, as you can tell by his work that he does care very much about a great number of things, Florence in particular. Rather, he is a man who sees the role of a ruler as that of a man who has to balance practicality with sentimentality, and how does one maneuver both in order to not only maintain his throne from those who threaten it within, as well as protecting both his people and his power from enemies without. It’s a fine line that any ruler is asked to tread, even in modern democracies. This theory isn’t so much cruel or manipulative as it is strict politics. It is how one maintains their state.
However, Machiavelli is certainly a man of his time, and writes very much that way. He is focused on the political situation that has been and is ongoing in 14th century Italy, and his observations are very much colored by the city-states and papal empire that existed in the land at the time, not to mention the rising powers of Spain and France to the east. Modern historians and political scientists look back on that with the benefit of hindsight, and wonder what Machiavelli was thinking at times, (medieval and early Renaissance France, straight out of the Hundred Years War, being a good example of strong, central government to anyone was a particular laugh.) But his observations do mark a time when things were changing in Europe, when it was less and less about small, feudal governments, and more about expanding powerbases, when rulers had to care more than about their duties of fief to some overlord, and more about ensuring their lands, people, and power base to create what would, in the next few hundred years, become the nation-states that we have inherited in our own world today.
Much of the advice that Machiavelli gives is very common sense now at days, the sort of thing that we all take for granted in modern politics. Not that we have much in the way of singular ruling princes in modern democracies, but the themes make sense to us even in our current political landscape. And it is hard to tell whether it is because Machiavelli isn’t necessarily inventing the wheel here, or if it is because he had, and its effects on the politics of Western society were forever changed by it. To be sure, it is a seminal work, but it’s hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. At times I sort of shake my head and think, “Why is this book so important? This isn’t anything particularly new or ground breaking?” As this wasn’t particularly a matter of literary discussion before Machiavelli, we will never know, and perhaps that is part of why is work is so seminal in Western literature.
Needless to say, one can not become Prince of a vampiric Camarilla city in Vampire: The Masquerade without employing more than a few of these methods.
A warning, however, as I mentioned this is a text that is from Renaissance Italy, and if you read it in English it is a translation to boot. Also, Machiavelli has the tendency to like to wander in many of his explanations and examples, (oh if I could have gotten away with that when I was in my history classes). Because of this, the reader often wonders why it is he is discussing Cesare Borgia one moment, then Heiro of Syracuse the next, (there is a point, and it takes him a while to get to it). For the historians out there, such as myself, you get giddy when he mentions events and people you learned about in your history classes, (I got excited at the Orsini and Colonna, having stayed at the Colonna Palace in Rome and heard the whole sordid story about those two families). For the person who is simply reading this as a political treatise, you will want to pull your hair out, especially if you know nothing about ancient or Renaissance Italian history.
However, it’s a lot of fun to read about, so go pick up Rome: The History of a City by Christopher Hibbert one of these days. It doesn’t cover Florence, but it does discuss a great many of the events, particularly with the Popes, that Machiavelli brings up.
Rate this wormy book: Machiavelli earns a FAT WORM from me. It’s not that his book isn’t good, (if very convoluted and long winded to those who aren’t used to reading texts from this period), but it’s not as if this is anything the modern reader doesn’t know. The true value in reading it is that it is codified here, complete with Machiavelli’s political thoughts on the matter, which leads you down the train of thought he himself was taking while writing it.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
Harcourt Brace Jovonovich-1973
“This is true love…you think this happens every day?”
The moment in the movie when Westley whispers that to Buttercup, I puddle into peels of rapturous delight. Since I was eleven-years-old, when I first saw the movie adaptation of The Princess Bride, I have adored the story of romance, adventure; daring sword fights, pirates….what isn’t to love for an eleven-year-old.
To this day, the movie is amongst one of my favorites, so much so it sits on my Ipod so I can listen to it while stuck in long, Los Angeles commutes. I own two copies of it personally. I can quote lines from the movie verbatim. I have friends who seriously considered naming parts of their anatomy after Westley, (if you need me to describe that further, perhaps you should go find ‘true love’ for yourself, or at least an attractive member of the opposite gender.)
This story has been as formative a part of my life as Cookie Monster and Transformers! And yet, I didn’t know for years that it was based on a book. Yes, I know it mentions it in the credits, but by that time I’m usually a sighing lump of goo on my couch, wishing I had a Westley to come and save me, (except I don’t live in a castle, there is no Prince Humperdink at my house, and the only pirates I know of are the ones who are downloading the movie illegally off the internet).
