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Title: Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library)
ISBN: 0679405607
Author:
Laurence Sterne
Publicate Date: 1991-10-15
Publish: 1991-10-15
List Price: $22.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $13.12
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $5.80
Amazon Merchant Price: $14.96
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Very uneven
this book is kinda boring and confusing. you really have to hang in there to get to the good stuff - which is scarce.
if youre into funny witty avante guard roots lit. make sure you read rabelais, cervantes, diderot, swift, voltaire, debergerac, lucian, erasmus and the Anatomy of Melancholy FIRST.
otherwise you might inadvertantly over-rate nash... or even worse, get turned off to reading all together.
(thats funny, I called Sterne "Nash" on accident - I guess Shandy reminds me of Nash's unfortunate traveller - another uneven boring book with flashes of brilliance)
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2: I wish I'd had an Uncle Toby
It is curious to observe that the "novel" of the XVIII Century has much more in common with the novels of the XX than with those of the XIX. Structure, tone, introspection, playfulness, jumps in Time, typographic and other experiments, have more to do with the modern novels of the XX Century "isms", as well, of course, with the work of Rabelais and Cervantes, predecessors and acknowledged influences of this hilarious, humanistic and great book. The story presents tales within tales, and it "progresses" in spirals, with different threads interweaving like DNA chains which bring about a living being: Tristram Shandy. Through these games with Time, rhythm and direction, we learn not so much about the life and times of Tristram, but of his family. Well into the book Tristram apologizes for not having been born just yet, but we don't care because we are immersed in the prosaic yet magical world of the father, Walter, as well as of Uncle Toby and his servant, Corporal Trim, the male-midwife, the parson, Widow Wadman, and other characters as outrageous as the next. The book is a funny digression on subject after subject, some of them with no apparent connection to the main thread. We learn about Uncle Toby's and Trim's monomania for recreating, in the garden, the fortress sieges of William III's wars in Flanders and the Netherlands. Or the obsession of Shandy Sr. with big noses, whose size is related to other parts of the anatomy. The closing part is the story of Widow Wadman's efforts to conquer the naive Toby, similar to his sieges.
The book develops in a continuous joy of digression, of pure literary pleasure, full of the most obscure erudite references worth reading in an annotated edition. The characters are perfect caricatures, full of humanity and good humour. Everything is subject of derision and mockery. One thing that makes it particularly memorable is the odd couple of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. Their absolute innocence, their boundless good faith, their devouted and manly friendship, make them a perfect British mirror of Don Quixote and Sancho, in their also perpetual assault on fortresses, as well military as temporal and verbal. A great ludic exercise of an obscure, and suddenly famous, parson from York, who has scandalized and amused generations of grateful readers.
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3: Pre-modernist postmodern
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.
Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel.
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book).
But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions.
Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure.
And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked.
At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story.
And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.")
Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
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4: Postmodern before modern
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.
Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel.
"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book).
But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions.
Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure.
And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked.
At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story.
And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.")
Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
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5: The LONG life and rants of one, Tristram Shandy
Many things could be said about The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, funny, unique, and off-topic being a few of them. Personally, I would call The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy to be a rant of the longest degree. To prove my point, the main character isn't even born before the end of the second volume. It takes the character one year to write about one day in his life, so even if you enjoyed the book you would never get to read an end.
To be fair, this is one of the first true novels ever written and is the very first stream of consciousness novel to ever be written. So with that in mind, it can go off once in a while on a rant because everyone does that in their own head once in awhile.
The characters are rather creative, ranging from a king to a slightly strange mother, but the side trips get very annoying when you are trying to reach the end of the book. Do you honestly want to know what each person did months before the main character was even born? Do we really need to know what color this was and what Mr. Toby Shandy did to cause misfortune to his unborn son the moment he was conceived?
Personally, this book was far too droning. I would much rather read something with more plot, and less stream of consciousness. I admit that maybe people would probably enjoy reading this book for its unique style, but I can not stand to read it. The tangents are too long and the overall style just isn't for me.
With all that in mind, I say that The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy is a decent book with a good story to tell, and tell... and tell. So if you like older writings with a twisted sense of humor, pick this one up.
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