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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.… (more)
I'm trying to think of something nice to say, but I can't! This is a "novel" with chaotic form, sub-standard grammar, punctuation and spelling. Again, I don't know the author personally, but in this case he was long-winded. He digressed so much that I forgot what the point of the paragraph or even the sentence was--if there was a point. The entire novel was a series of digressions until I had no idea what the novel was about. It is advertised as "bawdy" humor, which I'm not opposed to--but nothing but downright trash here. Why oh why did I continue to read this? It's a compulsion to finish, I must S.T.O.P.! I thought certainly it would get better, after all, it's a classic! 735 pages ( )
ταρασσει τους ἀνθρωπους οὐ τα πραγματα ἀλλα τα περι των πραγματων δογματα.
What stresses mankind is not things, but opinions about things --- Epictetus
Dedication
To the Right Honourable Mr. Pitt.
Sir,
Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retir'd thatch'd house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this Fragment of Life.
I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not under your Protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the country with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment's pain—I shall think myself as happy as a minister of state;—perhaps much happier than any one (one only excepted) that I have read or heard of.
I am, Great Sir, (and, what is more to your Honour) I am, Good Sir, Your Well-wisher, and most humble Fellow-subject,
The Author.
First words
"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; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; - that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; - and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: ---Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ---I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me."
Quotations
and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
What is best to take out the fire? ... If it is in a tender part, and a part which can conveniently be wrapt up ... Send to the next printer, and trust your cure to a soft sheet of paper just come off the press - you need do nothing more than twist it round. - The damp paper has a refreshing coolness in it - and the oil and lamp-black with which the paper is so strongly impregnated, does the business.
Last words
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick - And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.
This is the original work by Laurence Sterne, not the graphic novel adaptation/commentary by Martin Rowson. It should not be combined with the Norton Critical Edition, nor with single volumes of a two or three volume set.
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.
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Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy
Wikipedia in English (1)
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Inspired, metatextual, unbeatable silliness. (