The World’s Best Liar: On Reading The Princess Bride

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.
Aesop

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
A. A. Milne

I first saw the film The Princess Bride eighteen-years ago. The way the story unfolded so captivated me that I rushed to buy William Goldman’s novel. I wanted to see for myself how this tale of “true love” had originally been told.

And then I fell in love with the book. In fact, Goldman’s best-known work inspired me to try to write a novel in the same vein. Halfway through, however, I abandoned the effort after the characters held a meeting—in my head, of course—and informed me that although they were interesting, the things I had them doing were boring.

This year, I included The Princess Bride on the reading list of several of the classes I teach. And the students, virtually every one of them, have loved Goldman’s masterpiece.

“Why can’t all the books we read be this much fun?” a few of them have asked.

In The Princess Bride, William Goldman proves himself an astonishing storyteller. Throughout, he keeps the story engaging and the pace brisk. Most readers, though, will overlook Goldman’s remarkable writing skills because the novel is superbly humorous and lighthearted. But I refuse to allow this to happen in my classroom as I often shout out my admiration—and not without a certain degree of envy—during the novel’s most noteworthy passages.

What I find particularly ingenious about Goldman’s work is the way he inserts himself—or, better yet, his fictional personae—into The Princess Bride. He starts to employ this successful stratagem in the very first sentence of the book. Moreover, his splendid use of the artifice of being just the abridger—as opposed to the author of The Princess Bride—allows him to ridicule his own creation while leaping over incidents and time, as well as “cutting out” long segments of S. Morgenstern’s version without making the reader blink.

I’ve held back from telling the students that S. Morgenstern is Goldman’s invention; that the Florinese “author” of The Princess Bride never existed.

“You mean, the entire book is a lie?” a student asked when I finally pointed out that S. Morgenstern is also a fictional character.

“Yes,” I answered. “That’s the nature of fiction: to make things up.”

“You mean, all the stuff about Goldman’s own life, his father first reading him the story, his wife, his son, all those are lies?” the student asked, his eyes reflecting feelings of betrayal.

“Some of the facts of his life are real, others are not.”

“What are we to believe, then?” another student asked, the hurt over Goldman’s deception evident in her voice.

“Why do you have to believe this story?” I answered. “Why can you just enjoy it?”

“I hate that!” another student added as, in frustration, he tossed the book on his desk. “Goldman’s full of it!”

“We can stop reading The Princess Bride if you like. We can move on to another book.”

The class was silent for a moment. At last, a student mumbled, reminding me of the grandson’s character in the movie, “No. Let’s go on. I want to see how the story ends.”

How can a teacher not love The Princess Bride and its creator, William Goldman: The World’s Best Liar?