![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaI rereread The Princess Bride, as one does. Often, rereading is my favorite time to talk about a book.
A review is intended to be an equal-minded encapsulation: the whole book, with purpose, succinctly. My review of The Princess Bride is outdated and a far cry from succinct, although I still stand by it as a critique of the 25th Anniversary edition. The "abridgment" motif is the story's crowning moment in both forms, but the anniversary additions add too much; it wallows in straight upper-middle class male mundanity in a way that makes it wearying and far less poignant. On this reread I skipped "Buttercup's Baby" and I should have skipped the introduction—which, however brief, still pads the framing narrative by an unwelcome ten pages.
Rereading isn't equal-minded. It's an entirely biased return to something I know I love; it's an indulgence. This isn't to say that it's routine—I see my favorite books differently each time I reread them, and this time was particularly struck by the critiques I mentioned above—but it certainly rests on familiarity, as it's the familiarity that lets me concentrate on specific details.
And The Princess Bride is all about familiarity. I first read the book in my early teens; I assume that I was raised on the film, because it's been a part of my life for as long as I know. I remember being delighted—and duped—by the abridgment motif on that first reading. What I don't remember was feeling that the book wasn't quite as good. It's criminally easy to prefer whatever version of something you discover first, but to be honest, if you forced me to chose, I might say I prefer The Princess Bride as a book (the Zoo of Death! I understand why it was excised, but I love it). But I never quibble about which version does what better and why, or even how the best lines get a changed when written by Goldman or acted by Billy Crystal.
I can put the film on the background while I do something else and I do, all the time; the book needs my whole attention. So I hear the book lines in movie voices, and rather than preferring one version of them I'm simply glad I know them all. It's the familiarity of anticipating "oooh, the part when..."; it's the equivalent of child Billy Goldman in the framing narrative asking his father to reread the first sword fight: the framing narrative is our father, sometimes rushing us to the best parts, sometimes stopping to tell us what it all means; and we know the story already, even if we've never heard this version or maybe even the whole thing ever before—we know that life isn't fair, but true love makes it through to the end. It is a classic both in scope and by luck of the draw, and never stops benefiting from that fact.
I cried exactly where I was supposed to in The Princess Bride—its cues aren't subtle, just satisfying—but it wasn't the gross sobbing which accompanied my reread of His Dark Materials. I don't read popcorn books/beach reads/fluffy comfort books, less out of judgement and more because those books don't fulfill those requirements for me: they don't tickle the pleasure/comfort part of my brain. But The Princess Bride does. It's fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants. It's a story I know inside and out, a story that works even better because I do, which is more poignant because I can't skip Westley's death but I can promise myself a miracle.
A review is intended to be an equal-minded encapsulation: the whole book, with purpose, succinctly. My review of The Princess Bride is outdated and a far cry from succinct, although I still stand by it as a critique of the 25th Anniversary edition. The "abridgment" motif is the story's crowning moment in both forms, but the anniversary additions add too much; it wallows in straight upper-middle class male mundanity in a way that makes it wearying and far less poignant. On this reread I skipped "Buttercup's Baby" and I should have skipped the introduction—which, however brief, still pads the framing narrative by an unwelcome ten pages.
Rereading isn't equal-minded. It's an entirely biased return to something I know I love; it's an indulgence. This isn't to say that it's routine—I see my favorite books differently each time I reread them, and this time was particularly struck by the critiques I mentioned above—but it certainly rests on familiarity, as it's the familiarity that lets me concentrate on specific details.
And The Princess Bride is all about familiarity. I first read the book in my early teens; I assume that I was raised on the film, because it's been a part of my life for as long as I know. I remember being delighted—and duped—by the abridgment motif on that first reading. What I don't remember was feeling that the book wasn't quite as good. It's criminally easy to prefer whatever version of something you discover first, but to be honest, if you forced me to chose, I might say I prefer The Princess Bride as a book (the Zoo of Death! I understand why it was excised, but I love it). But I never quibble about which version does what better and why, or even how the best lines get a changed when written by Goldman or acted by Billy Crystal.
I can put the film on the background while I do something else and I do, all the time; the book needs my whole attention. So I hear the book lines in movie voices, and rather than preferring one version of them I'm simply glad I know them all. It's the familiarity of anticipating "oooh, the part when..."; it's the equivalent of child Billy Goldman in the framing narrative asking his father to reread the first sword fight: the framing narrative is our father, sometimes rushing us to the best parts, sometimes stopping to tell us what it all means; and we know the story already, even if we've never heard this version or maybe even the whole thing ever before—we know that life isn't fair, but true love makes it through to the end. It is a classic both in scope and by luck of the draw, and never stops benefiting from that fact.
I cried exactly where I was supposed to in The Princess Bride—its cues aren't subtle, just satisfying—but it wasn't the gross sobbing which accompanied my reread of His Dark Materials. I don't read popcorn books/beach reads/fluffy comfort books, less out of judgement and more because those books don't fulfill those requirements for me: they don't tickle the pleasure/comfort part of my brain. But The Princess Bride does. It's fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants. It's a story I know inside and out, a story that works even better because I do, which is more poignant because I can't skip Westley's death but I can promise myself a miracle.
