Just finished The Princess Bride – S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure – The ‘good parts’ version Abridged by William Goldman
This book is absolutely fantastic. I always have loved the movie based on this book so when I found that it is basically the same thing, just more cynical and darker with its interjections of narrative, I fell hopelessly in love with it.
Early on in the book S. Morgenstern (the fake original author) writes in little comments that give a baffling account of the time period of this story such as “(This was before Europe)” (37) and “[h]e was ashamed of his attire, worn boots and blue jeans (blue jeans were invented considerably before most people suppose)…” (43) about these parentheticals William Goldman writes that “maybe it was just the author’s way of telling the reader stylistically that ‘this isn’t real; it never happened.’” (39).
Meanwhile William Goldman throughout the entirety of this book interrupts the writing of the fake author he has created who on occasion interrupts his own story creating instances in the book where ‘both’ authors are referencing their home-life. Many of the interjections seem to point out “stylistically that ‘this isn’t real” as they paint a portrait of a less than ideal existence while telling a story of true love and adventure. Through the perspective of his created characters: father, mother, S. Morgenstern, his psychologist wife, and his kid, Goldman beats to death the idea that “this isn’t real.”
Somehow Goldman uses this instrument to his advantage. Taking a story and pulling it through these personalities he’s constructed what could have been a simple fairytale and turned it into an epic.
Also his writing is the funniest shit I’ve read in a very long time:
He was seventy-five minutes away from his first female murder, and he wondered if he could get his fingers to her throat before even the start of a scream. He had been practicing on giant sausages all the afternoon and had the movements down pretty pat, but then, giant sausages weren’t necks and all the wishing in the world wouldn’t make them so. (254-5)
The humor is dry and dark, the story is heartfelt and melodramatic, Goldman weaves it together better than I could have hoped.
American Horror Story episode 1 (a review in an explanation wrapped in spoilers through the art of screen capture and caption!!!1):
1.The show begins with a duet of soullessness wielding bats and bad intentions. When they enter an old abandoned house and start punishing all the light fixtures you understand their need for an outlet — like Blanch from A Street Car Named Desire they loathe the light and no wonder, whoever has dressed these children has made a mockery of their individual selves. They know their own personal quirks and strengths but the light of day dissolves these differences as the light destroys Blanch's sense of timelessness and youth.
2. Amidst their battle with individuality the duo happens upon a dead possum. The pure symbolism here leads into a frightening (capital 'i') Inceptional journey through truth that is best left untrodden. A dead beast who plays dead, but is dead (?)(inception).
3. Fast-forward several years to modern day — a family with a car carrying no baggage and minds filled with an infinite amount of baggage trek from one coast to the other in hopes of living wherever they stop, though they have forgotten or refused to pack in the physical realm.
4. Luckily they find this affordable Victorian mansion in LA where previously a couple "Modernest" men lived and killed eachother/themselves. It makes sense really, you could have seen it a mile away. Why would Modernists ever move into a highly ornamented home if not to kill eachother/themselves? Simple aesthetic gum-shoeing would have saved property values in this neighborhood.
5. This is the maid who came with the house. You may be wondering why someone who has a clouded lense (if you can tell from the picture) worries so much about their looks that they dye their hair ridiculous colors they probably didn't achieve in youth but refuses to endure a simple medical procedure that would give them back the use of their eyeball.
- 6. Ah-ha. It is not for her benefit that she dyes her hair but for the sake of the idiot viewer. In the perspective of the mother this maid appears calloused and soulless. In the father’s perspective she is a beautiful soulless naughty nanny, maid. Real naughty in-fact. Later she goes for the gold when she breaks every rule in the Maid Manual stimulating herself on her new patrons’ furniture.
- 7. After walking in on the burning bush maid the father attempts to extinguish the fire in his heart with tears and semen, simultaneously in a practice known as crysturbating. cry•stur•bate (krī stər bāt) verb [ intrans. ] shed tears while masturbating, esp. as an expression of horny sadness or guilt : he crysturbated in an attempt to cope with his maid’s hottness and the death of his child | [ trans. ] he crysturbated in the rain to express his new found freedom. ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French cribatre ‘to cry beat’ (see also WET WET RAIN).
Open letter to wordpress: what the shit is happening with those bullets?
8. The husband isn't the only one with a crush. Wife mother does the nasty with the thing pictured above which has not been identified as a an adolescent Stretch Armstrong or the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but I suspect it is one or the other.
9. In this scene we enter the mind of a young psychopath who lives in the school district and is a patient of the husband father, who is a psychiatrist. While that whistling song from Kill Bill is blasting in the background this kids wanders into class wearing a fake skull tattoo on his face which he obviously saw in some awful day-time television talk-show. Srsly, look it up. (I don't have access to the internet when I write, so you'll have to find the link yourself, I know! Tough shit d00d!)
10. Later when faux skullface gets into the haunted house basement he is magically transformed through strobe-light into a Matthew Barney movie. The movie within the show was Masonic and dealt with measuring things religiously with manhood.
11. At the end of the episode the husband dad meets up with Frank from Tom Waits' album Frank's Wild Years. Frank tries to convince husbandad to move out of the spooky house by telling him about his wild years.
12. Strangely, the story about Frank burning his family while they slept didn't convince the husbandad to move out, or raise questions about the house's continued existence, but simply made him want to get the fuck away from Frank.
Things I tried to say out loud:
“Yeah yeah I can’t not see that as a real rarity around here … here.”
— me earlier in the night referring to people masturbating in my shed.
Thoughts:
I wonder if I get payed for the second 1am I have to sit through.
Does the Aztec calendar have daylight-savings? Leap-years?
Who discovered what wind is?
Q: When is a mathemagician not a mathemagician? A: When it’s accounting.
Can I bury loved ones in trash dumps? Legally?
Would there be a profession that guarantees entrance into heaven? Like being a fireman?
What’s wrong with the rose bush in the front-yard?
I don’t like the idea of eating gourds.
MF Doom’s Special Herbs make for good reading music.
I’m starting Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination.
The Cars My True Frustration
(?)
