Tristram Shandy is a comic masterpiece, like Fielding's Tom Jones, which arose barely after the invention of the genre. This book nearly drove me crazy when I read it in college back in the mid-60's. I’m just going to stick that up here at the top, before I go off on a tangent, so it shows up for any of you browsing reviews attached to this book.This book is amazing. Tristram Shandy gives a ludicrous turn to solemn passages from respected authors that it incorporates, as well as to the consolatio literary genre. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years (vols. A diatribe on life. But don’t worry, it is not really a digression at all, as it is leading directly to the essence of this novel. The monologue in defense of Toby's Hobby Horse (and Hobby Horses in general) is a great defense of eccentricity and laissez faire in private life. And each new section was that same gag again. Sterne certainly opened up the genre with an experimental literary style in which he created a vibrant, raucous, hilarious novel still relevant 300 years after it was penned.
Three stars bc it was complicated.
If it is a digression, (which I formally dispute, partly because you can’t really digress before you have begun, and partly because it is crucial for the review’s essential development), BUT IF it should be considered a digression (by the harsh standards of formal review guidelines and rules), it certainly is of the noble Tristram-kind known as a “progressive digression”.963. (By the way, the movie that recently was made of this is surprisingly worth it. Here is a work of pure postmodernism, published in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Listed is number 58 on the list of Greatest Novels of All Time. In actuality, the book was a very fun read. Tristam narrates his life being born with a smooshed nose and later wedding a widow.
Maybe he doesn't go in for the batshit linguistic free-for-all that people like James Joyce do, but he is every bit as bizarre and technically innovative. Welcome back. 3 and 4, 1761; vols. This Penguin Classic contains Christopher Ricks's introductory essay, itself a classic of English literary criticism, together with a new introduction on the recent critical history and influence of Tristram Shandy by Melvyn New. My wife heard an NPR report on the film, and they used the terms Post-Modern and Unfilmable so many times that she knew I would be interested. This comes before stream of consciousness but has life-like discussion-esque patterns to the writing. Really not worth your time unless you want to somehow brag about having read it.What a slog! It's fun and crazy and noReally difficult to follow but brings to life the question of "who says we need to structure our novels in the same old way?" The ribald, high-spirited book prompted Diderot to hail Sterne as 'the English Rabelais.' The monologue in defense of Toby's HoI don't know what to make of this one. To mention some example'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy' is a fictional memoir of sorts, but the novel is written in a manner to subvert the formal conventions of the novel (a proto-post-modern genre), and along the way, assert the role of the author as a Maximus Prime Writer, or in other words, someone in complete control of your television set.
Because he has chosen humor as his medium, Sterne, like Shakespeare's tragically prophetic and misunderstood jester Yorick (who seems to be chosen by Sterne as his emblem, since he figures not just here but also in his A Sentimental Journey), makes for an unusual sort of a sage figure. We saw the film and liked it. I wonder if he got the idea from Tristram Shandy (since he said it was one of his favourite books), because this is exactly what Sterne has done here. Highly entertaining, loved it- even if I had to take breaks because it sometimes gets so overwhelming in detail and deviations. It's got no center. Vonnegut. And each new section was that same gag again.
The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, the gentleman took fiction into unknown realms, combining an entirely new concept in from with an idiosyncratic type of sentimental comedy. It seemed like a one-joke pony: the joke being that the narrator can't hold a narrative thread for more than three sentences in a row. Read...for without much reading, by which, your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the meaning of my next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) But I still couldn't stand Tristam Shandy. One has to laugh at Sterne's tearing out of chapters, allowing the reader to pencil in his favorite profanities, making sense of pages of black ink, marbled patterns, blank pages and squiggled lines marking little ups and downs -- as obscure as the raw meaning of life itself. It's slow and pretty weird. What a slog! We saw the film and liked it.
Narrated by Shandy, the story begins at the moment of his conception and diverts into endless digressions, I find most classics are like that.
Not because it's 'bad' per se, (parts of it are extremely engaging and genuinely funny in a way that basically no writing from the 18th century is engaging or funny) but because it seemed like the work of a huge talent essentially dicking around for hundreds and hundreds of pages on what felt like, to me, a gimmick.
You could recognize one of his wildly digressive, over-mannered sentences in a heartbeat.
It actually has more relevance for Tristram Shandy than many of the anecdotes Tristram himself tells in his story.
By whom would this danger be faced? “Where was I wounded, madam?” It's more humorous than funny. Not because it's 'bad' per se, (parts of it are extremely engaging and genuinely funny in a way that basically no writing I wanted to like this, I really did. Sterne is a hugely inventive, hugely capable writer. than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one."