Book Description
Edited by Joan New and Melvyn New.
Customer Reviews:
Postmodern before modern.......2007-04-03
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.
Stop procrastinating and read this book!! .......2006-08-23
"Tristram Shandy" may be the most influential comic novel in the English language. Its influence can be seen in works as different as Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children," Carlos Fuentes's "Christoper Unborn," and, of course, Joyce's "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake". Indeed, the "Wake" would probably not have been possible without the comic freedom bequeathed to his descendants by the good Rev. Sterne. Influence aside, however, this is also one of the funniest and most impressive novels ever written IN ANY LANGUAGE. Obsessively self-referential, it reads like a postmodern novel written two centuries before Derrida. Maniacally, outrageously comical, it's the book the members of 'Monty Python' might have written had they been a group of 18th-century litterateurs.
Maddeningly Hobbyhorsical.......2006-01-05
Imagine a book filled with em dashes separated by the occasional non sequitur. There you have TS, a jumble of a hodgepodge of a melange. Occasionally delightful turns of phrase notwithstanding, TS is recommended only to bookish masochists interested in dogs of the shaggy persuasion. (Sterne's Sentimental Journey, on the other hand, is a masterpiece.)
A technically perfect comedic novel........2005-03-30
Even in this day and age, this book pushes the boundaries of what a novel should look like. Sterne wrote a masterpiece and the surprising thing about this is that the book is as different from a novel as any can be. He uses more than one language in parts, he uses blank pages, and he skips from one topic to another, as the mood takes him. The book is a series of of character sketches, but the story about Tristram's Uncle Toby holds it all together. I think the genius of this book is Sterne's mastery of making one detail relevant to another. Sterne touches on all the elements of human life - Love, war, business, theology, religion, science, trade and medicine. Sterne juggles all these as well as his main story almost effortlessly. And parts of it will make you laugh out loud. The sketch that I found the funniest was Uncle Toby's abortive efforts to pursue Mrs. Wadman. It's absolutely hilarious!
The way to write a book is to read it upside down .......2005-01-18
There is a spirit of Tristram Shandy I am not sure I know how to define it. It is a making a game of everything in life including the writing of novels. It is a spirit of play which finds in the most commonplace things surprising reversals of fortune. It is in people who are stuck in their own character and for whom character is a gesture of repetition. It is for each and every thing not being where it should be, and not being what it should be but something else and different from what we expected it to be. It is an upside down turn around world where the child wonders what its parents were about when they begot him and the parents do not know why and where the clock in their hearts was ticking so fast at that particular moment.. It is much matter confounded with more mind, and above all that kind of surprise which makes us laugh.
As one Amazon reader wrote even Sterne's name is a kind of fitting upside down crazy joke.
Average customer rating:
- Pre-modernist postmodern
- The LONG life and rants of one, Tristram Shandy
- Tristram Shandy: There Is Logic In The Illogic
- A forerunner to metareality and postmodernism
- A canonic novel the worthy will love
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Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library)
Laurence Sterne
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 18th Century
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British
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ASIN: 0679405607
Release Date: 1991-10-15 |
Book Description
Introduction by Peter Conrad
Customer Reviews:
Pre-modernist postmodern.......2007-04-07
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.
The LONG life and rants of one, Tristram Shandy.......2006-12-05
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.
Tristram Shandy: There Is Logic In The Illogic.......2006-08-18
When Laurence Sterne, in 1760 wrote the first volume of TRISTRAM SHANDY in what was to be a series of nine, no one had any idea what this new genre of literature was meant to be. The only models that Sterne had were Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, so the field was pretty much wide open in terms of any competitor's choice of content, style, or theme. Sterne noted from these two that their successes were based on their characters' being placed in wildly varying and potentially threatening situations. He took these twin concepts of changeable location and possible harm which he incorporated into the first volume of Tristram Shandy, and then proceeded to turn the incipient world of novel writing over on its very young head. What differentiated this book from those of Fielding and Richardson was Sterne's abandoning the tidy world of the classical insistence on the need for unity. In a style that centuries later would be adopted by Joyce and Proust, Sterne twisted the relation between plot and time into a pretzel. To begin with, the title itself is a misnomer. The titular hero, Tristram, is not even born until midway through the book. He is born, appears briefly, disappears for lengthy periods of time, and then reappears briefly at the end. A more honest title would have been "The Life and Times of the Father and Uncle of Tristram Shandy." It is Walter Shandy, Tristram's father and Toby Shandy, the uncle, who dominate most of the action. And it is not simply a misdirection of who the primary protagonist is to be that gives TRISTRAM SHANDY its off beat flavor. What distinguishes this book from both its predecessors and most of its descendants is Sterne's refusal to use structured time as the unifying glue.
