Until producing his masterpiece, Sterne had only dabbled in writing, publishing a few sermons and a satire entitled A Political Romance. However, he has so much to relate about his eccentric family that he does not manage to get born until the 4th volume.

Realizing, finally, that his task is hopeless - it taking him more time to tell the story than to live his life - the novel ends by concluding that its readers have been taken in by a cock and bull story. While a hilarious and often bawdy read which delights in parody and satire, repeated images of disconnection and human isolation give the work a serious underlying theme: the hero ultimately doubts how much he can know, even about himself.

As the first novel about writing a novel, in which the author frequently breaks into imaginary dialogues with the reader, it has been lauded as the ancestor of stream of consciousness fiction. The first two volumes of the novel were a great success and made Sterne famous throughout Europe. As well as producing the further volumes of the tale, Sterne cashed in on his success by publishing 2 volumes of sermons attributed to Parson Yorick, the minister mentioned in the opening volume of Tristram ; drawing on his experiences as a priest, Yorick is said to be a veiled self portrait of the author.

William Hogarth , the artist now chiefly remembered for his satiric engravings, was commissioned to design two plates to be used as frontispieces in two of the volumes.

One depicts Corporal Trim reading a sermon on conscience to the sleeping Dr Slop, Uncle Toby, and Walter Shandy, and the other shown to the left , the baptism of Tristram. Based on a vivid appreciation of contemporary life, these engravings capture the elusive humour of Sterne perfectly.

Each text page is characterised by an intricate system of hyphens, dashes, asterisks, and occasional crosses; remarkable use is particularly made of the dash - varying in length, these are often treated as though they were words, while the small type area and generous spacing and margins of the original volumes emphasise their visibility. But more unusual than a playfulness with fonts is Sterne's frequent manipulation of the page: typical is the blank page shown here where the reader is invited to interact with the book and draw his own portrait of the Widow Wadman.

Such peculiarities draw attention to the appearance of the page and highlight the novel's lack of conventional form; indeed, although written in a conversational style, the enjoyment of the book very much depends upon the reader experiencing it as a physical object.

Regarded as a complex masterpiece today, Dr Johnson famously asserted that its popularity had not lasted because 'Nothing odd will do long'. Having been dogged with ill health throughout his adulthood, Sterne died from consumption a year after the publication of the ninth volume; although it is widely believed that this was intended to be the last volume, it is not known for sure.

Bizarrely, soon after Sterne died, his body was stolen by grave robbers, taken to Cambridge and used in an anatomy lecture. His body, however, was recognized by a fan and quietly returned to its grave. Did I say that? Surely his humor is not clerical, yet he was a cleric. Just as surely, Robert Herrick's poetry, except in his Noble Numbers, is not clerical, though he was a cleric.

And John Donne's poetry. Oh dear, we have stumbled on the English Conundrum. It is inconceivable for a priest--an Irish priest, an Italian priest--to have written Tristram Shandy. Even America, which also educated principally ministers, failed to produce clerically-educated, literary humor like Sterne's. A clergyman, Sterne certainly knew how seriousness was enhanced by stance and by robes. Robes can carry the cleric who "carries" or wears them.

Thus, he defines seriousness, "Gravity [is] a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. Robes add to the mysteriousness of the carriage, and the hiding of mental defect.

As a note, my undergrad Shakespeare teacher 38 plays in year course Theodore Baird wrote an article on Sterne, "The time scheme of TS and a source" which may have been published in the Norton Critical TS. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel that is somehow greatly entertaining and impossibly infuriating at the same time.

Tristram, our narrator and author, is quite partial to tangents. Actually, no. A true tangent has to touch the circle at one point. Tristram completely bypasses the circle. This is a novel about a man trying to write a novel. However, he is quite easily distracted. Just when there's a bare semblance of a plot, Tristram goes off on a reel about something The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel that is somehow greatly entertaining and impossibly infuriating at the same time.

