The Princess Bride

Author: William Goldman

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Romance, Comedy
Rating: B

"Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."

There’s a part of me that inherently feels bad for not giving The Princess Bride a higher rating.  In the almost thirty years since it was written it’s become a classic, and deservedly so.  It’s an amazing piece of comedic fantasy and an even more amazing piece of metafictional satire – in a way it’s a satire of books that are satires.  At the same time, however, the story itself is rather gimmicky, the threats to the protagonists are far too easily overcome, and William Goldman’s comments within the text can be a bit much.

At its core The Princess Bride is a story of true love: the beautiful Buttercup is in love with farm hand Westley, but a series of unfortunate events pulls them apart – he, presumably dead, is captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts and she is forcefully engaged to marry Prince Humperdinck, the heir to the Florin throne.  It’s also a story of friendship, as midway through the series of unfortunate events Buttercup is abducted by three men who all rather desperately need each other: the Sicilian criminal genius (Vizzini), the Spanish master swordsman (Inigo), and the Turkish giant (Fezzik).  Vizzini is a hunchback who seems to really need to have people around in order to be amazed at his genius; Inigo needs someone to tell  him what to do, although in his heart he longs to take vengeance on the six-fingered man who killed his father; and Fezzik fears being alone above all other things and longs for companionship.  There’s more to it than just this, however, as The Princess Bride is presented as an abridged version of a much longer book by the same name, written by S. Morgenstern. Goldman was read the story as a child by his father, who left out all the lengthy boring bits, and upon discovering that as an adult Goldman insisted on abridging his favourite novel with “just the good bits.”  Thus, the book has a lengthy introduction explaining Goldman’s backstory to the novel and is filled throughout with his own commentary, telling you where he’s cut out things and making references to the way his father told him the story the first time – and in one moment of sheer awesomeness saying that he wrote an additional scene for the novel, but his editor wouldn’t let him include it in the novel so if you write them they’ll send you the three page addition.  With one of the more recent releases of the books, this request can now be made online and an amusing letter regarding the scene will be sent to your email.  It’s actually a really good way of continuing the book that I have to give Goldman props for.

I do enjoy the story of Princess Bride, although whenever I read the text itself I can't help but feel that Goldman spends too much time providing the back story.  The story of how he decided to annotate the book is interesting and all, but it goes on for far too long, as do some of his commentary asides.  This is in contrast to the development of the characters, which is actually wanting.  I love Fezzik and Inigo, who Goldman does develop, but Buttercup and Westley are both kind of Mary Sues.  Goldman writes a lot that is supposed to act as development for the two, but really they both seem to just get by on naturally derived talent.  Buttercup is dumb as a post but amazingly beautiful and Westley is good at everything he does.  Everything.  The villans, however, are evil simply for the purpose of being evil.

The ending itself is a bit disappointing as well.  Despite the difficulties that overwhelm the characters everything seems to just fall into place for them.  They seem to win not because of any real thing that they do but because they have to.  It all just seems a bit too easy, a bit too simple, a bit too contrived.  It may just be that I know the story too well, and as such any suspense is removed.  I'm not entirely sure.