A girl can wish….
Anyway, when I did learn it was based on a book, I decided to give Mr. Goldman’s text a whirl. I had a bit of trepidation, admittedly. I so loved the original movie, and I had a feeling that somehow, someway the book would let me down. Either the story wouldn’t be nearly as fun, with its giants and miracles, or I’d find that the characters weren’t nearly as loveable as in the movie. Perhaps the movie wouldn’t follow anything in the book, and I would discover that the story was a long, drawn out mess of a tale, with the romance of Westley and Buttercup only some small part of what turned out to be some other epic story. What if I hated the book? Would this taint my love of the movie forever?
Well, to be fair, the book did not completely disappoint me…but it didn’t endear itself to me the way the movie did. In fact, the book lies weirdly in between for me. Unlike other books-cum-movies out there, I believe that this is one of the few books where the movie was actually an improvement on the story, rather than a sad, pale copy. And while this doesn’t take away from what is essentially a very good story, it does leave me sort of weirdly disappointed that I didn’t love the book more.
Much of the plot of The Princess Bride stays the same. In the country of Florin, the farm-boy Westley is in love with the self-absorbed Buttercup, who one day realizes she loves him as well. He leaves to find his fortune, but his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, a notorious killer who leaves no survivors. Heartbroken, Buttercup eventually agrees to marry Prince Humperdink, the heir to the Florinese throne, not realizing that he is using her and their marriage to help create a war with Florin’s long-time rival, Guilder. When the new Princess is kidnapped by three mercenaries, out to do the Prince’s bidding, only the mysterious Man in Black can save Buttercup. But he proves to be someone who Buttercup never expected to see again.
Goldman’s telling of the now familiar story takes on the literary conceit of being an abridgement of a historical work by an S. Morgenstern, a supposed famous Florinese historian. While Goldman presents Morgenstern’s “work” as a satirical take on the rich lives of nobles, it plays out as much more Goldman’s satirical take on the publishing world, his own made up marriage and family, (in the book he has a wife and son, in the real world he has a wife and two daughters), and poking fun at traditional fairy tales all together. Interspersed between the ‘abridgements’ that form the basis of the tale of Westley and Buttercup are Goldman’s own notes and observations on Morgenstern’s ‘work’, as well as personal remembrances of how he first heard the story as a boy, (all made up by Goldman), and the continuation of the device that Florin and Guilder are indeed real places that he not only has been to, but has descended from. All of this lends the reader to nearly, almost believe that none of this was make-believe, fairy tale romance at all, but that it really did happen, and Westley, Buttercup, and all of the rest really did exist in the annals of history. So badly did I want to believe it, that despite the fact that I know those places don’t exist, I became impressed at how well Goldman wove real history and politics alongside his make-believe. That is until he would rattle off some fact in the sort of tongue-in-cheek, flippant way that gave you a wink and a nod and reminded you that indeed this was really just a silly, fun fairy story, like you would tell your children at night.
The story’s greatest strength is in the compelling nature of its characters, one which obviously carried over into the later movie, made in 1987. However, movies can only fit so much into their allotted time, and so much that made these characters wonderful was left out of the film, but Goldman had intact in his book. Everything from the past of Inigo Montoya, with the heartbreaking loss of his father to the ‘six-fingered man’, to Fezzig’s essentially sweet nature trapped in his giant’s body, to the real reason why the Prince is as ruthless as he is. I found myself loving Inigo and Fezzig all the more, and found Humperdink more despicable than he was even portrayed in the movie. If possible it made me love the story that is so familiar to me now even more.
But there were some down sides to this version as well, things that did detract from it greatly for me. First of all, Goldman’s commentary, while perpetuating the idea that he is abridging a real work of academic scholarship, often breaks in at moments that are both irritating and unwelcome. And often his commentary has very little to do with what is actually going on in the plot, but rambles to stories about his imaginary wife and son, his woes on his life, the publishing process, his arguments with the supposed Morgenstern estate, and any countless number of bits of information he has gathered on the fictional Morgenstern and his work. And while this is amusing in its fashion, it begins to become tiresome after a while. It’s almost like watching the movie with Jerry Seinfeld sitting beside you running an ongoing commentary about whatever is going on in his head regarding the story at hand. And while that would be a great Seinfeld episode, its horrible academia, (which this is supposed to mimic), and even worse literature, and you find yourself skipping over these parts to get to ‘the good parts’ as Goldman would say.
