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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
If you’re interested in the 18th century then this book might be interesting to you. I found it interesting, sometimes funny but I’m also interested in that time period. For someone with little interest in the 18th century or literature of that time, the book may just feel exhausting.
The book is long and it takes a lot of concentration to read it because the first person character is constantly digressing and into minute detail on irrelevant things to his main goal - writing the story of his life. If I missed a short transition into a digression, I could be confused for an entire chapter or so. That’s the main joke of the book however, that the first person character finds it impossible to stay on point. It’s funny sometimes but like I mentioned, it’s a very long book and after you “get” the joke, it becomes old well before the halfway point.
The main interesting thing about the digressions is that they shine a light on topics that normal novels of that period wouldn’t explore. We get snapshots into attitudes, common situations, beliefs etc that no other book I’ve seen from this period discusses. A lot of the time, however, the digressions aren’t as interesting as that and can be tedious.
As someone who lives in France, Tristram’s musings on different parts of France I recognise were quite entertaining. Particularly the bit about Paris looking nicer than it smells and the Parisian streets being so narrow that it’d be hard to turn a wheelbarrow around in them.
Despite the frustration of tolerating all the digressions and tangents, I found the book quite funny. The way that the first person character seems to not understand how to use chapters properly is often funny. He’ll sometimes start a new chapter just because someone else begins to speak. Some of his chapters are only a sentence or two long and several have blank pages.
Difficult to give it less than 3 stars considering how ahead of its time it was but I still wouldn't recommend this to most readers.
The book is long and it takes a lot of concentration to read it because the first person character is constantly digressing and into minute detail on irrelevant things to his main goal - writing the story of his life. If I missed a short transition into a digression, I could be confused for an entire chapter or so. That’s the main joke of the book however, that the first person character finds it impossible to stay on point. It’s funny sometimes but like I mentioned, it’s a very long book and after you “get” the joke, it becomes old well before the halfway point.
The main interesting thing about the digressions is that they shine a light on topics that normal novels of that period wouldn’t explore. We get snapshots into attitudes, common situations, beliefs etc that no other book I’ve seen from this period discusses. A lot of the time, however, the digressions aren’t as interesting as that and can be tedious.
As someone who lives in France, Tristram’s musings on different parts of France I recognise were quite entertaining. Particularly the bit about Paris looking nicer than it smells and the Parisian streets being so narrow that it’d be hard to turn a wheelbarrow around in them.
Despite the frustration of tolerating all the digressions and tangents, I found the book quite funny. The way that the first person character seems to not understand how to use chapters properly is often funny. He’ll sometimes start a new chapter just because someone else begins to speak. Some of his chapters are only a sentence or two long and several have blank pages.
Difficult to give it less than 3 stars considering how ahead of its time it was but I still wouldn't recommend this to most readers.
By definition, the first post-modern novel, written in the 1700s. And extremely hilarious.
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Skim read this for one of my exams (it's in two days, keep me in your good thoughts).
While I found the book to be too large and too boring, that's exactly the point and I can appreciate the writing techniques that Laurence Sterne uses and that set him so apart from his contemporaries.
While I found the book to be too large and too boring, that's exactly the point and I can appreciate the writing techniques that Laurence Sterne uses and that set him so apart from his contemporaries.
I really hate it when a book defeats me, but this one did. I can handle old english when it follows a fairly direct line, but this books rambles and digresses all over the place. After slogging through 10% of the book (according to my Kobo) I decided I should look for something I can handle. Something easier. Dang. If you can read it and enjoy it, I tip my hat to you.
Quite an extraordinary read, one of the first truly autobiographical novels (preceding Rousseau), and at the same time a satire on this new genre. See the review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2078691942.
Before I began this book in 2014—
Wait a moment, don’t climb on your hobby-horse, or rather, don’t pounce on your keyboard to tell me that I didn’t begin this book, that it was Laurence Sterne who began this book more than two hundred and fifty years ago, long before I was even a * in my mothers’s eye or an answering * in my father’s—
So, before I began reading this book, like many amongst you, I had preconceived ideas about what—
Yes, it is worth paying attention to the wording here because the Life and some of the Opinions of Tristram Shandy relate to a time even before the moment of his own ✹—
But the Life and Opinions is still a good title, and the Opinions themselves, dating as they do from the 1760s, must have been preserved in the finest liquor to have retained such a freshness of spirit that you would think they had taken their first breath of Life a mere five minutes before—
Did I mention Time?
