Central Review

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.6
EAN: 9780141439778
ISBN: 0141439777
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 720
Publication Date: March 27, 2003
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Sales Rank: 11779
Studio: Penguin Classics

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Rating: - A genuinely hilarious and rewarding read
At a cursory glance, Sterne's book appears to be a novel in the traditional sense; an in-depth character study of a central protagonist. A closer look reveals the title to be the first of many traps laid to ambush the unwary reader; this exuberant comedy is a far-cry from the orderly prescriptive narratives of contemporary novels. An eccentric oddity and a masterful challenge to the expectations of its readers, Tristram Shandy is a shrewd exposition of the limitations of the novel, a form still very much in its infancy in Sterne's lifetime. Misleadingly entitled Life and Opinions, the story scarcely progresses beyond the superbly hectic first day of Tristram's life. Instead we are presented with a multiplication of beginnings until the entire book appears to be nothing more than an introductory prologue to an unattainable and continuously deferred book called Life and Opinions. The reader happily renounces himself to Sterne's method of riddle and bafflement as he navigates this cock and bull story where bawdy anecdotes are told out of order, memories are cut-off and fragmentary, and the suggestion of a single word causes page after page of absurd digression. Experience of the perceptible world resists being written and the profusion of typographical blanks, expletives, chaotic stage-business, and innuendo continually hint at what is not being said. However Sterne's gallery of eccentrics is made real through the charming characterisations of Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, and the Widow Wadman. An incredible book with an un-credible tale at its centre, Tristram Shandy is the best example in the canon of textual trickery and self-consciousness before the form's more lasting re-emergence in the 20th century. Innovative and amazingly modern in outlook, Sterne's masterpiece will be enjoyed by any reader who dares to delve into this riotous and entertaining tale.

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Rating: - The book's great, this edition isn't!
Giving Tristram Shandy a 1-star review makes me shudder, but I feel it's imperative that everyone knows this edition comes without -any- notes. If you're widely read and know a bit about the period this might not be a huge problem, but even then you're probably going to miss a lot with Sterne, who is a very allusive writer. I recommend getting another edition, most will come with notes.

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Rating: - A wandering rambling classic
This book was published in the mid eighteenth century but shows so much warm insight into humanity and the oddness of people's eccentricities that it is practically timeless. It celebrates and adores its characters with a gentle, loving wicked humour and observation and a glorious playful and rich (and florid) language which is modern enough to read without too much adjustment - there are no low moments or sad parts even though it covers many events which could have been seen as traumatic. It is bawdy without being crude or explicit. It is funny enough to keep you smiling throughout. It needs to be read again and again to get the most out of every word - especially because it rambles, chops and changes its narrative in a manner which the author admits is both appalling (and a deliberate play on the florid and rambling novels of the time) and which he comments on and talks to you about as he loses his way and finds it again. If I was only ever allowed one book to read for the rest of my life it would be this one - don't miss it! The Penguin Classic Audiobook read by Steven Pacey is a superb version of what must be in the top ten of books you'd never want to read out aloud - it makes the story jump out of the page and make sense.

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Rating: - One of the greatest of comic novels
Dr Johnson famously said of this book, "Nothing odd will do long - Tristram Shandy did not last." Well, even the good doctor could err. The book has lasted, to the delight of generations of readers.

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Rating: - A postmodern tale
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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