Yes, I do believe that the characters are even more compelling in the book; the one exception to this rule is Buttercup. She is the one character I found to be less compelling in the book than in the movie, a vapid, self-centered, ignorant girl, who made you wonder what Westley saw in her in the first place. Yes, admittedly, she does grow a great deal in the book, maturing to be both internally beautiful as well as externally. But there is Westley, braving every danger, fighting ever foe, coming back from death itself for this woman, and she not only treats him horribly in the beginning, but then ditches him at the Fire Swamp because she made a promise, and she doesn’t want to die.
At least in the movie, she does it for very noble reasons, and it makes you understand why Westley would come back from the dead to be with her. In Goldman’s narrative it only comes off as his own self-delusion that convinces himself that Buttercup did it out of greater reasons. It just-so-happens that she eventually comes to her senses about it all and realizes that Westley is worth it all in the end., and perhaps Goldman is trying to make a statement about true love and imperfections, and I realize that. I perhaps prefer the fairy tale.
On the whole, the book isn’t a bad book, it’s even better than mediocre. It’s a good book, and if I had not grown up with the movie all of my life, I might even say it was a great book. But once that mental image was ingrained into my pop culture psyche, it wouldn’t turn off. It is almost the same problem I have with the Harry Potter books and movies, except in reverse, (oh, what they did to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).
Rate this wormy book: This is a FAT WORM, enjoyable to read, and a good way to get your romantic, fairy tale, swashbuckling, pretty-pretty princess fix in. If you are a huge fan of the movie, prepare for some minor irritations with the book, but on the whole a hell of a lot of fun. Have fun storming the castle….
William Goldman
Harcourt Brace Jovonovich-1973
“This is true love…you think this happens every day?”
The moment in the movie when Westley whispers that to Buttercup, I puddle into peels of rapturous delight. Since I was eleven-years-old, when I first saw the movie adaptation of The Princess Bride, I have adored the story of romance, adventure; daring sword fights, pirates….what isn’t to love for an eleven-year-old.
To this day, the movie is amongst one of my favorites, so much so it sits on my Ipod so I can listen to it while stuck in long, Los Angeles commutes. I own two copies of it personally. I can quote lines from the movie verbatim. I have friends who seriously considered naming parts of their anatomy after Westley, (if you need me to describe that further, perhaps you should go find ‘true love’ for yourself, or at least an attractive member of the opposite gender.)
This story has been as formative a part of my life as Cookie Monster and Transformers! And yet, I didn’t know for years that it was based on a book. Yes, I know it mentions it in the credits, but by that time I’m usually a sighing lump of goo on my couch, wishing I had a Westley to come and save me, (except I don’t live in a castle, there is no Prince Humperdink at my house, and the only pirates I know of are the ones who are downloading the movie illegally off the internet).
A girl can wish….
Anyway, when I did learn it was based on a book, I decided to give Mr. Goldman’s text a whirl. I had a bit of trepidation, admittedly. I so loved the original movie, and I had a feeling that somehow, someway the book would let me down. Either the story wouldn’t be nearly as fun, with its giants and miracles, or I’d find that the characters weren’t nearly as loveable as in the movie. Perhaps the movie wouldn’t follow anything in the book, and I would discover that the story was a long, drawn out mess of a tale, with the romance of Westley and Buttercup only some small part of what turned out to be some other epic story. What if I hated the book? Would this taint my love of the movie forever?
Well, to be fair, the book did not completely disappoint me…but it didn’t endear itself to me the way the movie did. In fact, the book lies weirdly in between for me. Unlike other books-cum-movies out there, I believe that this is one of the few books where the movie was actually an improvement on the story, rather than a sad, pale copy. And while this doesn’t take away from what is essentially a very good story, it does leave me sort of weirdly disappointed that I didn’t love the book more.
Much of the plot of The Princess Bride stays the same. In the country of Florin, the farm-boy Westley is in love with the self-absorbed Buttercup, who one day realizes she loves him as well. He leaves to find his fortune, but his ship is attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, a notorious killer who leaves no survivors. Heartbroken, Buttercup eventually agrees to marry Prince Humperdink, the heir to the Florinese throne, not realizing that he is using her and their marriage to help create a war with Florin’s long-time rival, Guilder. When the new Princess is kidnapped by three mercenaries, out to do the Prince’s bidding, only the mysterious Man in Black can save Buttercup. But he proves to be someone who Buttercup never expected to see again.