Just when there's a bare semblance of a plot, Tristram goes off on a reel about something else. For example: Tristram tries to write about his birth, he goes slightly off-topic, we finally witness his birth around page For some, this novel would be absolute hell.

And at points, I was of that mindset. But then Sterne would come through with some of the most ridiculous and hilarious scenes that all is eventually forgiven. There are chapters in here that are some of the funniest I've ever read Tristram's accidental circumcision for example. And these parts really prop up the entire novel.

It is first and foremost a farce and a social satire, or a cock and bull story. If you are thinking of tackling Tristram Shandy then in the words of the Scouts: be prepared. You'll hate this novel and you'll love this novel.

In the end they'll balance out. Nov 18, picoas picoas rated it it was ok Shelves: If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review. But books can become difficult when difference of culture, or viewpoint, or language, or elapsed time intervene.

Dickens is more difficult now than years ago, and part of the reward of reading Dickens is the lear If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review. Dickens is more difficult now than years ago, and part of the reward of reading Dickens is the learning of how British society has changed.

The difficulty of reading Virgil might include learning some Latin; the difficulty of reading Dante might involve at least a parallel text edition.

Feb 27, Markus rated it it was amazing Shelves: classic-fictions , read-in-english. Laurence Sterne — Tristram Shandy is the name of the hero of this fictional work which was first published in Written in the first person, the reader may assume that the author speaks of himself.

The first half of the book speaks of the process of the birth of our hero. And even about his conception by his parents of him. His mother giving birth, she would seem to have been the main character, but she is not. She is hardly ever mentioned and is there in the background, in labour, upstairs. Downstairs we have Tristram's father and his uncle, Toby Shandy and occasionally other friends and visitors in conversations about all and everything, religion, philosophy, literature, history and experiences.

Digressions are the main subjects of the book. It takes up to about half the book before Tristram is actually born. And then there is more about uncle Toby and his falling in love with the problem for the future wife of not knowing if Toby is in a position to consume the marriage. The reader who can read and understand this language fully and completely must indeed be good in English.

In modern times it is common to read works of fiction without any structure or frame; the author is just writing down every thought that crosses his mind. It was certainly unusual in , and this work established its place as a classic and has retained it ever since. Recommended reading to all admirers of classic literature. May 26, Amit Mishra rated it really liked it.

Despite its instant popularity and its ordinary sounding title, Tristram Shandy is a novel with no clear beginning, middle and end; its narrative content is distributed across bafflingly idiosyncratic time-scheme interrupted by numerous digressions, authorial comments and interference with the printed fabric of the book.

The comically fragmented storyline is a reaction or epistolary artifice in favour of a novelistic shape that depends on the association of ideas, a realistic impression.

Nov 22, Elenabot rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , know-thyself. Wittgenstein once noted that you could profitably write an entire work of philosophy that is comprised entirely of jokes. 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. 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 Sentim Wittgenstein once noted that you could profitably write an entire work of philosophy that is comprised entirely of jokes.

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. And yet, I think, it is this very peculiar way of revealing insight where we thought there was none to be had and in a way we thought it unlikely to get it to boot that makes him interesting as a philosopher-novelist.

His narrative shows the roundabout, circuitous ways that insight is to be had in life. Ultimately, what the work explores is what self-knowledge means, and what it takes to make up a coherent story that defines a self out of our fragmentary experience. It stretches the means of narrative description in order to model our day-to-day processes of self-knowledge and meaning-making, while in the end showing that our narratives themselves make the self they aim to discover. The purpose of the novel is to self-reflexively explore the limits of narrative, as a medium, to render the shape of a life.

