Goldman and Lileks

I'm re-reading "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman. He grew up not far from where I live now, incidently, according to his prologue. (Add him to the list of famous North Shore-ites: Ray Bradbury, Neil Flynn, John Ankerberg...) If you can trust the prologue. One of the ways that the book is better than the movie is that Goldman's voice as the narrator is so great. His voice comes through on about four levels, actually: there's "William Goldman" as the supposed editor of the book, "Morgenstern" as the author, the narrator, and the characters' dialog. In the movie, you mostly get the dialog, with a little bit of the narrator's voice from "Grandpa." What I'm saying is that, although the movie is spectacular, it's only half of what you get in the book.

Last time I read this book was in college, before I started reading Lileks. I'm noticing a big similarity in their voices--they're both fond of parenthesis and fanciful dialog. They both have interesting use of hyperbole and understatement. I'm trying to figure out what it is, exactly. I think it might be that their words are understated, but what they describe is exagerrated. [That makes no sense] Ok, fine, stop reading then. Both of you who read this blog.

Oh yeah, and self-deprecation. They use a lot of self-deprecation.