What do you think?
Rate this book
夭賳丿诏丕賳蹖 賵 毓賯丕賷丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇賷爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖
芦夭賳丿诏蹖 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 丕爻鬲 亘賴 賯賱賲 芦賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳禄 丕賳诏賱蹖爻蹖 讴賴 丿乇 賴賮鬲 賲噩賱丿 賵 丿乇 賯丕賱亘蹖 胤賳夭 丌賲蹖夭 賲賳鬲卮乇 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲. 讴鬲丕亘 丨丕囟乇貙 丨丕賵蹖 賴賮鬲 賲噩賱丿 丕孬乇 賲匕讴賵乇 丿乇 蹖讴 賲噩賱丿 丕爻鬲. 丿乇 賲噩賱丿丕鬲 丕賵賱蹖賴 丕蹖賳 賲噩賲賵毓賴貙 乇賵丨 胤賳夭 亘乇 丕丨爻丕爻丕鬲 睾賱亘賴 丿丕乇丿貙 丕賲丕 丿乇 賲噩賱丿丕鬲 亘毓丿蹖貙 胤賳夭 丕賳丿讴 丕賳丿讴 乇賳诏 亘丕禺鬲賴 賵 噩丕蹖 禺賵丿 乇丕 亘賴 丕丨爻丕爻丕鬲 丿丕丿賴 丕爻鬲. 丕爻鬲乇賳 丿乇 噩賱丿 賴賮鬲賲 丕孬乇 禺賵丿 賵賯丕蹖毓 爻賮乇卮 亘賴 丕乇賵倬丕 乇丕 鬲丨乇蹖乇 讴乇丿賴 丕爻鬲. 丕賵 亘丕 賳賵卮鬲賳 丕蹖賳 丿丕爻鬲丕賳貙 禺丿 乇丕 亘賴 毓賳賵丕賳 倬丕蹖賴 诏匕丕乇 賲讴鬲亘蹖 噩丿蹖丿 丕夭 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 丕丨爻丕爻蹖 賲毓乇賮蹖 讴乇丿貨 趩乇丕 讴賴 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 賴乇 蹖讴 丕夭 卮禺氐蹖鬲賴丕貙 賳賲丕蹖丕賳诏乇 亘禺卮蹖 丕夭 夭賳丿诏蹖 禺氐賵氐蹖 丕爻鬲乇賳 賵 丕賮乇丕丿蹖 賲蹖亘丕卮丿 讴賴 亘丕 丌賳賴丕 丿乇 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 亘賵丿賴 丕爻鬲. 丕爻鬲乇賳 亘丕 鬲胤亘蹖賯 卮禺氐蹖鬲 賵 賴賵蹖鬲 禺賵丿 亘乇 卮禺氐蹖鬲 賵 賴賵蹖鬲 卮禺氐蹖鬲賴丕蹖 丿丕爻鬲丕賳貙 蹖毓賳蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 賵 蹖賵乇蹖讴貙 禺賵丿 乇丕 丿乇 賲毓乇囟 爻賵亍 鬲賮丕賴賲丕鬲 亘爻蹖丕乇蹖 賯乇丕乇 丿丕丿貨 丕賲丕 孬丕亘鬲 讴乇丿 讴賴 卮禺氐蹖鬲 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 賲蹖鬲賵丕賳丿 賳賯胤賴 賲乇讴夭蹖 賵 讴丕賳賵賳蹖 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 诏乇丿丿貙丕诏乇 丕賵 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 氐丕丨亘 賳亘賵睾 亘丕卮丿.
794 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1767
2,298 people are currently reading
44.8k people want to read
About the author
Laurence Sterne
1,411听books389听followersLaurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption (tuberculosis).
See also
See also
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,757 reviews
January 1, 2020
Before I start my review of this delightful classic, I have to tell you a short anecdote from my teaching life. But don鈥檛 worry, it is not really a digression at all, as it is leading directly to the essence of this novel. It actually has more relevance for Tristram Shandy than many of the anecdotes Tristram himself tells in his story. If it is a digression, (which I formally dispute, partly because you can鈥檛 really digress before you have begun, and partly because it is crucial for the review鈥檚 essential development), BUT IF it should be considered a digression (by the harsh standards of formal review guidelines and rules), it certainly is of the noble Tristram-kind known as a 鈥減rogressive digression鈥�.
It is also quite modest and unpretentious, as it won鈥檛 need any footnotes, and it won鈥檛 come with Latin quotes either, or with omitted or ripped out chapters. It will simply be a short introductory tale - setting the stage for the review to come.
Here it is then, without any further announcement!
