The Princess Bride
S. Morgenstern & William Goldman (abridger)
283 pages
published in 1973

Last week I found the 1987 movie of The Princess Bride on dvd and after watching it, I was in the mood to reread the book as well. Having now done so, it was interesting to see how faithful the movie was to the book. Which not surprising, considering William Goldman both abridged S. Morgenstern's original work and wrote the script for the movie.

It is of course impossible to create any movie adaptation that's 100% faithful to its source, if only because of the different strengths of the respective media. What the movie makers wisely did was to concentrate on the core story of Buttercup and Westley, removing all of the subtext and commentary Goldman put into the book when he abridged it. The only important plot element missing from the movie is the Zoo of Death, which seems to have been taken out for budgetary reasons...

The movie then was an abridgement of an abridgement, but what of the original abridgement? In his introduction Goldman claims that he was inspired to write this "good parts" version of Morgenstern's classic after he discovered his father had done so when reading The Princess Bride to him as a boy. Like Gulliver's Travels, the original Princess Bride was a satire on persons and institutions long dead and gone, again like Gulliver's Travels in the form of an adventure story. Strip away "the boring bits", Goldman must have thought and presto, you have one classic adventure story with everything: fencing, fighting, torture, poison, True Love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautifulest ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts of all natures and descriptions, pain, death, brave men, coward men, strongest men, chases, escapes, lies, truths, passion and miracles.

It certainly sounds okay.

It reads more than okay. I could be snobbish about this and write how typically American it is to want to abridge a classic, taking away everything that can't be understood by a bright eight year old, but the fact remains that what is left behind is one of the best adventure stories ever written. I'm sure the material Goldman cut is worthy in its own right and someday perhaps I will read the unabridged version, but for now I had too much fun reading the "good parts" version.

Don't let yourself be put off by Goldman's introduction which is overtly long and too personal for my liking: did we really have to know how he felt about his wife and son? Not a happy marriage, it seems. If necessary, skip the introduction and start with Chapter One, the bride.