Goldman’s telling of the now familiar story takes on the literary conceit of being an abridgement of a historical work by an S. Morgenstern, a supposed famous Florinese historian. While Goldman presents Morgenstern’s “work” as a satirical take on the rich lives of nobles, it plays out as much more Goldman’s satirical take on the publishing world, his own made up marriage and family, (in the book he has a wife and son, in the real world he has a wife and two daughters), and poking fun at traditional fairy tales all together. Interspersed between the ‘abridgements’ that form the basis of the tale of Westley and Buttercup are Goldman’s own notes and observations on Morgenstern’s ‘work’, as well as personal remembrances of how he first heard the story as a boy, (all made up by Goldman), and the continuation of the device that Florin and Guilder are indeed real places that he not only has been to, but has descended from. All of this lends the reader to nearly, almost believe that none of this was make-believe, fairy tale romance at all, but that it really did happen, and Westley, Buttercup, and all of the rest really did exist in the annals of history. So badly did I want to believe it, that despite the fact that I know those places don’t exist, I became impressed at how well Goldman wove real history and politics alongside his make-believe. That is until he would rattle off some fact in the sort of tongue-in-cheek, flippant way that gave you a wink and a nod and reminded you that indeed this was really just a silly, fun fairy story, like you would tell your children at night.
The story’s greatest strength is in the compelling nature of its characters, one which obviously carried over into the later movie, made in 1987. However, movies can only fit so much into their allotted time, and so much that made these characters wonderful was left out of the film, but Goldman had intact in his book. Everything from the past of Inigo Montoya, with the heartbreaking loss of his father to the ‘six-fingered man’, to Fezzig’s essentially sweet nature trapped in his giant’s body, to the real reason why the Prince is as ruthless as he is. I found myself loving Inigo and Fezzig all the more, and found Humperdink more despicable than he was even portrayed in the movie. If possible it made me love the story that is so familiar to me now even more.
But there were some down sides to this version as well, things that did detract from it greatly for me. First of all, Goldman’s commentary, while perpetuating the idea that he is abridging a real work of academic scholarship, often breaks in at moments that are both irritating and unwelcome. And often his commentary has very little to do with what is actually going on in the plot, but rambles to stories about his imaginary wife and son, his woes on his life, the publishing process, his arguments with the supposed Morgenstern estate, and any countless number of bits of information he has gathered on the fictional Morgenstern and his work. And while this is amusing in its fashion, it begins to become tiresome after a while. It’s almost like watching the movie with Jerry Seinfeld sitting beside you running an ongoing commentary about whatever is going on in his head regarding the story at hand. And while that would be a great Seinfeld episode, its horrible academia, (which this is supposed to mimic), and even worse literature, and you find yourself skipping over these parts to get to ‘the good parts’ as Goldman would say.
Yes, I do believe that the characters are even more compelling in the book; the one exception to this rule is Buttercup. She is the one character I found to be less compelling in the book than in the movie, a vapid, self-centered, ignorant girl, who made you wonder what Westley saw in her in the first place. Yes, admittedly, she does grow a great deal in the book, maturing to be both internally beautiful as well as externally. But there is Westley, braving every danger, fighting ever foe, coming back from death itself for this woman, and she not only treats him horribly in the beginning, but then ditches him at the Fire Swamp because she made a promise, and she doesn’t want to die.
At least in the movie, she does it for very noble reasons, and it makes you understand why Westley would come back from the dead to be with her. In Goldman’s narrative it only comes off as his own self-delusion that convinces himself that Buttercup did it out of greater reasons. It just-so-happens that she eventually comes to her senses about it all and realizes that Westley is worth it all in the end., and perhaps Goldman is trying to make a statement about true love and imperfections, and I realize that. I perhaps prefer the fairy tale.
On the whole, the book isn’t a bad book, it’s even better than mediocre. It’s a good book, and if I had not grown up with the movie all of my life, I might even say it was a great book. But once that mental image was ingrained into my pop culture psyche, it wouldn’t turn off. It is almost the same problem I have with the Harry Potter books and movies, except in reverse, (oh, what they did to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).
Rate this wormy book: This is a FAT WORM, enjoyable to read, and a good way to get your romantic, fairy tale, swashbuckling, pretty-pretty princess fix in. If you are a huge fan of the movie, prepare for some minor irritations with the book, but on the whole a hell of a lot of fun. Have fun storming the castle….
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