Anecdote leading to the formal beginning of the review:
I used to teach a very peculiar class for a couple of years. They were known throughout the school for their lively interest in everything and for their almost inexhaustible talent for digression. Whatever you set out to teach them, they took over and formed a lesson of their own according to their curiosity and enthusiasm. You had to prepare for their classes in exactly the opposite way compared to all other groups. In other lessons, you were trying your best to stimulate interest and to engage in interactive discussions to keep the students remotely awake, but with this set of adolescents you had to plan some deliberately, excruciatingly boring elements in order to curb their energies, and to guide them towards some kind of focus. They had so many questions to ask, so many anecdotes to tell, so many viewpoints to argue, that you simply did not get to finish a single chapter in the history book on time. That, of course, is inconvenient as you can鈥檛 postpone the assessment of the Grade 8 curriculum to Grade 10.
One day, when I was particularly tired - it was the last period in the afternoon - I lost control of their discussion. Whoever has taught a lively class knows what I am talking about. You realise all of a sudden that you are completely off topic, that there are centuries of history to wade through to get back to the starting point, and that the class machine is running full speed towards the edge of reason. All hands were up, everyone wanted to share opinions and life stories, and I wanted to wrap up and go home. What to do? Slowly, steadily I started to take over the conductor job again, to guide the diverse contributions towards my goal, to rein in the cacophony of voices. We were just about to reestablish order and to close the chapter of the initial digression that had got the unruly crowd started, when one boy raised his hand and threw in another random thought, pointing straight towards new chaos. I finally lost my only superficially kept temper and yelled:
鈥淪TOP DIGRESSING FROM THE DIGRESSION!鈥�
From then on, that became a standard saying in the class, a sure card to play to get them to laugh.
Little did I know that they were complete amateurs, compared to the master Tristram Shandy!
While my class just managed to make the analysis of the effects of crop rotation in the Industrial Revolution turn into something as closely related as revolutionary pop songs in the 21st century, Tristram manages to fill 8.5 hours of audiobook time to get born, while eagerly discussing his own nose, noses in general, his Uncle Toby, and the different dogmas of Protestants and Catholics, and several other important topics, including his name and the line of beauty and Don Quixote etc. etc. etc. (and I promise you that those enigmatic 鈥渆tc鈥� fill several hundred pages!).
He accurately calculates that he won鈥檛 be able to finish the account of his life and opinions, as he is spending so much time on a couple of hours that he consistently accumulates years of backlog in his narrative. It runs in the family, as his father set out to write a pedagogical work for him, the Tristopaedia, which never caught up with the growing boy.
While we glimpse quite a lot of Tristram鈥檚 family, their lives and their opinions, he is rather mum about his own person, always finding more important topics to talk about. Closing the novel, I know more about the mortality of Trim鈥檚 hat and about the amours of Uncle Toby than about Tristram himself. But that doesn鈥檛 really matter, for most of all, I know that the modern novel has some work to do to catch up with this experimental classic.
What a pure joy to see the narrator tear the body of the novel open and show the scaffold of it in its artificial randomness. And what additional spice to get bits and pieces of Tristram鈥檚 erudition, wit, and sense of humour. Who needs a plot, anyway? Isn鈥檛 that more artificial in the end than a long dialogue on the pleasures and pains of dividing a work into chapters?
Do I really need to know the details of a love story when the essence of love is rendered in alphabetical order instead?
鈥淟ove is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most
Agitating
Bewitching
Confounded
Devilish affairs of life - the most
Extravagant
Futilitous
Galligaskinish
Handy-dandyish
Iracundulous (there is no K in it) and
Lyrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most
Misgiving
Ninnyhammering
Obstipating
Pragmatical
Stridulous
Ridiculous - though by the bye the R should have gone first鈥�
As you can imagine, I could go on and on, from one thread to another, and still not be any closer to starting my review, so I will make a drastic decision, and urge you to let Tristram speak for himself instead - there is no one like him to speak anyway.
Please read his digressions!
They are much more amusing than I can adequately show you. I strongly recommend the audio version, as it forced me to sit still and not digress from the text in the way I might have otherwise, had I had the slightest chance. I recommend having a copy of the book next to you as well, as some pages are more interesting in a visual than in an auditive, not to mention narrative, way.
To keep seated, I employed my hands with yarn as well, spinning my own threads into a warm poncho which will come in very handy when the teaching season starts again, - as will my time with Tristram, for I can鈥檛 imagine any lecture that could possibly prepare you better for the digressions of students than the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy!
A superb experiment of a novel, and a unique voice in world literature!
