“Reading William
Goldman’s prose is like watching Fred Astaire tap dance,” a reviewer once wrote.
And while I come to bury Goldman, I will not praise him for The Princess Bride, nor for Butch Cassidy.
Yes, heresy.
My point being that this prolific writer never got the
credit he deserved for many other works. Like the wonderful Boys and Girls Together who tripped the
light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.
And Magic, that subtly chilling
tale of a schizophrenic ventriloquist and his dummy. This is where Goldman does with words what
Hitchcock did with film.
To my mind, Goldman was part of a trio of American authors who
did their best work at roughly the same time – the sixties and seventies – and who’s
writing was...well, I won’t go so far as
to say similar in style, but struck a comparable chord. And their métier was often the coming of age novel
or, more usually, one stage after that -- young adults coming to grips with (sometimes
sordid) reality. All three writers were inspired by and often used the setting of
New York City.
One was Hermann Raucher, of Summer of ‘42 fame (Hey, forget the movie, read the book before you
judge me), who also did the wonderful There
Should Have Been Castles and more.
The other was Evan Hunter (as Ed McBain he wrote the 87th
Precinct police procedurals, but that’s another story), who based his breakthrough
The Blackboard Jungle on his experiences
as a New York school teacher. I particularly liked Last Summer and the amnesiac’s tale, Buddwing -- though neither novel is flawless.
So back to Mr Goldman. Yes, yes, great screenplays, great Hollywood
memoirs...and of course the immortal line, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You
killed my father, prepare to die.” But to me his work is epitomized by Corky
Withers, the ventriloquist magician sinking slowly into madness.
Farewell, William Goldman, and flights of welcoming
publishers sing thee to thy rest.
