True story, inasmuch as it matters...
Jun. 14th, 2026 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serizawa3000 This was ages ago.
It's my second year of college. One of my new classmates (he eventually became a dear friend, and is dearly missed) discloses to me that the movie The Princess Bride was based on a book. Until that point, I did not know there was a book. And I remembered watching the movie on home video years before (when I was in high school) and thinking it was okay, but I hadn't thought much about it since then, save for remembering who all was in it by dint of seeing them in other things.
He--classmate, friend, Drama Club comrade-in-arms--went into considerable detail about stuff from the book that didn't make it into the movie. (In retrospect, it was probably due to time and budget reasons that the movie didn't feature Prince Humperdinck's Zoo of Death. You get some Shrieking Eels and R.O.U.S... actually there weren't Shrieking Eels in the book; when Buttercup tries to swim away, Vizzini puts some blood in the water--his own!--to attract sharks.)
But the thing he got me thinking about was that he was looking for the unabridged edition of the book. He was certain it was out there, somewhere. "I WANT to read the packing and unpacking scenes!"
That's the thing. That's the magic, I guess. The conceit is that William Goldman (novelist, screenwriter, good buddy of Stephen King) "abridged" The Princess Bride from a much thicker book, because amid all the romance and swashbuckling, the book's "real" author "Simon Morgenstern" wrote lengthy bits that were one part history, one part satire, with occasional asides directly addressing the reader about one thing or another... and to someone wanting to read an adventure story, this stuff is dull. Hence why the book is called the "Good Parts" edition.
In any case, my friend wanted to find the unabridged edition, he was that convinced.
Time passed. College ended. I saw my friend less frequently, though we did still communicate via phone, online, and finally, Facebook.
At some point, I was looking up something or other online, as you do... and the realization set in that there is NO unabridged edition of The Princess Bride. William Goldman made it all up. There was no "S. Morgenstern". (Goldman did write another "S. Morgenstern" work called The Silent Gondoliers, and I remember seeing it at the library.)
The reveal was in the details of the book's framing device, where Goldman talks about his wife (Helen) and son (Jason), and how he manages to get a copy of the book for his son's birthday; Jason started reading it but got bogged down in chapter two, which is why Goldman decided to abridge the book (and swaps out S. Morgenstern's asides to the reader for his own).
William Goldman didn't have a son in real life. He had two daughters. The Princess Bride came to be from bedtime stories he told them.
I never mentioned any of this to my friend. I have no idea if he ever found out himself, or if, perhaps, he knew all along and his wanting to find an unabridged Princess Bride was akin to what wrestlers call kayfabe...
It's my second year of college. One of my new classmates (he eventually became a dear friend, and is dearly missed) discloses to me that the movie The Princess Bride was based on a book. Until that point, I did not know there was a book. And I remembered watching the movie on home video years before (when I was in high school) and thinking it was okay, but I hadn't thought much about it since then, save for remembering who all was in it by dint of seeing them in other things.
He--classmate, friend, Drama Club comrade-in-arms--went into considerable detail about stuff from the book that didn't make it into the movie. (In retrospect, it was probably due to time and budget reasons that the movie didn't feature Prince Humperdinck's Zoo of Death. You get some Shrieking Eels and R.O.U.S... actually there weren't Shrieking Eels in the book; when Buttercup tries to swim away, Vizzini puts some blood in the water--his own!--to attract sharks.)
But the thing he got me thinking about was that he was looking for the unabridged edition of the book. He was certain it was out there, somewhere. "I WANT to read the packing and unpacking scenes!"
That's the thing. That's the magic, I guess. The conceit is that William Goldman (novelist, screenwriter, good buddy of Stephen King) "abridged" The Princess Bride from a much thicker book, because amid all the romance and swashbuckling, the book's "real" author "Simon Morgenstern" wrote lengthy bits that were one part history, one part satire, with occasional asides directly addressing the reader about one thing or another... and to someone wanting to read an adventure story, this stuff is dull. Hence why the book is called the "Good Parts" edition.
In any case, my friend wanted to find the unabridged edition, he was that convinced.
Time passed. College ended. I saw my friend less frequently, though we did still communicate via phone, online, and finally, Facebook.
At some point, I was looking up something or other online, as you do... and the realization set in that there is NO unabridged edition of The Princess Bride. William Goldman made it all up. There was no "S. Morgenstern". (Goldman did write another "S. Morgenstern" work called The Silent Gondoliers, and I remember seeing it at the library.)
The reveal was in the details of the book's framing device, where Goldman talks about his wife (Helen) and son (Jason), and how he manages to get a copy of the book for his son's birthday; Jason started reading it but got bogged down in chapter two, which is why Goldman decided to abridge the book (and swaps out S. Morgenstern's asides to the reader for his own).
William Goldman didn't have a son in real life. He had two daughters. The Princess Bride came to be from bedtime stories he told them.
I never mentioned any of this to my friend. I have no idea if he ever found out himself, or if, perhaps, he knew all along and his wanting to find an unabridged Princess Bride was akin to what wrestlers call kayfabe...