As for my review, I accidentally ripped it out of my 欧宝娱乐 account and replaced it with this text instead. Sometimes things like that happen, and the original review is in the literary ether together with the missing chapter in Tristram Shandy. To tell the story of all those alternative texts, we would need the help of Borges and his Labyrinths. But that is another story - or two, or three...
It is also quite modest and unpretentious, as it won鈥檛 need any footnotes, and it won鈥檛 come with Latin quotes either, or with omitted or ripped out chapters. It will simply be a short introductory tale - setting the stage for the review to come.
Here it is then, without any further announcement!
Anecdote leading to the formal beginning of the review:
I used to teach a very peculiar class for a couple of years. They were known throughout the school for their lively interest in everything and for their almost inexhaustible talent for digression. Whatever you set out to teach them, they took over and formed a lesson of their own according to their curiosity and enthusiasm. You had to prepare for their classes in exactly the opposite way compared to all other groups. In other lessons, you were trying your best to stimulate interest and to engage in interactive discussions to keep the students remotely awake, but with this set of adolescents you had to plan some deliberately, excruciatingly boring elements in order to curb their energies, and to guide them towards some kind of focus. They had so many questions to ask, so many anecdotes to tell, so many viewpoints to argue, that you simply did not get to finish a single chapter in the history book on time. That, of course, is inconvenient as you can鈥檛 postpone the assessment of the Grade 8 curriculum to Grade 10.
One day, when I was particularly tired - it was the last period in the afternoon - I lost control of their discussion. Whoever has taught a lively class knows what I am talking about. You realise all of a sudden that you are completely off topic, that there are centuries of history to wade through to get back to the starting point, and that the class machine is running full speed towards the edge of reason. All hands were up, everyone wanted to share opinions and life stories, and I wanted to wrap up and go home. What to do? Slowly, steadily I started to take over the conductor job again, to guide the diverse contributions towards my goal, to rein in the cacophony of voices. We were just about to reestablish order and to close the chapter of the initial digression that had got the unruly crowd started, when one boy raised his hand and threw in another random thought, pointing straight towards new chaos. I finally lost my only superficially kept temper and yelled:
鈥淪TOP DIGRESSING FROM THE DIGRESSION!鈥�
From then on, that became a standard saying in the class, a sure card to play to get them to laugh.
Little did I know that they were complete amateurs, compared to the master Tristram Shandy!
While my class just managed to make the analysis of the effects of crop rotation in the Industrial Revolution turn into something as closely related as revolutionary pop songs in the 21st century, Tristram manages to fill 8.5 hours of audiobook time to get born, while eagerly discussing his own nose, noses in general, his Uncle Toby, and the different dogmas of Protestants and Catholics, and several other important topics, including his name and the line of beauty and Don Quixote etc. etc. etc. (and I promise you that those enigmatic 鈥渆tc鈥� fill several hundred pages!).
He accurately calculates that he won鈥檛 be able to finish the account of his life and opinions, as he is spending so much time on a couple of hours that he consistently accumulates years of backlog in his narrative. It runs in the family, as his father set out to write a pedagogical work for him, the Tristopaedia, which never caught up with the growing boy.
While we glimpse quite a lot of Tristram鈥檚 family, their lives and their opinions, he is rather mum about his own person, always finding more important topics to talk about. Closing the novel, I know more about the mortality of Trim鈥檚 hat and about the amours of Uncle Toby than about Tristram himself. But that doesn鈥檛 really matter, for most of all, I know that the modern novel has some work to do to catch up with this experimental classic.
What a pure joy to see the narrator tear the body of the novel open and show the scaffold of it in its artificial randomness. And what additional spice to get bits and pieces of Tristram鈥檚 erudition, wit, and sense of humour. Who needs a plot, anyway? Isn鈥檛 that more artificial in the end than a long dialogue on the pleasures and pains of dividing a work into chapters?
Do I really need to know the details of a love story when the essence of love is rendered in alphabetical order instead?
鈥淟ove is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most
Agitating
Bewitching
Confounded
Devilish affairs of life - the most
Extravagant
Futilitous
Galligaskinish
Handy-dandyish
Iracundulous (there is no K in it) and
Lyrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most
Misgiving
Ninnyhammering
Obstipating
Pragmatical
Stridulous
Ridiculous - though by the bye the R should have gone first鈥�
As you can imagine, I could go on and on, from one thread to another, and still not be any closer to starting my review, so I will make a drastic decision, and urge you to let Tristram speak for himself instead - there is no one like him to speak anyway.
Please read his digressions!
They are much more amusing than I can adequately show you. I strongly recommend the audio version, as it forced me to sit still and not digress from the text in the way I might have otherwise, had I had the slightest chance. I recommend having a copy of the book next to you as well, as some pages are more interesting in a visual than in an auditive, not to mention narrative, way.