When Sterne presents his action in a manner that seems to defy the laws of causality in that results may precede causes, he does so by his novel use of the association of ideas which act to reconnect threads of thought that are snipped here and spliced there. Such cycles of snipping and splicing lead to digressions such as when in Volume II, the removal of Walter Shandy's wig leads his brother to be reminded of military tactics from his participation in a long past war. Such digressions take on a life of their own, like baby universes after the Big Bang with each one branching off to a possibly related clone. Sterne asks a lot of his readers to tolerate these rapid and often extended shifts in time and perspective. For those readers who are nimble enough of mind to follow, they are treated to some very comic scenes of humor that range from the broadest of satire to the most scatological of coarse jesting. By the time that Tristram makes his initial appearance, the reader has already learned to anticipate the many detours (some would call them roadblocks) of time and space that Sterne has inserted. Many of these scenes of digressive humor are so bizarre and pathetic, that the reader is not sure whether he should laugh or cry. And that perhaps is the magic that causes each new generation of readers to return and follow the twisted paths of time and space that even now can wring tears and laughs from them, sometimes in the same breath.
A forerunner to metareality and postmodernism.......2006-05-19
Lawrence Sterne's sprawling "Shandy" is a fun, difficult read I enjoyed most when I took the time to digest it in 50-60 page chunks. Sterne's meandering style, with no sense of plot, and digression upon digression, can be frustrating to those looking for a story or any sense of a straight narrative.
But for those who love word play, or, like me, grew up reading Mad Magazine and other satire; or anyone with a degree in Latin or philosophy, or even if you're a frustrated writer stifled over care to the craft, "Shandy" is the book for you.
It's crazy fun -- missing pages, the infamous marbled page, black pages, drawings of pointing fingers, digression after digression on such diverse topics as armaments, noses, and fasting, and one of the most self-conscious, self-referential narrative voices in all of fiction. Literary critics point to Shandy as one of the first examples of postmodernist writing.
Sterne presages the modern tendency towards meta-fiction, that blurry limbo between fact and fiction. The controversy over "A Million Little Pieces," reality television, the movies "Adaption" and "American Splendor," along with the stream-of-consciousness style of Kerouac and the Beat Movement -- any work where the creator's ego/persona interjects into the narrative -- owes a creative debt to Tristram Shandy.
I saw the movie and decided to read the book to make sense of it all. Of course, the book was no help. Sense has no place in the "Shandean" universe. The intrepid reader should just roll with it, laugh at the absurdities and highlight in pencil the little nuggets of wisdom contained herein.
A canonic novel the worthy will love.......2006-03-26
Although my motivation alone to read Life and Opinions speaks to its literary value (it is required reading for esteemed and illustrious Professor Priscilla "Sawcebox" Gilman's Eighteenth Century British Novels course at the prestigious and highly selective Vassar College in the scenic Hudson Valley of New York), I have discovered that it actually lives up to its assigned space in the canon. For those who are connoisseur-enough to understand that it takes patience, devotion, and a well-rounded understanding of vulgarity to get through an obra-maestra such as this, it is truly a fun read. At times I find myself daring to laugh out loud (lol) to Sterne's outlandish and fearless narrative. After such morally righteous (dull) tales as Pamela and Joseph Andrews, this novel is a welcome release. FINALLY here is an author who knows how to take charge of his readership and completely disregards their wishes while acknowledging and thriving off of their existence. Unlike the other little girly writers of his age who chew day and night on their anxiety of criticism, Sterne addresses his critics directly, super-manly, and does the most masculine thing of all: he makes fun of them. I mean, what better credit can one do for oneself other than to make a spectacle of those who think differently? In conclusion, don't attempt this one if you aren't a careful reader: it will just be words on a page, page after page, with a few anomalies stuck in. For the adventurous reader, carpe librum! However, I will offer one word of advice; watch for the pointed finger hand- therein little nuggets of truth, perfect for the mantle.
