The Princess Bride by William Goldman Read Free Book Online

she was the leading hostess of the land?) Eventually, her passion for fabric and face paint caused her to settle permanently in Paris, where she ran the only salon of international consequence.
    For now, she busied herself with simply sleeping on silk, eating on gold and being the single most feared and admired woman in Florinese history. If she had figure faults, her clothes concealed them; if her face was less than divine, it was hard to tell once she got done applying substances. (This was before glamour, but if it hadn’t been for ladies like the Countess, there would never have been a need for its invention.)
    In sum, the Rugens were Couple of the Week in Florin, and had been for many years. . . .

    This is me. All abridging remarks and other comments will be in red so you’ll know. When I said at the start that I’d never read this book, that’s true. My father read it to me, and I just quick skimmed along, crossing out whole sections when I did the abridging, leaving everything just as it was in the original Morgenstern.
    This chapter is totally intact. My intrusion here is because of the way Morgenstern uses parentheses. The copy editor at Harcourt kept filling the margins of the galley proofs with questions: ‘How can it bebeforeEurope butafterParis?’ And ‘How is it possible this happensbeforeglamour when glamour is an ancient concept? See “glamer” in the Oxford English Dictionary.’ And eventually: I am going crazy. What am I to make of these parentheses? When does this book take place? I don’t understand anything. Hellllppppp!!!’ Denise, the copy editor, has done all my books since Boys and Girls Together and she had never been as emotional in the margins with me before.
    I couldn’t help her.
    Either Morgenstern meant them seriously or he didn’t. Or maybe he meant some of them seriously and some others he didn’t. But he never said which were the seriously ones. Or maybe it was the author’s way of telling the reader stylistically that ‘this isn’t real; it never happened.’ That’s what I think, in spite of the fact that if you read back into Florinese history, it did happen. The facts, anyway; no one can say about the actual motivations. All I can suggest to you is, if the parentheses bug you, don’t read them.

    “Quick—quick—come—” Buttercup’s father stood in his farmhouse, staring out the window.
    “Why?” This from the mother. She gave away nothing when it came to obedience.
    The father made a quick finger point. “Look—”
    “You look; you know how.” Buttercup’s parents did not have exactly what you might call a happy marriage. All they ever dreamed of was leaving each other.
    Buttercup’s father shrugged and went back to the window. “Ahhhh,” he said after a while. And a little later, again, “Ahhhh.”
    Buttercup’s mother glanced up briefly from her cooking.
    “Such riches,” Buttercup’s father said. “Glorious.”
    Buttercup’s mother hesitated, then put her stew spoon down. (This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man first clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)
    “The heart swells at the magnificence,” Buttercup’s father muttered very loudly.
    “What exactly is it, dumpling?” Buttercup’s mother wanted to know.
    “You look; you know how” was all he replied. (This was their thirty-third spat of the day—this was long after spats—and he was behind, thirteen to twenty, but he had made up a lot of distance since lunch, when it was seventeen to two against him.)
    “Donkey,” the mother said, and came over to the window. A moment later she was going “Ahhh” right along with him.
    They stood there, the two of them, tiny and awed.
    From setting the dinner table, Buttercup watched them.
    “They must be going to meet Prince Humperdinck someplace,” Buttercup’s mother said.
    The father nodded. “Hunting. That’s what the Prince