To keep seated, I employed my hands with yarn as well, spinning my own threads into a warm poncho which will come in very handy when the teaching season starts again, - as will my time with Tristram, for I can鈥檛 imagine any lecture that could possibly prepare you better for the digressions of students than the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy!
A superb experiment of a novel, and a unique voice in world literature!
As for my review, I accidentally ripped it out of my 欧宝娱乐 account and replaced it with this text instead. Sometimes things like that happen, and the original review is in the literary ether together with the missing chapter in Tristram Shandy. To tell the story of all those alternative texts, we would need the help of Borges and his Labyrinths. But that is another story - or two, or three...
Read
June 24, 2024Before I began this book in 2014鈥�
Wait a moment, don鈥檛 climb on your hobby-horse, or rather, don鈥檛 pounce on your keyboard to tell me that I didn鈥檛 begin this book, that it was Laurence Sterne who began this book more than two hundred and fifty years ago, long before I was even a * in my mothers鈥檚 eye or an answering * in my father鈥檚鈥�
So, before I began reading this book, like many amongst you, I had preconceived ideas about what鈥�
Yes, it is worth paying attention to the wording here because the Life and some of the Opinions of Tristram Shandy relate to a time even before the moment of his own 鉁光€�
But the Life and Opinions is still a good title, and the Opinions themselves, dating as they do from the 1760s, must have been preserved in the finest liquor to have retained such a freshness of spirit that you would think they had taken their first breath of Life a mere five minutes before鈥�
Did I mention Time?
So yes, before I began reading Sterne, I had a sort of bias against this innocent book鈥�
No, not innocent as to what happens between its covers, no, for it treats of everything in the world and doesn鈥檛 mince its words in the telling, doesn鈥檛 strut about like a turkey cock but rather talks turkey, as in gets straight to the鈥�
But to go back to where I began, that period of time before I picked up Shandy and conceived the fancy鈥�
No, not that kind of fancy.
Why is it that we humans are ever occupied by conceptions of a double-meaning nature, as if words were not already weighty enough without adding鈥�
Although generally, at least today, few of us seem capable of constructing sentences fortified with the kind of ravelins or outworks favoured by Tristram鈥檚 uncle Toby and his trusty henchman Trim. For you must accept, if you are to read Sterne that the work is a very well fortified construction, that every sentence contains at least two facets or aspects, and each aspect faces off at an angle as in goes in a different direction and therefore the time taken to read鈥�
Did I mention Time, because the notion, the very conception of Time is very central to any coherent understanding of the relationship between the writing of this book and the reading of it鈥�
And speaking of the reading, we mustn't underestimate the importance of the Opinions of the reader; although not mentioned in the title, the Opinions of the reader are nevertheless鈥�
The narrative, such as is, is interrupted by frequent digressions directed at the reader and when these asides are aimed in particular at the female reader, well鈥�
Broadsides are not out of place to mention, in fact the terminology of the battlefield is used for even the most peaceful-sounding conversations, not to speak of matters amatory鈥�
And although seemingly random, the trajectory of the narrative is very precisely plotted between order and chaos, between sense and nonsense, between mysteries and riddles, between the spiritual and the natural, between abstract philosophy and practical wisdom, between noses and鈥�
Since the writer, together with his appendages, is always present in his own writing, just as every man is present at the shaving of his own beard, Laurence Sterne may also be鈥�
We can鈥檛 but speculate that the subacid personality Sterne gives Tristram鈥檚 father, a man who is pedantically obtuse and razor-sharp at the same time, and the ridiculously cautious diplomacy he allows Tristram鈥檚 mother (though it is a clever and perfectly impenetrable protection against the father鈥檚 razor wit, and blunts it nicely from time to time), plus the childlike humanity with which he endows Tristram's uncle Toby鈥�
However, it is the character of the parson Yorick, who, like his namesake in Hamlet, that fellow of such 鈥榠nfinite jest鈥�, has a great appreciation of nonsense which he allies with a paradoxical impatience of folly and verbosity, and the whole may give us the truest picture of Laurence鈥�
I鈥檓 reminded of Joyce鈥檚 'Man in the Macintosh', the ghost-like figure who flits in and out of , and aren鈥檛 there many such elusive raincoated men in Beckett too鈥�
So yes, I think Sterne may well have inserted himself into his own novel via Yorick, his Jester of a parson鈥�
But for this speculation, I have no proof, at least ready, so I will_that point unless some hypercritick reader of this review wants to 鈫� to it鈥�
The last word I will allow to Sterne:
Therefore, my dear friend and companion (reader), if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out,鈥攂ear with me,鈥攁nd let me go on, and tell my story my own way:鈥攐r if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,鈥攐r should sometimes put on a fool鈥檚 cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,鈥攄on鈥檛 fly off,鈥攂ut rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;鈥攁nd as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,鈥攐nly keep your temper.听
Wait a moment, don鈥檛 climb on your hobby-horse, or rather, don鈥檛 pounce on your keyboard to tell me that I didn鈥檛 begin this book, that it was Laurence Sterne who began this book more than two hundred and fifty years ago, long before I was even a * in my mothers鈥檚 eye or an answering * in my father鈥檚鈥�
So, before I began reading this book, like many amongst you, I had preconceived ideas about what鈥�
Yes, it is worth paying attention to the wording here because the Life and some of the Opinions of Tristram Shandy relate to a time even before the moment of his own 鉁光€�
But the Life and Opinions is still a good title, and the Opinions themselves, dating as they do from the 1760s, must have been preserved in the finest liquor to have retained such a freshness of spirit that you would think they had taken their first breath of Life a mere five minutes before鈥�
Did I mention Time?
