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You know, I think it's *totally awesome* that William Goldman wrote this book the year I was born, and now, 31 years later, people are still debating about whether S. Morganstern was a real person. We all love this kind of alternate reality in movies, so why is it so disturbing when it happens in a book? The printed word is not gospel...
Florin and Guilder are both names for old European currencies (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilder ), and frankly I think that Goldman's schtik about European hat- wearing customs etc. is hysterical. When the movie first came out, I was determined to find out more about this S. Morganstern, and I found a book in my school library called "The Gondoliers," that was supposedly written by him. It's a children's book, and Goldman actually went out of his way to publish another book under the same name to fool kids like me! Wow.
And this was the final nice touch: in the book edition I bought, when Wesley and Buttercup are reunited at the bottom of the ravine, Goldman says that S. Morganstern did want to tell us exactly what happened, because "all creatures deserve their privacy" or something like that. Goldman says that he wrote his *own* version of the reunion scene, but that he was prevented from publishing it by the Morganstern estate. So he includes an address where you could write Goldman's publisher and ask for his version of the reunion scene. When I did this (I was in Jr. High school, okay?) I got the most hilarious letter back. It had been updated every few years since PB was first published, with a story about how a lawyer for Morganstern's estate (realistically named "Kermit Smog") keeps blocking Goldman's publisher from releasing his version of the reunion scene. Just priceless. I wonder if they're still sending this out upon request. I haven't seen anything that inventive and hilarious for that age group since.
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