Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
'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. 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 1760. 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. Sterne fills his novel cover to cover with literary/philosophical/Christian/ancient Greek/ French intellectual essay and Art references that are twisted into puns, jokes, wordplay and wayward opinions and speeches, but especially digressions. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of digressions. Not only does the conversation and remembrances during the night of Tristram's birth take up 40% of the book before he is born and named, but one of the nine 'books' (sections) is a lively inserted travelogue of the author's trip to Paris.
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.
The excessive ornamentation of the writing, which delights even as it clearly is a satire on ornamentation of writing in general, functions to bring a million subtle and crude representations of the male ***** to the fore in painfully hilarious tales and bawdy torments into funny literary tropes (such as sex-comedy scenes, romantic fails, marital interplays, social proposals which at first appear quite respectable). 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. He also makes sure to protect the reader from profane parts with plenty of **********. This all makes for a curious read, already slow because of untranslated foreign language quotations and unorthodox grammar, ---punctuation--- and sophisticated OED language of 1760.
I strongly recommend picking up a copy, such as the Modern Library printing, which has plenty of notes and glossaries. Also, I found this link to be profoundly helpful:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tristram-shandy/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapters-15.
However, if you find the book very enjoyable despite nearly drowning in 18th century words, as well as its lack of conventional construction, as I did, I would read the book’s sections first before using the link to clear up the occasional confusions of meaning. The wit will be lost if you flip to offside explanations too much.
I'm not even going to try to summarize most of what the book’s plot is, other than to say it takes time and effort to read. 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. Mrs. 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.
.
If you are looking for any forward motion in the plot, forget it. Sterne fills his novel cover to cover with literary/philosophical/Christian/ancient Greek/ French intellectual essay and Art references that are twisted into puns, jokes, wordplay and wayward opinions and speeches, but especially digressions. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of digressions. Not only does the conversation and remembrances during the night of Tristram's birth take up 40% of the book before he is born and named, but one of the nine 'books' (sections) is a lively inserted travelogue of the author's trip to Paris.
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.
The excessive ornamentation of the writing, which delights even as it clearly is a satire on ornamentation of writing in general, functions to bring a million subtle and crude representations of the male ***** to the fore in painfully hilarious tales and bawdy torments into funny literary tropes (such as sex-comedy scenes, romantic fails, marital interplays, social proposals which at first appear quite respectable). 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. He also makes sure to protect the reader from profane parts with plenty of **********. This all makes for a curious read, already slow because of untranslated foreign language quotations and unorthodox grammar, ---punctuation--- and sophisticated OED language of 1760.
I strongly recommend picking up a copy, such as the Modern Library printing, which has plenty of notes and glossaries. Also, I found this link to be profoundly helpful:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tristram-shandy/summary-and-analysis/book-1-chapters-15.
However, if you find the book very enjoyable despite nearly drowning in 18th century words, as well as its lack of conventional construction, as I did, I would read the book’s sections first before using the link to clear up the occasional confusions of meaning. The wit will be lost if you flip to offside explanations too much.
I'm not even going to try to summarize most of what the book’s plot is, other than to say it takes time and effort to read. 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. Mrs. 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.
.
I've heard a lot about this book. So that when I started reading it, I expected it to be a really good thing. But frankly speaking I didn't enjoy it at all. I'd been waiting for some interesting moments till the end. But I hardly found any! Perhaps,my fault was that I didn't dare to read the book in original. I know that there are a lot of word games in English version, which can not be translated into any other languages. So that maybe some of Sterene's jokes weren't digested by me.
I didn't understand the idea of the book. I got used to the books with a well-structured plot without any philosophical digression. I know it's too shallow of me to do so but that's me!:)
Sterne's text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th centuries like Pope, Locke, and Swift. And being not familiar with them it was hard to follow the writer's thoughts.
My favorite character though was Uncle Toby who resembles Don Quixote in many ways (and Don Quixote is one of my beloved protagonists in the whole literature).
I know it's a good book and all. And I have nobody to blame but myself and my taste in particular for not appreciating it...
I didn't understand the idea of the book. I got used to the books with a well-structured plot without any philosophical digression. I know it's too shallow of me to do so but that's me!:)
Sterne's text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th centuries like Pope, Locke, and Swift. And being not familiar with them it was hard to follow the writer's thoughts.
My favorite character though was Uncle Toby who resembles Don Quixote in many ways (and Don Quixote is one of my beloved protagonists in the whole literature).
I know it's a good book and all. And I have nobody to blame but myself and my taste in particular for not appreciating it...
I gave up after 100 pages. Life is too short for me to slog my way through a book that has no plot.
funny
slow-paced
"Well! dear brother Toby, said my father, upon his first seeing him after he fell in love—and how goes it with your Ass?" (558).
Back in 2008, I wanted to read this book because some extract from it made it sound like it’d be a fun one.
It’s a weird one for sure. Is there a plot? Were people really like the characters back then? Wtf was this weird stream of consciousness writing.
Glad I’m done with it, maybe it’d have been better to keep it serialised the way it looks like it was originally published.
It’s a weird one for sure. Is there a plot? Were people really like the characters back then? Wtf was this weird stream of consciousness writing.
Glad I’m done with it, maybe it’d have been better to keep it serialised the way it looks like it was originally published.
This was one difficult book to get through, mainly because your enjoyment of it depends entirely on how much you enjoy digressions. I found myself enjoying parts of it while finding Sterne a bit too "cute" during most of it. It's a groundbreaking book and I understand its importance, but I wouldn't say that I liked reading over 500 pages of it. The style really does become grating when there's so much of it. I would say that how I took to the humor probably depended on my mood each time I picked it up, as sometimes I found the digressions and asides hilarious, such as when Toby continuously interrupts a story about the King of Bavaria and his castles. There are also a number of deliciously dirty jokes in the book, which are always welcome when tackling such a monumental work of serious literature. Overall I would say that this is a book that fans of classic literature should read, but if you're struggling through book one, you're probably not going to like the rest, as it really is more of the same.