So yes, before I began reading Sterne, I had a sort of bias against this innocent book鈥�
No, not innocent as to what happens between its covers, no, for it treats of everything in the world and doesn鈥檛 mince its words in the telling, doesn鈥檛 strut about like a turkey cock but rather talks turkey, as in gets straight to the鈥�
But to go back to where I began, that period of time before I picked up Shandy and conceived the fancy鈥�
No, not that kind of fancy.
Why is it that we humans are ever occupied by conceptions of a double-meaning nature, as if words were not already weighty enough without adding鈥�
Although generally, at least today, few of us seem capable of constructing sentences fortified with the kind of ravelins or outworks favoured by Tristram鈥檚 uncle Toby and his trusty henchman Trim. For you must accept, if you are to read Sterne that the work is a very well fortified construction, that every sentence contains at least two facets or aspects, and each aspect faces off at an angle as in goes in a different direction and therefore the time taken to read鈥�
Did I mention Time, because the notion, the very conception of Time is very central to any coherent understanding of the relationship between the writing of this book and the reading of it鈥�
And speaking of the reading, we mustn't underestimate the importance of the Opinions of the reader; although not mentioned in the title, the Opinions of the reader are nevertheless鈥�
The narrative, such as is, is interrupted by frequent digressions directed at the reader and when these asides are aimed in particular at the female reader, well鈥�
Broadsides are not out of place to mention, in fact the terminology of the battlefield is used for even the most peaceful-sounding conversations, not to speak of matters amatory鈥�
And although seemingly random, the trajectory of the narrative is very precisely plotted between order and chaos, between sense and nonsense, between mysteries and riddles, between the spiritual and the natural, between abstract philosophy and practical wisdom, between noses and鈥�
Since the writer, together with his appendages, is always present in his own writing, just as every man is present at the shaving of his own beard, Laurence Sterne may also be鈥�
We can鈥檛 but speculate that the subacid personality Sterne gives Tristram鈥檚 father, a man who is pedantically obtuse and razor-sharp at the same time, and the ridiculously cautious diplomacy he allows Tristram鈥檚 mother (though it is a clever and perfectly impenetrable protection against the father鈥檚 razor wit, and blunts it nicely from time to time), plus the childlike humanity with which he endows Tristram's uncle Toby鈥�
However, it is the character of the parson Yorick, who, like his namesake in Hamlet, that fellow of such 鈥榠nfinite jest鈥�, has a great appreciation of nonsense which he allies with a paradoxical impatience of folly and verbosity, and the whole may give us the truest picture of Laurence鈥�
I鈥檓 reminded of Joyce鈥檚 'Man in the Macintosh', the ghost-like figure who flits in and out of , and aren鈥檛 there many such elusive raincoated men in Beckett too鈥�
So yes, I think Sterne may well have inserted himself into his own novel via Yorick, his Jester of a parson鈥�
But for this speculation, I have no proof, at least ready, so I will_that point unless some hypercritick reader of this review wants to 鈫� to it鈥�
The last word I will allow to Sterne:
Therefore, my dear friend and companion (reader), if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out,鈥攂ear with me,鈥攁nd let me go on, and tell my story my own way:鈥攐r if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,鈥攐r should sometimes put on a fool鈥檚 cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,鈥攄on鈥檛 fly off,鈥攂ut rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;鈥攁nd as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do any thing,鈥攐nly keep your temper.听
December 28, 2017
So many great discoveries were made absolutely unintentionally鈥�
Christopher Columbus was sailing to India and unexpectedly discovered America without any slightest suspicions.
Laurence Sterne was writing some obscure petty biography and unawares discovered postmodernism.
