While She Knits ~ Mendacious Mentions

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

Taking theme again from the little hints about the next book,  today's book discussion...

In which a matched set of garnets as big as your thumb is mentioned mendaciously.

I don't know about you, but I immediately thought this conversation would be funny, and smiled.
Humor--if you don't read The Thief, etc. for the humor, I don't know why you *do* read them.



So, What Books Have a Sense of Humor You Just Love?

Is there a common thread? Do you like sharp reparte? Physical humor? Literary references?

What is the Funniest/Wittiest/Most Mendacious Book you have read?



(As is usual, you may praise the Queen's Thief books...but we assume we all know how brilliant and funny they are.)

Comments

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Um...you DO realize that William Goldman WROTE the Princess Bride, right? All those asides, and S. Morgenstern -- they are completely made up. They ARE the story, or part of it.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

This brings back memories.

When I was 14, I read Princess Bride and figured out there was no S. Morgenstern, and I wrote a letter to the editor saying, "hey, what's up with this book? Florin and Guilder are coins, not countries!" and they sent me back such a nice personal letter about how I was a smart kid, and I might want to read John Gardner's Chimera and someday Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Welcome to the world of the unreliable narrator.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Gah, John Barth, I meant, not Gardner.

[sgwordy.livejournal.com]

Yes, re that he wrote it; that's why it's ALMOST offensive b/c of course it's his and so his connection is irrevocable but I still like to pretend. :) re the asides, they didn't do anything for me and were not the part of the story I liked (and actually they ruin the story a bit for me) so I skip them.

That is really cool about the letter, btw. I saw the movie when I was quite young (and watch it several times a year even now) but didn't read the book until much later so I already knew the background from the movie, etc. It must have been really cool to have that firsthand experience AND get a letter about it. Did you save it?

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the asides aren't HIM. They're a fictional persona.

[adalanne.livejournal.com]

Yeah. He doesn't even have a son. ^_^ I read the book in school and shocked by how he was such a jerk, too, until my teacher pointed out that it was all fake. (She was actually shocked most of the class thought it was real; she couldn't believe we thought someone would actually publish something that disparaging about their own child. *lol) Then it just added another level of flavor to such a layered book.

[sgwordy.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely, sorry I'm not doing a very good job of being clear here. I had such a terrible reaction to that persona that it really turned me off to the book. I like to act like Goldman chose to do something else (maybe something more like himself telling stories to his daughters or something) so that that persona doesn't exist. I like the Buttercup/Wesley story so much but the narrator he chose to do was not fun for me. However, it's interesting to see that others took that extra part of the book as an additional layer to the book. It was such a detraction for me that my reaction was to separate it rather than try to incorporate it. Maybe it's time to give them another try...

[inkasrain.livejournal.com]

What you said.

[etv13.livejournal.com]

What I think is interesting is that Goldman also wrote the screenplay, and chose to use such a different, simpler, MUCH more sentimental framing device. Also,

spoiler alert
spoiler alert



the book seriously undercuts the happy ending, while the movie doesn't.

[inkasrain.livejournal.com]

Well, it would be a bit complicated to get through the entire fictional-Goldman story on film, as it's almost all, if not entirely, exposition. Still, the message of intergenerational bonding remains, and that's really the main theme of Goldman's plotline, I think.

Why do you think the book shortchanges the happy ending?

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the book end with Westley's pill wearing off and the horsemen getting closer and closer?

[etv13.livejournal.com]

Not shortchanges, undercuts. Here it is:


(CONSIDER THE PREVIOUS SPOILER ALERT TO BE REITERATED)

"'Complain to Mr. Morgenstern. 'And they lived happily ever after is how it ends.'

"The truth is, my father was fibbing. I spent my whole life thinking it ended that way up until I did this abridgement. Then I glanced at the last page. This is how Morgenstern ends it.

"Buttercup looked at him. 'Oh my Westley, so do I.'

"From behind them suddenly, closer than they imagined, they could hear the roar of Humperdinck. 'Stop them! Cut them off!'

"They were, admittedly, startled, but there was no reason for worry: they were on the fastest horses in the kingdom, and the lead was already theirs.

"However, this was before Inigo's wound reopened; and Westley relapsed again; and Fezzik took the wrong turn; and Buttercup's horse threw a shoe. And the night behind them was filled with the crescendoing sound of pursuit.

"That's Morgenstern's ending, a 'Lady or the Tiger?'-type effect (this was before 'The Lady or the Tiger,' remember). Now, he was a satirist, so he left it that waY, and my father was, I guess I realized too late, a romantic, so he ended it another way.

"Well, I'm an abridger, so I'm entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs.

But that doesn't mean I think they had a happy ending either. Because, in my opinion anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail.

I'm not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

[inkasrain.livejournal.com]

True, true-- I had forgotten the ambiguity of the ending. But really, it isn't all that different in the film, if I remember correctly. The movie just cuts out without our being exposed to the unpleasantries that follow, but they are still there if you want them to be-- just as everything bad that happens in the last line of the book can be resolved easily and happily, if the reader chooses. It's definitely not as satisfying as a proper conclusion, but I think it has thematic merits, sort of blending Goldman's pseudo-reality with "Morgenstern's" pseudo-fiction. (See, this is what I get for being an English major... everything's gotta have a theme, everything's gotta be analyzed...)

Although I do have to admit, I've never been a huge fan of the film's ending-- the group riding off happily into the night seemed a bit tacked on to me. And isn't Inigo basically bleeding to death after his confrontation with Humperdinck? All of a sudden he seems just fine... it just never sat well with me.

[etv13.livejournal.com]

The movie actually ends with the (charming, I don't want to suggest that I'm against sentimentality at all, except in the god-awful movie version of Charlotte's Web) wind-up of the frame story, with the Peter Falk character saying "As you wish" to his grandson's suggestion that he read the story again the next day. And of course, we've already been told that "As you wish" really means "I love you." So yeah, the story inside the frame ends kinda/sorta ambiguously (although I bet at least 90% of viewers take it as a happy ending), but the movie as a whole ends with a tender moment that's quite different in tone from "Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."

And again, what I think is particularly interesting about it is that the writer of the book and the writer of the screenplay are both (presumably, at least, we've all heard about how you have to take screenwriting credits with a grain of salt) William Goldman. He knew that what would work in a movie was different from what would work in a book and he gave us those two really different framing devices. And of course, he could have done the movie without a framing device at all, the way a lot of people on this thread seem to prefer to read the book, but he didn't.