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The Princess Bride: S Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure (Paperback)
by William Goldman
| Category:
Teens, Classic, Fantasy, Adventure |
| Market price: ¥ 258.00
MSL price:
¥ 248.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
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MSL Pointer Review:
A witty and elegant subversion of the fantasy genre. It's one of those books where you never want it to end. Recommend it to everybody!
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Author: William Goldman
Publisher: Ballantine Books; 25th Anniv edition
Pub. in: November, 1998
ISBN: 034543014X
Pages: 416
Measurements: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00352
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0345430144
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- Awards & Credential -
"His swashbuckling fable is nutball funny... A 'classic' medieval melodrama that sounds like all the Saturday serials you ever saw feversihly reworked by the Marx Brothers." - Newsweek
"One of the funniest, most original, and deeply moving novels I have read in a long time." - Los Angeles Times
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- MSL Picks -
Believe it or not, my future husband used this book to win my hand. I think giving it to me as a gift was his way of proving that he is a hopeless romantic, since the book is so wonderfully hopelessly romantic. So far, he's lived up to it! If you've only seen the movie, but love it, then you should definitely read the book. Also look for the 25th Anniversary (yes, it's really been that long) edition this Christmas--it includes the first chapter of the forthcoming sequel, Buttercup's Baby.
(Quoting From the Publisher)
Target readers:
Children, teens, young adults.
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William Goldman has been writing books and movies for more than forty years. He has won two Academy Awards (for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), and three Lifetime Achievement awards in screenwriting. His novel Marathon Man has made him very famous in dentist's offices around the world.
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From the Publisher
Once upon a time came a story so full of high adventure and true love that it became an instant classic and won the hearts of millions. Now in hardcover in America for the first time since 1973, this special edition of The Princess Bride is a true keepsake for devoted fans as well as those lucky enough to discover it for the first time. What reader can forget or resist such colorful characters as
Westley... handsome farm boy who risks death and much, much worse for the woman he loves; Inigo... the Spanish swordsman who lives only to avenge his father's death; Fezzik... the Turk, the gentlest giant ever to have uprooted a tree with his bare hands; Vizzini... the evil Sicilian, with a mind so keen he's foiled by his own perfect logic; Prince Humperdinck... the eviler ruler of Guilder, who has an equally insatiable thirst for war and the beauteous Buttercup; Count Rugen... the evilest man of all, who thrives on the excruciating pain of others; Miracle Max... the King's ex-Miracle Man, who can raise the dead (kind of); The Dread Pirate Roberts... supreme looter and plunderer of the high seas; and, of course, Buttercup... the princess bride, the most perfect, beautiful woman in the history of the world.
S. Morgenstern's timeless tale - discovered and wonderfully abridged by William Goldman - pits country against country, good against evil, love against hate. From the Cliffs of Insanity through the Fire Swamp and down into the Zoo of Death, this incredible journey and brilliant tale is peppered with strange beasties monstrous and gentle, and memorable surprises both terrible and sublime.
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This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
How is such a thing possible? I'll do my best to explain. As a child, I had simply no interest in books. I hated reading, I was very bad at it, and besides, how could you take the time to read when there were games that shrieked for playing? Basketball, baseball, marbles--I could never get enough. I wasn't even good at them, but give me a football and an empty playground and I could invent last-second triumphs that would bring tears to your eyes. School was torture. Miss Roginski, who was my teacher for the third through fifth grades, would have meeting after meeting with my mother. "I don't feel Billy is perhaps extending himself quite as much as he might." Or, "When we test him, Billy does really exceptionally well, considering his class standing." Or, most often, "I don't know, Mrs. Goldman: what are we going to do about Billy?"
What are we going to do about Billy? That was the phrase that haunted me those first ten years. I pretended not to care, but secretly I was petrified. Everyone and everything was passing me by. I had no real friends, no single person who shared an equal interest in all games. I seemed busy, busy, busy, but I suppose, if pressed, I might have admitted that, for all my frenzy, I was very much alone.
"What are we going to do about you, Billy?"
"I don't know, Miss Roginski."
"How could you have failed this reading test? I've heard you use every word with my own ears."
