This book is only like A Clockwork Orange (the second in this series of books I'd been putting off indefinitely until today) because I also postponed reading The Princess Bride because I'd already seen the movie.
It's a pretty reliable rule of thumb that if a novel spawns a really good film, said book must be equally as good. No so, I have now learned; not so at all.
William Goldman wrote this overstuffed and bloated story within a story within a story (yes, that's right three layers...and I may have miss-counted, it could be four layers, I think that is more accurate - four. Yup. Four. Four or five.)
Goldman's running joke is he abridged an obtuse novel originally read to him as a child by his father and after he fawns over his own celebrity for a while he relates that story with constant interruption by both himself and by the (fictitious) author of the (fictitious) original. And in this, the 25th Anniversary Edition, he has added another layer by beginning with a new introduction which continues the gag and ends with a new epilogue which continues the gag. Dead horse kicked = too many times.
The best thing of all was when Rob Reiner hired Goldman to write the screenplay. He does a wonderful job of abridging his abridgement. All the good parts are in the film, all the unfunny parts got left in his book, which shouldn't be on any best-of-the-best, bucket list, desert island, top 100, must read book list. The film - yes - it's fantastic. This book? No.
I hope Goldman is dead before the 35th Anniversary Edition because it will just have another layer of unfunny self-congratulatory bullshit wrapped around it.
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