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….