"I'm sorry, Miss Roginski. I must not have been thinking."
"You're always thinking, Billy. You just weren't thinking about the reading test."
I could only nod.
"What was it this time?"
"I don't know. I can't remember."
"Was it Stanley Hack again?" (Stan Hack was the Cubs' third baseman for these and many other years. I saw him play once from a bleacher seat, and even at that distance he had the sweetest smile I had ever seen and to this day I swear he smiled at me several times. I just worshipped him. He could also hit a ton.)
"Bronko Nagurski. He's a football player. A great football player, and the paper last night said he might come back and play for the Bears again. He retired when I was little but if he came back and I could get someone to take me to a game, I could see him play and maybe if whoever took me also knew him, I could meet him after and maybe if he was hungry, I might let him have a sandwich I might have brought with me. I was trying to figure out what kind of sandwich Bronko Nagurski would like."
She just sagged at her desk. "You've got a wonderful imagination, Billy."
I don't know what I said. Probably "thank you" or something.
"I can't harness it, though," she went on. "Why is that?"
"I think it's that probably I need glasses and I don't read because the words are so fuzzy. That would explain why I'm all the time squinting. Maybe if I went to an eye doctor who could give me glasses I'd be the best reader in class and you wouldn't have to keep me after school so much."
She just pointed behind her. "Get to work cleaning the blackboards, Billy."
"Yes, ma'am." I was the best at cleaning blackboards.
"Do they look fuzzy?" Miss Roginski said after a while.
"Oh, no, I just made that up." I never squinted either. But she just seemed so whipped about it. She always did. This had been going on for three grades now.
"I'm just not getting through to you somehow."
"It's not your fault, Miss Roginski." (It wasn't. I just worshipped her too. She was all dumpy and fat but I used to wish she'd been my mother. I could never make that really come out right, unless she had been married to my father first, and then they'd gotten divorced and my father had married my mother, which was okay, because Miss Roginski had to work, so my father got custody of me--that all made sense. Only they never seemed to know each other, my dad and Miss Roginski. Whenever they'd meet, each year during the Christmas pageant when all the parents came, I'd watch the two of them like crazy, hoping for some kind of secret glimmer or look that could only mean, "Well, how are you, how's your life been going since our divorce?" but no soap. She wasn't my mother, she was just my teacher, and I was her own personal and growing disaster area.)
"You're going to be all right, Billy."
"I sure hope so, Miss Roginski."
"You're a late bloomer, that's all. Winston Churchill was a late bloomer and so are you."
I was about to ask her who he played for but there was something in her tone that made me know enough not to.
"And Einstein."
Him I also didn't know. Or what a late bloomer was either. But boy, did I ever want to be one.
When I was twenty-six, my first novel, The Temple of Gold, was published by Alfred A. Knopf. (Which is now part of Random House which is now part of R.C.A. which is just part of what's wrong with publishing in America today which is not part of this story.) Anyway, before publication, the publicity people at Knopf were talking to me, trying to figure what they could do to justify their salaries, and they asked who did I want to send advance copies to that might be an opinion maker, and I said I didn't know anybody like that and they said, "Think, everybody knows somebody," and so I got all excited because the idea just came to me and I said, "Okay, send a copy to Miss Roginski," which I figure was logical and terrific because if anybody made my opinions, she did. (She's all through The Temple of Gold, by the way, only I called her "Miss Patulski"--even then I was creative.)
"Who?" this publicity lady said.
"This old teacher of mine, you send her a copy and I'll sign it and maybe write a little--" I was really excited until this publicity guy interrupted with, "We were thinking of someone more on the national scene."
Very soft I said, "Miss Roginski, you just send her a copy, please, okay?"
"Yes," he said, "yes, by all means."
You remember how I didn't ask who Churchill played for because of her tone? I must have hit that same tone too just then. Anyway, something must have happened because he right away wrote her name down asking was it ski or sky.
"With the i," I told him, already hiking through the years, trying to get the inscription fantastic for her. You know, clever and modest and brilliant and perfect, like that.
"First name?"
That brought me back fast. I didn't know her first name. "Miss" was all I ever called her. I didn't know her address either. I didn't even know if she was alive or not. I hadn't been back to Chicago in ten years; I was an only child, both folks gone, who needed Chicago?