So yes, before I began reading Sterne, I had a sort of bias against this innocent book—
No, not innocent as to what happens between its covers, no, for it treats of everything in the world and doesn’t mince its words in the telling, doesn’t strut about like a turkey cock but rather talks turkey, as in gets straight to the—
But to go back to where I began, that period of time before I picked up Shandy and conceived the fancy—
No, not that kind of fancy.
Why is it that we humans are ever occupied by conceptions of a double-meaning nature, as if words were not already weighty enough without adding—
Although generally, at least today, few of us seem capable of constructing sentences fortified with the kind of ravelins or outworks favoured by Tristram’s uncle Toby and his trusty henchman Trim. For you must accept, if you are to read Sterne that the work is a very well fortified construction, that every sentence contains at least two facets or aspects, and each aspect faces off at an angle as in goes in a different direction and therefore the time taken to read—
Did I mention Time, because the notion, the very conception of Time is very central to any coherent understanding of the relationship between the writing of this book and the reading of it—
And speaking of the reading, we mustn't underestimate the importance of the Opinions of the reader; although not mentioned in the title, the Opinions of the reader are nevertheless—
The narrative, such as is, is interrupted by frequent digressions directed at the reader and when these asides are aimed in particular at the female reader, well—
Broadsides are not out of place to mention, in fact the terminology of the battlefield is used for even the most peaceful-sounding conversations, not to speak of matters amatory—
And although seemingly random, the trajectory of the narrative is very precisely plotted between order and chaos, between sense and nonsense, between mysteries and riddles, between the spiritual and the natural, between abstract philosophy and practical wisdom, between noses and—
Since the writer, together with his appendages, is always present in his own writing, just as every man is present at the shaving of his own beard, Laurence Sterne may also be—
We can’t but speculate that the subacid personality Sterne gives Tristram’s father, a man who is pedantically obtuse and razor-sharp at the same time, and the ridiculously cautious diplomacy he allows Tristram’s mother (though it is a clever and perfectly impenetrable protection against the father’s razor wit, and blunts it nicely from time to time), plus the childlike humanity with which he endows Tristram's uncle Toby—
However, it is the character of the parson Yorick, who, like his namesake in Hamlet, that fellow of such ‘infinite jest’, has a great appreciation of nonsense which he allies with a paradoxical impatience of folly and verbosity, and the whole may give us the truest picture of Laurence—
I’m reminded of Joyce’s 'Man in the Macintosh', the ghost-like figure who flits in and out of [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428891345l/338798._SY75_.jpg|2368224], and aren’t there many such elusive raincoated men in Beckett too—
So yes, I think Sterne may well have inserted himself into his own novel via Yorick, his Jester of a parson—
But for this speculation, I have no proof, at least ready, so I will_that point unless some hypercritick reader of this review wants to ↵ to it—
The last word I will allow to Sterne:
Therefore, my dear friend and companion (reader), if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out,—bear with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,—only keep your temper.
Wait a moment, don’t climb on your hobby-horse, or rather, don’t pounce on your keyboard to tell me that I didn’t begin this book, that it was Laurence Sterne who began this book more than two hundred and fifty years ago, long before I was even a * in my mothers’s eye or an answering * in my father’s—
So, before I began reading this book, like many amongst you, I had preconceived ideas about what—
Yes, it is worth paying attention to the wording here because the Life and some of the Opinions of Tristram Shandy relate to a time even before the moment of his own ✹—
But the Life and Opinions is still a good title, and the Opinions themselves, dating as they do from the 1760s, must have been preserved in the finest liquor to have retained such a freshness of spirit that you would think they had taken their first breath of Life a mere five minutes before—
Did I mention Time?
So yes, before I began reading Sterne, I had a sort of bias against this innocent book—
No, not innocent as to what happens between its covers, no, for it treats of everything in the world and doesn’t mince its words in the telling, doesn’t strut about like a turkey cock but rather talks turkey, as in gets straight to the—
But to go back to where I began, that period of time before I picked up Shandy and conceived the fancy—
No, not that kind of fancy.
