View Single Post
  #11  
Old 03-12-2007, 04:00 AM
Nate the Great's Avatar
Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
You just activated his Trek card
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 4,859
Default

Okay, infodump time. Standard disclaimers of the frailty of the human memory apply. S. (Simon) Morgenstern is a literary device made up by William Goldman. He had this awesome idea for a novel, but couldn't find a way to tie together all the scenes into a cohesive novel. So he decided to write down the scenes and tie them together via expository monologue. In the novel, Simon Morgenstern acually lived in the kingdom of Florin, which exists somewhere around Belgium, if I'm not mistaken. He was Jewish (hence the somewhat exaggerated characterizations of Miracle Max and Valerie) who had learned to speak in five languages (two of which are presumably Florinese and Guilderese), but after immigrating to America he was reduced to jobs in the service industry. William Goldman's grandfather met him in a cafe in New York and got a firsthand account of the events of the fall of Humperdinck and the escape of Buttercup and Westley. Morgenstern had written the Princess Bride partially as a history novel about his homeland, but mostly as a satirical jab at the follies of the aristocrasy. Goldman's grandfather had a copy of the book, but promptly tossed out all the "boring bits" about what was served at the banquet for each night during the ninety days between Buttercup's kidnapping and the wedding, the pages upon pages of Humperdinck's stepmother packing her stuff to go to Florin to arrange the marriage of Humperdinck to the princess of Guilder (who wears a wig, by the way), pages of her unpacking, what happened during Buttercup's princess training for those three years between Westley's death and the big announcement, and so on. Page after page that never existed Goldman pretended to erase, deciding to use his fictional grandfather as a literary device to get to the "Good Bits."
__________________
mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate.
Zeke: It comes nateurally to him.

mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea.

Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity.

Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further.
Reply With Quote