"Send it to Highland Park Grammar School," I said, and first what I thought I'd write was "For Miss Roginski, a rose from your late bloomer," but then I thought that was too conceited, so I decided "For Miss Roginski, a weed from your late bloomer," would be more humble. Too humble, I decided next, and that was it for bright ideas that day. I couldn't think of anything. Then I thought, What if she doesn't even remember me? Hundreds of students over the years, why should she? So finally in desperation I put, "For Miss Roginski from William Goldman--Billy you called me and you said I would be a late bloomer and this book is for you and I hope you like it. I was in your class for third, fourth and fifth grades, thank you very much. William Goldman."
The book came out and got bombed; I stayed in and did the same, adjusting. Not only did it not establish me as the freshest thing since Kit Marlowe, it also didn't get read by anybody. Not true. It got read by any number of people, all of whom I knew. I think it is safe to say, however, no strangers savored it. It was a grinding experience and I reacted as indicated above. So when Miss Roginski's note came--late--it got sent to Knopf and they took their time relaying it--I was really ready for a lift.
"Dear Mr. Goldman: Thank you for the book. I have not had time yet to read it, but I am sure it is a fine endeavor. I of course remember you. I remember all my students. Yours sincerely, Antonia Roginski."
What a crusher. She didn't remember me at all. I sat there holding the note, rocked. People don't remember me. Really. It's not any paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability.
So when Miss Roginski sent me that note making her just like everyone else, I was glad she'd never gotten married, I'd never liked her anyway, she'd always been a rotten teacher, and it served her right her first name was Antonia.
"I didn't mean it," I said out loud right then. I was alone in my one-room job on Manhattan's glamorous West Side and talking to myself. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I went on. "You got to believe that, Miss Roginski."
What had happened, of course, was that I'd finally seen the postscript. It was on the back of the thank-you note and what it said was, "Idiot. Not even the immortal S. Morgenstern could feel more parental than I."
S. Morgenstern! The Princess Bride. She remembered!
Flashback.
1941. Autumn. I'm a little cranky because my radio won't get the football games. Northwestern is playing Notre Dame, it starts at one, and by one-thirty I can't get the game. Music, news, soap operas, everything, but not the biggie. I call for my mother. She comes. I tell her my radio's busted, I can't...
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Xeneri (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
"Wait a minute, wait a minute... Is this a kissing book?" Well, yes and no...you'll just have to read it to find out for yourself.
William Goldman is a legend in the world of screenwriting, known for his clever, crisp dialogue and engrossing narrative, so why should his novels be any different?
Utterly charming, 'The Princess Bride' combines action, adventure, plenty of swordplay, and yes, some kissing... Those of you who only saw the movie (also writen by Goldman - see my DVD review) are missing out on many of the delights of the book, notably on the developed backstory of the characters and the clean, wry prose.
Here's a bit of trivia: First, there is NO S. Morgenstern - he is made up, fictitious, a red herring... accept it and move on. Second, Mr. Goldman will send you a lost section if you write to his address and request it (the one of mentions in the book)! When I first read that 10 years ago, I wrote to the company mentioned in the book and was delighted to receive my bonus section! (Hey, Mr Goldman if you are reading this, I lost my copy 3 years ago when I moved to LA! Could you please send me another one? )
Cherish this book and keep it to share with your children.
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Gwen Kramer (MSL quote) , USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
I have loved this book for years (I think it may be my favorite) William Goldman is a talented author especially with dialogue. This is a wonderful spoof/homage to old fashioned swashbuckling romance.
I noticed that a lot of people believe this book is an abridged version of the "original" S. Morgenstern book. Actually, Morgenstern does not exist, just try looking him up on the library of congress. He was just made up as part of the joke. Think about it, isn't a bit ironic that Morgenstern and William Goldman write EXACTLY the same way. This is supposed to be abridged, not rewritten. Plus, if Morgenstern existed, then Florin must too. Actually, Florin and Guilder were coins, the names were just borrowed. You'll never find the countries in your history book.