Customer Reviews:
An amazingly-told tale of an 18th Century family.......2000-06-05
Have you ever wanted to read a book where the author decides to "rip out" one of the chapters, or leaves a blank page for you to 'draw' one of the characters? Would you enjoy an 18th-Century story which takes many chapters before the hero is born? The tale is touchingly told. The characters are real, and constantly fascinating. It's not their fault that their story is frequently interrupted by outlandish "digressions" on the part of an author so creative that his modern descendants are considered to be Joyce and Beckett as well as many others. Would you enjoy a chapter about Chapters? About buttonholes? About whether parents and their children are kin to each other? A chapter on curses? Laurence Sterne has so much trouble getting Walter and Toby Shandy downstairs that he calls in the "critics" to do it. Advice on reading such an unusual, even unique book: read the first several chapters, then stop and reread them. Continue that process and soon the book will feel quite familiar, and that's when the fun starts! Walter loves arguments about anything. Uncle Toby enjoys building military models. Tristram is quite busy just trying to get born and baptized with the correct name. His mother Elizabeth argues with her husband Walter about midwives and their methods. (Their wedding contract is here for you to peruse...it causes some problems itself.) This volume "3" consists of the Notes on the text (which is found in volumes "1" and "2".) Amazon also lists several less expensive paperback editions of the novel, the preferred one being the Oxford World Classics Edition.
Book Description
A Sentimental Journey is a novel without a plot, a journey without a destination. It records the adventures of the amiable Parson Yorick, as he sets off on his travels through France and Italy, relishing his encounters with all manner of men and women-particularly the pretty ones. Sterne's tale rapidly moves away from the narrative of travel to become a series of dramatic sketches, ironic incidents, philosophical musings, reminiscences, and anecdotes; sharp wit is mixed with gaiety, irony with tender feeling. With A Sentimental Journey, as well as his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, Sterne forged a truly original style and established himself as the first of the stream-of-consciousness writers.
This new Penguin Classics edition features an introduction that discusses the novel in relation to Sterne's other writing and places it within the context of "sentimental" literature. Also included are a chronology, suggestions for further reading, and full explanatory notes.
Customer Reviews:
thanks.......2007-09-09
book arrived well within the expected time frame; book was in fabulous condition. will recommend seller to friends.
boring journey.......2007-06-30
maybe this book is just dated (im being generous). it kinda reminds me of Nash's unfortunate traveller or anatomy of melancholy only less entertaining. naw, more like those essays in the tabloids from the era like the tattler - not even that good really. there are some moments of being clever but never truly brilliant or entertaining.
I realy wanted to read shandy but that dreaful film ruined my ability to get past the first page - i guess i need to wait until the bad after taste is gone. whatever - journey is truly forgettable - not worth the time whatsoever. i probably should only give it one star.
THE GREATGRANDFATHER OF JAMES JOYCE ULYSSES.......2006-08-03
a similar seemingly pointless but profoundly significant AND FUNNY epic delivered under the guise of a trivial travelogue, written by a fellow Irishman. Nice to know Joyce read his Sterne as well as his daily newspaper while traveling in Trieste.
This parody must be read and enjoyed on its own terms. Recent academic commentaries are helpful in understanding, a fact which does not detract from this work.
I wish I wish.......2006-05-31
I wish I could go around France and Italy and chat it up like this fellow does.
I also wish I could write like him. Every once in a while I run across a writer who can really tell a tale and uses English as a painter uses oils.
Ben
IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSION.......2005-11-07
The reader who expects Sterne's "Sentimental Journey" to provide something of an ordered travelogue will be disappointed. It is a seemingly artless web of loosely connnected episodes, anecdotes, impressions, musings. There is no structured narrative - one digression leads to another; some are amusing, some are absurd, some are thoughtful, but all of them are entertaining.
My current rereading of the "Journey" was itself a digression. I had been watching a movie version of "Mansfield Park" that diverged significantly from Jane Austen's novel. In one scene (which is not in the novel) Henry Crawford tries to win Fanny Price's approval by reading her a passage from the "Sentimental Journey". (It is the scene with the caged starling calling "I can't get out - I can't get out" - a very poignant and appropriate selection, in my view). So you see - I had to reread both "Mansfield Park" and the "Journey" to fully appreciate the connection; and I don't regret it.
The narrator of the "Journey" is Parson Yorick, a character introduced in Sterne's "Tristram Shandy", who owes as much to Shakespeare's jester as to Cervantes' Don Quixote. As he tells it, the journey came about in a haphazard manner. He had forgotten that England was at war with France and that he would need a passport. This leads to all sorts of complications and adventures, but in the end everything turns out just fine. His encounters with beggars and princes, innkeepers and shopkeepers are amusing and often revealing. The many temptations put in his way by mysterious ladies and obliging filles de chambre temporarily distract him from his purpose - but what is his purpose? The journey itself is the object of his quest.
