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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
Throughout the story of Tristram Shandy's life, Sterne’s use of visual aids alternately conceals and emphasizes text. He includes a black page, a marble page, lines of asterisks, pointing fingers, illustrations by William Hogarth, and lines of dashes, to name a few. At the end of Volume VI, Tristram draws five distinct, squiggly lines to illustrate how non-linear the first five volumes of his story have been, almost like a measurement of the electrical impulses of Tristram’s brain through his own pen. This is the decidedly off-kilter narrative by Sterne, who plays with the emerging novel form by experimenting with memory, associations, digressions, interruptions, and bawdy humor. Sterne may have been radical in his authorial style for the 18th century, but the style becomes tiresome after nine volumes of it. This book is interesting while keeping its primitive form and playfulness in mind, but may find more fans among 18th century novel scholars than the everyday reader.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Wat een boek. Origineel vergeleken met hedendaagse boeken, en zot-verbijsterend-origineel voor een boek geschreven in de 18de eeuw. Het verhaal (in zoverre dat er een echt verhaal is) springt van de ene uitweiding naar de andere, waarbij toch eerst even teruggeblikt wordt naar iets anders, "maar geen zorgen beste lezer, in het hiernavolgende hoofdstuk wordt er weer teruggekeerd naar wat ik oorspronkelijk aan't zeggen was". Op zijn best (en zo zijn er behoorlijk wat momenten) is het boek ontzettend grappig op de typisch Britse Monty Python-manier en vaak kon ik een luidop gegrinnik niet tegenhouden.
Maar laat ons een hobby-horse een hobby-horse noemen: dit boek is ook erg lang. En naast de grappige momenten zijn er ook net iets te veel saaie stukken. Bovendien is het hard werk, en worstelde niet alleen ik maar ook het woordenboek van mijn e-reader met het Oud-Engels.
Toch vier sterren omdat het boek uitblinkt in originaliteit en een echte belevenis is: puur alleen daardoor een must-read. En omdat ik het laatste stuk over het liefdesleven van uncle Toby zo heerlijk vond. Want hartje voor uncle Toby: wat een schattige lieve mens is dat toch. Ik ga hem zowaar missen, denk ik.
Maar laat ons een hobby-horse een hobby-horse noemen: dit boek is ook erg lang. En naast de grappige momenten zijn er ook net iets te veel saaie stukken. Bovendien is het hard werk, en worstelde niet alleen ik maar ook het woordenboek van mijn e-reader met het Oud-Engels.
Toch vier sterren omdat het boek uitblinkt in originaliteit en een echte belevenis is: puur alleen daardoor een must-read. En omdat ik het laatste stuk over het liefdesleven van uncle Toby zo heerlijk vond. Want hartje voor uncle Toby: wat een schattige lieve mens is dat toch. Ik ga hem zowaar missen, denk ik.
At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the reader, my uncle Toby fell in love:
—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even over head and ears in it,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:—this is recurring again to Plato’s opinion, which, with all his divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for that.
Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle Toby fell into it.
Hilarious and surprisingly modern. Totally worth the time investment.
If you were living in the 1750's and you had a friend who was writing something for NaNo WriMo and was entirely focused on just getting the daily word count, just to get through it, if that friend had other writing to do, like French homework or Latin translation or essays on fortifications, and figured "eh, I'll just stick all of those in my novel TOO! It'll help with the word count!" I think your friend would, at the end of November, hand you a novel much like Tristram Shandy.
It's so random, so weird. Did we ever get the promised chapter on button holes? I don't remember. I had conversations with people in my book club like "Have you gotten to the bit where he's born yet?" "Oh, thank heaven, you mean he actually DOES get born?" (someone's husband, breaking in "What do you mean you're halfway through the book and the main character isn't BORN yet?") or "How about that chapter about going down the stairs?" "Wasn't it two chapters?" "I think you're right..."
Did I like it? I have no idea. I think so? Or maybe it's like my experience of The Jerk, where, every time it comes up in conversation, it's hilarious, but actually experiencing it isn't actually as funny as I want it to be.
It's so random, so weird. Did we ever get the promised chapter on button holes? I don't remember. I had conversations with people in my book club like "Have you gotten to the bit where he's born yet?" "Oh, thank heaven, you mean he actually DOES get born?" (someone's husband, breaking in "What do you mean you're halfway through the book and the main character isn't BORN yet?") or "How about that chapter about going down the stairs?" "Wasn't it two chapters?" "I think you're right..."
Did I like it? I have no idea. I think so? Or maybe it's like my experience of The Jerk, where, every time it comes up in conversation, it's hilarious, but actually experiencing it isn't actually as funny as I want it to be.
I am a sucker for a book that winks at or laughs at the reader on a regular basis - Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Pynchon, DFW - and Sterne is the granddaddy of them all. Anyone who likes to just get on with the story should not read this book. Sterne winds you up a foot to go three inches, but that is all part of it. But after 300 pages of this, it got a bit tiresome. I found a great graphic novel adaption by Martin Rowson that I am reading to the end. Blasphemy yes but I think Sterne might approve.
Povinné první tři knihy a stačí. Na tohle fakt nemám nervy...
What a funny, abrupt ending! But also a delightful read, and one I'm glad I could take my time with.