This is the Spinal Tap thing, the joke is done with a totally straight face so that there are always people who aren't exactly sure if it's the real deal. That was the reason Rob Reiner was chosen to direct the movie version.
Read this book, enjoy it, it is one of the best you will ever experience. The diaglogue is unforgetable (every sylabub!)
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
The greatness of this book is truly, in the word's of Vizzini "Inconceivable!" What's this book about? Fencing, fighting, true love, strong hate, harsh revenge, a few giants, lots of bad men, lots of good men, pain, death, brave men, coward men, escapes, lies, truth, passion, miracles. It's hilarious, heart breaking, and terrifying all at the same time. If none of that sounds good to you, or if you've seen the movie and didn't like it, don't read the book. If you liked the movie, the book is twice as good!
Who's the genius behind this incredible book? The answer is simple, William Goldman (which is another whole story in its self). If you look at the book you'll read: "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure. The "good parts version" abriged by William Goldman." In Goldman's introduction he explains how when he was a ten years old and was home sick with pneumonia, his father read him the book. (Sound farmiliar? If you're remembering the scene between the grandfather and the boy in the book you're right.) His father was a poor, English struggling immigrant from Florin, the setting of the Princess Bride. His father explains how Morgenstern was a great writer in his country and that there it is a very famous book. Goldman obviously loves the book.
As a man, Goldman decides to give the book to his son, Jason for his tenth birthday. After putting in an enormous amount of time and money to track down the book, to his shock the son hates it. In turn, he decides to re-read the book for himself. What he discovers is that his father didn't actually read him the whole book, he only read him the good parts. The book in fact was not even really focussing on the story he heard, it's actually all about the history of Florin. Goldman decides to abridge the book with only the "good parts."
Everything I have just told you is a lie and it will drive you crazy the whole book! William Goldman did not in fact "abridge" the book he wrote the book. He invents Florin, he invents Jason, he invents everything! Why such a brilliant writer would completely give all the credit to another writer who never existed I will never understand. The book is filled with clever and hilarious "abridgement notes" from Goldman. Not only are they funny to read, they keep you on top of things so you never are confused or find yourself searching back for explanations. If you don't like this sort of thing, don't worry they're written in a way that can be easily skipped.
You can read about all of the plot in any other review, but in a couple of sentences: Buttercup falls in love with the gorgeous Farm Boy. He goes off to America to seek their fortune. Buttercup learns that he dies. She is forced to marry the awful Prince even though she vows never to love again. Buttercup gets kidnapped... this is just the beginning! If I go any farther I'll give it away! If this sounds like a stupid fairy tale to you TRUST ME its not! Sure, it's about love, but in between revenge, poison, a man obsessed with human pain, death, duels, well I think you get the idea.
As if all of this isn't enough! There is something special about this addition you can't find anywhere else.
If you want to read a great story about true love, victory, defeat, pain and if you want a book that will make you laugh out loud, cry, or tremble with fear this is THE book. I truly think I can honestly say there is no other book like it. I would would put it against any of the great fantasty story writer, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis anyday! It goes ten times faster than any of the Lord of the Rings and is in my opinion just as exciting if not more. One tip, if you haven't watched the movie READ THE BOOK FIRST! It's got so many exciting turns and such an incredible ending, don't ruin it for yourself like I did.
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Bob Ritchie (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
I loved this book! I just finished reading it and really, really want to find the sequel, Buttercup's Baby, which, I believe, won't be published for a while. The story is about Buttercup, a beautiful woman, who discovers that she loves the farm boy, Wesley, just in time for him to leave for America! But then Buttercup recieves the devasting news that Wesley has been killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts! Buttercup is devasted and in her haste, consents to marry the evil Prince Humperdink. For three years, Buttercup, the once common daughter of a farmer, learns how to be a princess and future queen. One day, she is kidnapped by a band of three men: a mighty giant (the champion wrestler of 73 countries), the gratest swordsman in the world, and a tiny hunchback who happens to be the genius of the theives of Florin! However, a man dressed completely in black soon appears on the scene who seems to match all three mens' skills! This man attempts to rescue the doomed-to-die Buttercup, and you'll have to read this wonderful novel to find out what happens! |
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