But the most weird and paradoxical thing about it is that he discovered postmodernism long before the modernists managed to discover modernism.
And at that he was a clergyman. Strange are your deeds, Oh Lord.
But the most important thing is that God dictated to Laurence Sterne a universal postmodern rule: 鈥榥ever piss out of your window鈥�.
Christopher Columbus was sailing to India and unexpectedly discovered America without any slightest suspicions.
Laurence Sterne was writing some obscure petty biography and unawares discovered postmodernism.
But the most weird and paradoxical thing about it is that he discovered postmodernism long before the modernists managed to discover modernism.
It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, 鈥� not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air 鈥� but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad.
And at that he was a clergyman. Strange are your deeds, Oh Lord.
But the most important thing is that God dictated to Laurence Sterne a universal postmodern rule: 鈥榥ever piss out of your window鈥�.
December 28, 2021
(Book 963 from 1001 books) - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman = Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years (vols. 3 and 4, 1761; vols. 5 and 6, 1762; vols. 7 and 8, 1765; vol. 9, 1767).
As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and color to his tale, to the extent that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III. ...
鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 亘蹖爻鬲 賵 倬賳噩賲 賲丕賴 爻倬鬲丕賲亘乇 爻丕賱2000賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 夭賳丿诏丕賳蹖 賵 锟斤拷賯丕蹖丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丕亘乇丕賴蹖賲 蹖賵賳爻蹖貨 丕賳鬲卮丕乇丕鬲 賳爻賱 賯賱賲貙 爻丕賱1378貙 丿乇 丿賵 噩賱丿貨 趩丕倬 丿蹖诏乇 爻丕賱1388貨 丿乇674氐貨 卮丕亘讴9789643515515貨 趩丕倬 倬賳噩賲 爻丕賱1399貨 毓賳賵丕賳 乇賵蹖 噩賱丿: 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴丕蹖 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕蹖乇賱賳丿蹖 鬲亘丕乇 亘乇蹖鬲丕賳蹖丕 - 爻丿賴18賲
乇賲丕賳蹖鈥� 丕爻鬲 賳賵卮鬲賴 蹖 芦賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳禄貙 丿乇 賳賴 噩賱丿 (賳爻禺賴 丕氐賱蹖)貨 丿賵 噩賱丿 賳禺爻鬲 丕夭 乇賲丕賳貙 丿乇 爻丕賱1759賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 賲賳鬲卮乇 卮丿貙 賵 噩賱丿賴丕蹖 亘毓丿蹖 胤蹖 賴賮鬲 爻丕賱 倬蹖 丌蹖賳丿貙 亘賴 趩丕倬 乇爻蹖丿賳丿貨 讴鬲丕亘 芦丿丕爻鬲丕賳 夭賳丿诏蹖 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿禄 賳噩蹖亘鈥屫藏ж団€� 丕蹖貙 亘賴 賳丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄 丕爻鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 亘乇丕蹖 賳賵卮鬲賳 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳貙 卮蹖賵賴鈥� 丕蹖 乇丕 亘賴 讴丕乇 賲蹖鈥屭屫辟嗀� 讴賴 丕丿丕賲賴 蹖 爻賳鬲 