Much of the comedy is epistemic. We see the insane efforts the narrator makes to pinpoint the exact cause of events, like a quirky old man who is frantically fumbling through all his pockets in his search for his keys so that he can let his guests into his house at long last. This leads to the "hero's" long-postponed -birth- yes, the dude isn't even born til, what, if I recall, chapter 9?? This being the case, you're asked to not look for a narrative thread here, but rather to look behind the thread, at the making of the thread out of the fragments of a life, frantically pulled together by a comically earnest old man who is desperate to entertain you with a story but, I imagine, also mischievously and sadistically withholding it, in the case of Sterne himself, who is behind the scenes.

If you're insistent on looking for a story here, this work will be a gruesome test of endurance for you. And that is precisely where the humor of it lies, in the discharge of laughter that comes every time you realize that the narrator's impish, comical, philosophical fastidiousness about identifying the exact causes of life events is the cause of the grueling, indefinite postponement of the satisfaction of our epistemic hunger for narrative consummation that we all expect.

We all hunger for a tidy tying up of loose ends. Can he get born already?? We're ready to throw causality out the window, if he could just get on with it and come into life. Please, enough already about how a chance conversation with the uncle about military fortification methods might have had something to do with the events leading up to the insemination!

And yet, we masochistically love the treatment we're being dished out, somehow. And that also forms part of the humor of the situation. I think that all narrative structures are built on top of an implicit ontology. Sterne's is no exception, and yet looking at this mess of detail, you'd think I am hallucinating a pattern where there is none.

In A Sentimental Journey, the narrator usefully formulates his one overriding principle: "All is intermix'd. Indeed, "all is intermix'd" in life, and that is why it is also intermix'd in his art, which tries to stretch the limits of representation and description in order to reflect life as much as possible. Sterne is an early precursor to the stream of consciousness method of narrative, which seeks to render experience in all its messy richness.

Yet the dashes and the fragmentary, collage-like method of building up a description which often culminates in an anticlimactic lack of completion - and collapses upon itself like a house of cards built on the sand - suggests that narrative is, by its nature, a futile endeavour to make a complete, meaningful whole out of an inherently broken, scattered existence.

The self-reflexivity fractures the narrative prism into myriads of fragmentary shards. If we'd have precision, we lose the rounded completeness we seek, and vice versa. We can never capture the richness of experience in our narrative, symbolic nets. We can only skirt the periphery of that unruly richness. I love the way he exhibits, narratively, what is involved in the -effort- at making an honest description of an event in life. The narrative re-enacts the processes by which, on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis, we put together whatever meaning is to be had out of our experience.

The narrative's self-reflexive efforts at examining the process of description model the epistemic processes by which we make up a lifeworld, a bubble of meaning in which we, ultimately, are sealed for the duration of our lives. If we look at how we, ourselves, in our everyday efforts to form a unity out of the scattered messiness of our lives, we will find, with a smile of recognition, much of that same process of knowing our lives reflected in Sterne's narrative method here.

The messiness of tangled and obscure causalities, the irreducible particularity of events, the -surplus- of meanings that is just not collapsible into a tidy framework, is the threefold truth that Sterne insists on. Describing an event in life turns out to be like trying to scoop up water with a sieve. Part of the humor comes from here, also, from this inevitably doomed effort to fix life into a description just as it is endlessly slipping away through the cracks.

Sterne is a modern day Aristophanes making fun of Socrates' way of being rather ridiculous way of being "out of touch" with life. The humor comes, ultimately, from the narrator's insistence on philosophic precision and self-reflexivity in the face of life's irreducible messiness.

It comes from the ironic discrepancy between the philosophic attitude and lived life. It is as if the narrator plays along with the philosophic demand for clarity and precision, only to reveal its absurdity. Despite that, there is no nihilist conclusion here, as one might expect from a work that denies all order as a kind of forgery. Rather, it is as if the narrator were trying to catch a rambunctious child at play who is also sometimes rather destructive in its carefree abandon and get it to sit pretty in a corner so that he could get its portrait right.

Life doesn't stop that way. We understand this because the work -shows- this truth. The ultimate point in all this, I think, and yes, I insist, there is a philosophical point just as there is a narrative one is to show at what a far remove from life all our projects of systematization, or of providing a totalizing description, really are.