Why is it that we humans are ever occupied by conceptions of a double-meaning nature, as if words were not already weighty enough without adding—
Although generally, at least today, few of us seem capable of constructing sentences fortified with the kind of ravelins or outworks favoured by Tristram’s uncle Toby and his trusty henchman Trim. For you must accept, if you are to read Sterne that the work is a very well fortified construction, that every sentence contains at least two facets or aspects, and each aspect faces off at an angle as in goes in a different direction and therefore the time taken to read—
Did I mention Time, because the notion, the very conception of Time is very central to any coherent understanding of the relationship between the writing of this book and the reading of it—
And speaking of the reading, we mustn't underestimate the importance of the Opinions of the reader; although not mentioned in the title, the Opinions of the reader are nevertheless—
The narrative, such as is, is interrupted by frequent digressions directed at the reader and when these asides are aimed in particular at the female reader, well—
Broadsides are not out of place to mention, in fact the terminology of the battlefield is used for even the most peaceful-sounding conversations, not to speak of matters amatory—
And although seemingly random, the trajectory of the narrative is very precisely plotted between order and chaos, between sense and nonsense, between mysteries and riddles, between the spiritual and the natural, between abstract philosophy and practical wisdom, between noses and—
Since the writer, together with his appendages, is always present in his own writing, just as every man is present at the shaving of his own beard, Laurence Sterne may also be—
We can’t but speculate that the subacid personality Sterne gives Tristram’s father, a man who is pedantically obtuse and razor-sharp at the same time, and the ridiculously cautious diplomacy he allows Tristram’s mother (though it is a clever and perfectly impenetrable protection against the father’s razor wit, and blunts it nicely from time to time), plus the childlike humanity with which he endows Tristram's uncle Toby—
However, it is the character of the parson Yorick, who, like his namesake in Hamlet, that fellow of such ‘infinite jest’, has a great appreciation of nonsense which he allies with a paradoxical impatience of folly and verbosity, and the whole may give us the truest picture of Laurence—
I’m reminded of Joyce’s 'Man in the Macintosh', the ghost-like figure who flits in and out of [b:Ulysses|338798|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428891345l/338798._SY75_.jpg|2368224], and aren’t there many such elusive raincoated men in Beckett too—
So yes, I think Sterne may well have inserted himself into his own novel via Yorick, his Jester of a parson—
But for this speculation, I have no proof, at least ready, so I will_that point unless some hypercritick reader of this review wants to ↵ to it—
The last word I will allow to Sterne:
Therefore, my dear friend and companion (reader), if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out,—bear with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—or if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,—only keep your temper.
Like with so many other readers, this early-modern book (1759-1767) in me aroused feelings of alternating irritation and amusement. The irritation of course is related to the endless digressions, which Sterne consciously uses as a figure of style, but which does at times drive you crazy. And the amusement especially has to do with the comical situations he describes, the small human features of his characters, and the pseudo-learned style in which this book is written. The humorous elements tumble over each other, and drive the satirical content of this book almost to the level of the Don Quixote. It should not come as a surprise that the references to Cervantes and Rabelais are often very explicit.
I must confess that I have not read this book in its entirety (that's why I don't give it a rating). After the first two volumes I skipped large parts, but I kept reading until the end. And then I noticed that Sterne's digressions became somewhat more limited, that he referred much more frequently to his own poor health, and that his life story became more and more a travelogue. Only the antipathetic, often misogynistic statements of his father, and the military hobby horse of his much more sympathetic uncle Toby, remain recurring elements.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often identified as the first writer to write a true autobiography (in his Confessions). It was published in 1770. With this Tristram Shandy Sterne was almost 10 years ahead of him, but at the same time it is a mockery of a genre that would one day come firmly into the canon of Western literature.
I must confess that I have not read this book in its entirety (that's why I don't give it a rating). After the first two volumes I skipped large parts, but I kept reading until the end. And then I noticed that Sterne's digressions became somewhat more limited, that he referred much more frequently to his own poor health, and that his life story became more and more a travelogue. Only the antipathetic, often misogynistic statements of his father, and the military hobby horse of his much more sympathetic uncle Toby, remain recurring elements.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often identified as the first writer to write a true autobiography (in his Confessions). It was published in 1770. With this Tristram Shandy Sterne was almost 10 years ahead of him, but at the same time it is a mockery of a genre that would one day come firmly into the canon of Western literature.
Finished reading my first foray into 18th century literature, although I doubt much of the rest of it reads like this, with its twisted structure, absurd digressions, and typographical jokes. Some of it is incredibly quotable, fresh, and fun; other parts border on incomprehensible as the centuries render the jokes obscure.