“The Princess Bride” is one of those books that, by the time I actually got around to reading it, I was pissed that I was only just then getting around to reading it. Surely, someone should have made sure I understood how good this book was. But no. I was forced to discover it for myself.
The movie’s awesome, obviously.
For the longest time, I had no idea that there was a book. Even when I found out, I assumed that it was a novelization of the movie, as opposed to the original source material.
In case you haven’t yet had this revelation, I’ll tell you. “The Princess Bride” was published as a novel in 1973. The movie didn’t come out until 1987.
In a universe chock-full of loose adaptations, this movie follows the book incredibly closely. Which makes sense. The author, William Goldman, was a Hollywood screenwriter, known for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, among others. And I think that’s noticeable in the book, which is full of scenes best described as “cinematic”. And when the time came to turn “The Princess Bride” into a movie, Goldman wrote the script himself.
What caught me off guard is the difference in frame story. In the movie, Peter Falk is reading the story to his grandson, skipping a few scenes based on the taste of his audience. Peter Falk is awesome, obviously.
The frame story in the novel is more complex. The narrator is a Hollywood screenwriter named William Goldman, who wishes he had a better relationship with his son. He remembers fondly a book a book his father used to read to him, called “The Princess Bride” by S. Morgenstern. But when he finally tracks the book down, he finds a dull and tedious history text, from which his father was pulling the few-and-far-between tidbits of action. William Goldman, the character, then compiles his own version of the book, which is what you’re now reading.
This puts “The Princess Bride” solidly into two of my favorite niche genres – books about fictional literature, and books in which the main character has the same name as the author.
If you’re looking for books about fictional literature, I can recommend “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov, “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino, and “The King in Yellow” by Robert Chambers. On my to-be-read list is “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa” by Jan Potocki.
In the second category, I’m currently loving Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne series of detective novels, narrated by a novelist named Anthony Horowitz, who fundamentally misunderstands all the clues, in the best Captain Hastings tradition. It’s delightful.