In a sense, when we yearn for narrative completeness, that drive takes over and creates an independent universe of pure fiction in which we almost exclusively come to dwell. Ultimately, the irony of the book is that it is less about the "Life" of Tristram Shandy than it is about his - and influential others' - "Opinions.

Life just IS a process of story-making; the story we make up cements us in place for life. We live in our personal bubble of meaning, and, as such, real conversation is impossible as the novel amply displays, with the numerous hilarious fly-by "conversations". What we leave behind is simply our pet construct, which then shapes - and circumscribes - the life of those who come after. Each with his own hobby horse, as Sterne would put it, and your hobby-horse is your destiny.

The philosopher is no different, and lacks any privileged perspective over all other hobby horses though we philosophers like to think of philosophy as some meta-hobby-horse. When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing will put an end to all kind of reading;—and that in time, As war begets poverty, poverty peace,——must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started.

Even before reading Nietzsche, as a budding philosopher who is also an avid consumer of art and reader of literature, I have realized that most philosophy impoverishes itself by ignoring the crucial way in which the medium through which we give form to our wisdom becomes a crucial part of that wisdom.

The relationship between the medium and style of a philosophy to its content is much like the relationship between body and mind, in general. After all, what is Nietzsche without that shadowy lushness of style, or Kant without that crystalline lucidity? Hume without irony, or Plato without the dialogue form? I am of the rather anathema conviction that the resources of philosophizing would expand considerably if it were to cease its phony, age-old war against the arts declared in Plato's Republic , and instead learn to draw on the rich characterizations of human experience that the arts alone can provide.

After all, the epistemic instrument that the arts can provide - and that philosophy notoriously lacks - is the -description- it provides of the irreducible particularity, specificity and richness of lived life. If philosophy is to more fully draw on all our capacity for experience and insight, it must learn from the much more richly specified descriptive process that narrative possesses, and which helps it more directly map onto experience.

This conviction tends to make me an outsider among -both- philosophers and artists, each of whom believes, in their own way, that "never the twain shall meet. View all 5 comments. It is all in good fun, a wonderful satire that aims for lowbrow comedy by using every single aspect of the highbrow educated culture of 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.

To mention some examples of the author's games with the reader, the Dedication is placed after several chapters of the book, chapters are skipped or missing, the narration of the action is interrupted by sudden 'ejaculations' of listening characters or the author who are reminded of another story, which may or may not be finished in the telling, while the original plot thread may be mislaid for awhile.

If you are looking for any forward motion in the plot, forget it. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of digressions. There is mention early in the book of an amusing mysterious injury that a central character suffered and that Tristram promises to explain, which he eventually does in a chaotic collage of revisited scenes involving an anxious romance. This mystery is possibly the one reason that some readers finish the book in spite of its archaic language and frustrating construction.

That said, Sterne also seems to conclude sometimes a banana is just a banana, and we readers are too quick to judge. Sterne entertains as he experiments with font changes, colored wordless pages, and curly lines which refuse to be straightforward. This all makes for a curious read, already slow because of untranslated foreign language quotations and unorthodox grammar, punctuation and sophisticated OED language of I strongly recommend picking up a copy, such as the Modern Library printing, which has plenty of notes and glossaries.

The wit will be lost if you flip to offside explanations too much. There is no question reading it will be a slow job, despite short chapters. However, I found the novel immensely entertaining and worth the effort. It is the silly intelligent wit which is the main interest. The book also shows that family life and people are not much different in love, marriage or interests despite the difference of centuries between the time the book was written and our time.

So, this is my severely abbreviated partial summary: Two of the sweetest ex-soldiers I've ever had the pleasure to meet - Corporal Trim, a companion, and Captain Uncle Toby Shandy, who are inseparable since they both retired from military service after injuries, and Toby's brother, the soon-to-be father Walter Shandy, are awaiting the birth of Tristram, Walter's son.

