meelie | stuff what I talked about!

this came up tonight - here is the link to an article about the letters that you would get if you wrote to William Goldman about the scene of the reunion of Buttercup and Wesley in The Princess Bride.:

The book is peppered with interruptions from Goldman, telling the reader what he left out of the original text. Only once does he mention writing his own scene, a powerfully emotional reunion scene between the story’s hero, Wesley, and his true love, Buttercup. But it’s not in the book, Goldman explains, because the publisher wouldn’t allow him to put words into the great Morgenstern’s mouth. Goldman does, however, tell the reader that they can get the scene he wrote mailed to them if they write to the book’s publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Thousands of people dutifully wrote in, who helped oblige Goldman in his trickery and multi-level storytelling. Because nobody ever got that scene. Goldman certainly never wrote one, but that wasn’t the point. The point is that, if you wrote in to HBJ (and later, Random House), you got a funny letter perpetuating the Goldman “character” and Morgenstern charade…and never the reunion scene.