Some of his observations are rather sobering; e.g.,he concludes that we advance in life not by the favors we bestow but by the favors we receive, and that the surest way to success is through shameless flattery. Every politician knows that - but are the rest of us ready to admit it? There is a streak of cynicism running through Sterne's lightheartedness. Even the story of the starling, which supposedly teaches the narrator the value of freedom, ends on a note of bitter irony: the bird is passed fondly from hand to hand, but no one sets it free.
As Sterne weaves into his tale characters and episodes from "Tristram Shandy", another digression is looming ahead: now we simply have to reread "Tristram Shandy"!
Average customer rating:
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Laurence Sterne And the Visual Imagination
W. B. Gerard
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 075465673X |
Book Description
Introduction and Notes by Robert Folkenflik
Rich in playful double entendres, digressions, formal oddities, and typographical experiments, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman provoked a literary sensation when it first appeared in England in a series of volumes from 1759 to 1767. An ingeniously structured novel (about writing a novel) that fascinates like a verbal game of chess, Tristram Shandy is the most protean and playful English novel of the eighteenth century and a celebration of the art of fiction; its inventiveness anticipates the work of Joyce, Rushdie, and Fuentes in our own century. This Modern Library Paperback is set from the nine-volume first edition from 1759.
Customer Reviews:
Tristram Shandy.......2007-06-07
What does one even say about Tristram Shandy? Amazing? A bit of fresh air? Challenging? Hysterical? A marvelous satire on the novel (and everything else, literally) that is developed by its digressions and nearly entirely abandons linear plot structure. I have never laughed so hard while reading a classic.
Postmodern before the modern.......2007-04-21
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.
I get it, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.......2007-01-31
Post-modernism isn't appreciated as such in the truly post-modern era. This book may have inspired and launched a thousand novels in succeeding generations, but outside of aspiring modern writers who need either justification or inspiration, it really has no place. It's irrelevant, completely unfunny, and as unintellectual as a neo-con's talking points.
My bias: Joyce and Sterne belong in the same bowl to be devoured by artists and fellow writers and happily ignored by most consumers of literature. Maybe we aren't smart enough to enjoy it, but we are intelligent enough to get it. It's just not that fun to struggle through. These are mostly pointless words penned as amusement and should be treated as such. There's little of humanism to reveal here, so let it be what it is: the recreation of a mind unburdened by survival or love. Too bad so much ink was spilled on so little substance.
Sterne's best since 1766.......2007-01-10
A book doesnt survive for 240 years if it doesn't have value. I came upon this book because I once had the luck to meet the SF writer John Brunner in a pub, and inter alia he recommended it. The worst (or at any rate most difficult) thing with this book is the punctuation -- sometimes Sterne (the writer) is talking to you, sometimes to somebody off-stage -- sometimes he uses commas to indicate a pause which may take him off in a new direction, sometimes a hyphen. If you can get over all this, you are sitting down to have a chat with the most interesting person you are ever likely to meet, namely Tristram Shandy, who has the driest sense of humour ever wished on a body -- and the most logical (and therefore intensely amusing) father Walter, and the sweetest natured of all uncles (Toby,as narrow in his own way as Walter) whose servant Trim can turn the dropping of a hat into a drama -- and one must not forget his mother, who always wins arguments by never arguing...And yet others. Sterne can stretch the description of single moments to cover pages, and make you burst out laughing at the end of it (or often in the middle). Did Sterne think of his book as a stage play? The characters are brought wonderfully to life,but the narrative unfolds with so many long (usually interesting) asides -- and sometimes asides of asides -- and with such a complicated ebb-and-flow that you probably cannot make sense of it on a proscenium. What's that you ask? -- But what is the plot? -- well, Tristram takes half the book to get born, and a goodly time to be nearly dealt a life-changing blow by a window, and then there is the business of him running faster than Death through France, and the affair of his Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman...really, you ask too much wanting a plot as well! If you needs must have a plot, I have a fine garden round the back, and you may choose your own, and I will pay my gardener extra to tend it for you.
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Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (Oxford World's Classics)
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (Penguin Classics)
Tom Jones (Wordsworth Classics)
Tristram Shandy - A Cock and Bull Story
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (Penguin Classics)