Any conversations in which they participate tend to soon revolve around their war experiences, which are basically a thousand ways to describe the building of walls and trenches. A male midwife has joined them, Dr. Slop, who joins in the conversation while they sit in the parlor. Shandy, Elizabeth, has refused to use Slop and is with her own choice of midwife, a woman, upstairs, in labor.

Walter, meanwhile holds forth on many many many things, mostly involving opinions and ideas, such as hobby-horses, names, economics and women. Tristram, in telling of this night, also drifts to future events as well as the past, particularly stories about the local parson, Yorick. Alas, poor Yorick Like father, like son. Jan 24, Melissa Rudder rated it really liked it Shelves: master-s-exam. After I read it a mere three years ago, I swore I would take my MA Exam without rereading it to avoid undergoing such torture a second time.

I gave it one star on goodreads. Having forgotten everything about the novel aside from my distaste for it , I had to reread it for the exam. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wrote "ha! I laughed out loud. I read sections to people around me because I thought they were amusing. I put the book down hesitantly when I had to take a break from it. Very strange. I think my main problem with reading Tristram Shandy the first time was that I was looking for the linear plot that reached its climax in the third act and then gracefully fell to its denouement.

Sterne wants to shake up the expected system—something rather ahead of its time in the s. On my first reading, I rebelled against his diversionary tactics and tangents and dangerously thrust my nose into the book searching for the next big plot development. And that is not how you should read Tristram Shandy. View 2 comments.

Apr 07, ba rated it really liked it. To be honest, I never heard of this book before the film came out last year. 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. We saw the film and liked it. I finally picked upthe book and read it, expecting a challenging work that would yield some intellectual dividends if I could just plow through it somehow. In actuality, the book was a very fun read.

It did indeed have the foreshadowings of postmoder To be honest, I never heard of this book before the film came out last year. It did indeed have the foreshadowings of postmodern flair. Of course where one would today find cinematic references, there were instead references to Voltaire, Cervantes and Shakespeare. Really, much of the book plays with the then new form of the novel, and questions what is writable and what isn't.

The narrative, such as it is, unfolds as a narrator tangents around an autobiography, augmented by an "editor" in the form of footnotes, and sometimes inserted right into the text.

The narrator addresses the reader directly, often anticipating the reader's objections and arguing his point. The footnoting at points is pre-reminiscent? Whimsical typography and comically abbreviated chapters recall precall? In conclusion, for obvious reasons, I'm going to try to make it through this entire review without mentioning an author that rhymes with Schmynchon.

Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last. Feb 27, Maddie added it Shelves: university. I can't believe I actually finished this.

Book: Author trying to write down every thought he ever had. Readers also enjoyed. Literary Fiction. About Laurence Sterne. Laurence Sterne. Laurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy ; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics.

Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption tuberculosis. Books by Laurence Sterne. Some of the best stories take a few hundred years to tell. But if you're in the mood for uncanny connections, hoping back and forth through Read more Trivia About The Life and Opin Quotes from The Life and Opin Welcome back.

Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Classics and the Goodreads Librari What's the Name o Born in Ireland in , Sterne spent much of his life as a country vicar near York. In the novel, Parson Yorick is an ironical self-portrait. His work had the difficulties often associated with original work.

The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy were rejected by the London publisher, Robert Dodsley, but, when privately printed, quickly sold out. Like all subsequent bestsellers, Sterne and his book became the subject of fierce literary argument. The novel was obscene, preposterous and infuriating, the opposite of what a novel should be.

The author was a "coxcomb", a vain and deplorable impostor, deficient in the good taste of a true artist. The notorious Black Page between chapters 12 and 13 of volume I was a silly stunt. And so on. Dr Johnson expressed the critical consensus when, in , he boomed: "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

But the good doctor was wrong. Tristram Shandy is odd; and it did last.