芦賮乇丕賳爻賵丕 乇丕亘賱賴禄貙 丿乇 丿丕爻鬲丕賳鈥屭堐屰屸€� 丕爻鬲貨 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 芦鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄貙 倬乇 丕爻鬲 丕夭貙 丕馗賴丕乇 賳馗乇賴丕貙 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿 乇丕賵蹖貙 讴賴 亘賴 卮讴賱蹖 賳丕賲賳馗賲貙 賵 倬乇丕讴賳丿賴貙 亘賴 禺賵丕賳卮诏乇 丕乇丕卅賴 賲蹖鈥屫促堎嗀� 賵 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴貙 亘丕 讴賱讴鈥屫ㄘж槽屸€屬囏й� 賮乇丕賵丕賳貙 亘丕夭诏賵蹖蹖 丕氐賱 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 乇丕貙 賲乇鬲亘 亘賴 鬲兀禺蹖乇 賲蹖鈥屫з嗀ж藏� 丕蹖賳 卮蹖賵賴貙 亘毓丿賴丕 丿乇 丌孬丕乇 芦噩蹖賲夭 噩賵蹖爻禄貙 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 蹖 芦丕蹖乇賱賳丿蹖禄貙 賵 芦丿蹖賵蹖丿 賮丕爻鬲乇 賵丕賱丕爻禄貙 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 蹖 乇賲丕賳 賵 丿丕爻鬲丕賳鈥屬囏й� 讴賵鬲丕賴 芦丌賲乇蹖讴丕蹖蹖禄貙 賳蹖夭貙 丕丿丕賲賴 蹖丕賮鬲賴 丕爻鬲貨 芦夭賳丿诏蹖 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄 乇丕貙 噩賳丕亘 丌賯丕蹖 芦丕亘乇丕賴蹖賲 蹖賵賳爻蹖禄貙 亘賴 賮丕乇爻蹖 鬲乇噩賲賴 讴乇丿賴貙 賵 丕賳鬲卮丕乇鬲 賳爻賱 賯賱賲貙 丿乇 爻丕賱1378賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貙 丌賳 乇丕 丿乇 丿賵 噩賱丿 賲賳鬲卮乇 讴乇丿賴鈥� 丕爻鬲
賳賯賱 丕夭 賳賲賵賳賴 賲鬲賳: (丕蹖 讴丕卮 倬丿乇 蹖丕 賲丕丿乇賲貙 蹖丕 丿乇 賵丕賯毓 賴乇丿賵 鈥ω� 趩賵賳 賴乇丿賵 賲賵馗賮 亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇 亘賵丿賳丿 鈥ω� 賵賯鬲蹖 賲乇丕 亘賴 賵噩賵丿 賲蹖丌賵乇丿賳丿貙 賲蹖丿丕賳爻鬲賳丿 趩賴 賲蹖讴賳賳丿貙 丕诏乇 趩賳丕賳讴賴 亘丕蹖丿貙 亘賴 丕蹖賳 丕賲乇 鬲賵噩賴 賲蹖讴乇丿賳丿貙 賵 賲蹖丿蹖丿賳丿貙 讴賴 趩賴 趩蹖夭賴丕貙 亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇卮丕賳 亘爻鬲诏蹖 丿丕乇丿貙 賵 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 倬丕蹖 亘賴 賵噩賵丿 丌賵乇丿賳 蹖讴 賲賵噩賵丿 賲毓賯賵賱貙 丿乇 賲蹖丕賳 丕爻鬲貙 亘賱讴賴貙 賲爻卅賱賴 蹖 鬲卮讴蹖賱貙 賵 鬲卮讴賱 賲賳丕爻亘 丨乇丕乇鬲 亘丿賳 丕蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿貙 賵 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕賸 賳亘賵睾貙 賵 爻丕禺鬲賲丕賳 賲睾夭 丕賵 賴賲貙 賲胤乇丨 丕爻鬲貙 賵 丨鬲蹖 賲賲讴賳 丕爻鬲貙 爻乇賳賵卮鬲 賴賲賴 蹖 禺丕賳丿丕賳 丕蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿貙 丕夭 丕禺賱丕胤貙 賵 丕賲蹖丕賱蹖 鬲丕孬蹖乇 倬匕蹖乇丿貙 讴賴 丌賳 賴賳诏丕賲 睾賱亘賴 丿丕卮鬲賳丿 ...貨 丕诏乇 亘賴 賵丕爻胤賴 蹖 丌賳 丿賵 丕爻亘 爻乇賰卮貙 賵 丌賳 乇丕賳賳丿賴 蹖 丿蹖賵丕賳賴 賳亘賵丿貙 讴賴 賲丕 乇丕貙 丕夭 芦丕爻鬲蹖賱鬲賳禄 亘賴 芦丕爻鬲丕賲賮賵乇丿禄 亘乇丿貙 丕蹖賳 賮讴乇 賴乇诏夭 亘賴 匕賴賳賲 乇丕賴 賳賲蹖蹖丕賮鬲貨 賲孬賱 亘乇賯 賲蹖乇賮鬲貙 蹖讴 爻乇丕卮蹖亘 爻賴 賲蹖賱 賵 賳蹖賲蹖 亘賵丿貙 讴賴 胤蹖 丌賳貙 亘賴 夭丨賲鬲 丕诏乇 倬丕蹖賲丕賳 亘丕 夭賲蹖賳 鬲賲丕爻 賲蹖蹖丕賮鬲貙 鈥ω� 亘爻 讴賴 丌賴賳诏 丨乇讴鬲賲丕賳 爻乇蹖毓 亘賵丿 ...貨 禺賱丕氐賴貙 賮讴乇蹖 亘賴 賲睾夭賲 丌賲丿貙 賵 賯賱亘 賴賲 丿乇 丌賳 賲卮丕乇賰鬲 賰乇丿)貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 09/11/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 06/10/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
Tristram Shandy is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years (vols. 3 and 4, 1761; vols. 5 and 6, 1762; vols. 7 and 8, 1765; vol. 9, 1767).
As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and color to his tale, to the extent that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III. ...
鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 亘蹖爻鬲 賵 倬賳噩賲 賲丕賴 爻倬鬲丕賲亘乇 爻丕賱2000賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 夭賳丿诏丕賳蹖 賵 锟斤拷賯丕蹖丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丕亘乇丕賴蹖賲 蹖賵賳爻蹖貨 丕賳鬲卮丕乇丕鬲 賳爻賱 賯賱賲貙 爻丕賱1378貙 丿乇 丿賵 噩賱丿貨 趩丕倬 丿蹖诏乇 爻丕賱1388貨 丿乇674氐貨 卮丕亘讴9789643515515貨 趩丕倬 倬賳噩賲 爻丕賱1399貨 毓賳賵丕賳 乇賵蹖 噩賱丿: 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賴丕蹖 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 丕蹖乇賱賳丿蹖 鬲亘丕乇 亘乇蹖鬲丕賳蹖丕 - 爻丿賴18賲
乇賲丕賳蹖鈥� 丕爻鬲 賳賵卮鬲賴 蹖 芦賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳禄貙 丿乇 賳賴 噩賱丿 (賳爻禺賴 丕氐賱蹖)貨 丿賵 噩賱丿 賳禺爻鬲 丕夭 乇賲丕賳貙 丿乇 爻丕賱1759賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 賲賳鬲卮乇 卮丿貙 賵 噩賱丿賴丕蹖 亘毓丿蹖 胤蹖 賴賮鬲 爻丕賱 倬蹖 丌蹖賳丿貙 亘賴 趩丕倬 乇爻蹖丿賳丿貨 讴鬲丕亘 芦丿丕爻鬲丕賳 夭賳丿诏蹖 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿禄 賳噩蹖亘鈥屫藏ж団€� 丕蹖貙 亘賴 賳丕賲 芦鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄 丕爻鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 亘乇丕蹖 賳賵卮鬲賳 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳貙 卮蹖賵賴鈥� 丕蹖 乇丕 亘賴 讴丕乇 賲蹖鈥屭屫辟嗀� 讴賴 丕丿丕賲賴 蹖 爻賳鬲 芦賮乇丕賳爻賵丕 乇丕亘賱賴禄貙 丿乇 丿丕爻鬲丕賳鈥屭堐屰屸€� 丕爻鬲貨 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 芦鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄貙 倬乇 丕爻鬲 丕夭貙 丕馗賴丕乇 賳馗乇賴丕貙 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿 乇丕賵蹖貙 讴賴 亘賴 卮讴賱蹖 賳丕賲賳馗賲貙 賵 倬乇丕讴賳丿賴貙 亘賴 禺賵丕賳卮诏乇 丕乇丕卅賴 賲蹖鈥屫促堎嗀� 賵 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴貙 亘丕 讴賱讴鈥屫ㄘж槽屸€屬囏й� 賮乇丕賵丕賳貙 亘丕夭诏賵蹖蹖 丕氐賱 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 乇丕貙 賲乇鬲亘 亘賴 鬲兀禺蹖乇 賲蹖鈥屫з嗀ж藏� 丕蹖賳 卮蹖賵賴貙 亘毓丿賴丕 丿乇 丌孬丕乇 芦噩蹖賲夭 噩賵蹖爻禄貙 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 蹖 芦丕蹖乇賱賳丿蹖禄貙 賵 芦丿蹖賵蹖丿 賮丕爻鬲乇 賵丕賱丕爻禄貙 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 蹖 乇賲丕賳 賵 丿丕爻鬲丕賳鈥屬囏й� 讴賵鬲丕賴 芦丌賲乇蹖讴丕蹖蹖禄貙 賳蹖夭貙 丕丿丕賲賴 蹖丕賮鬲賴 丕爻鬲貨 芦夭賳丿诏蹖 賵 毓賯丕蹖丿 丌賯丕蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖禄 乇丕貙 噩賳丕亘 丌賯丕蹖 芦丕亘乇丕賴蹖賲 蹖賵賳爻蹖禄貙 亘賴 賮丕乇爻蹖 鬲乇噩賲賴 讴乇丿賴貙 賵 丕賳鬲卮丕乇鬲 賳爻賱 賯賱賲貙 丿乇 爻丕賱1378賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貙 丌賳 乇丕 丿乇 丿賵 噩賱丿 賲賳鬲卮乇 讴乇丿賴鈥� 丕爻鬲
賳賯賱 丕夭 賳賲賵賳賴 賲鬲賳: (丕蹖 讴丕卮 倬丿乇 蹖丕 賲丕丿乇賲貙 蹖丕 丿乇 賵丕賯毓 賴乇丿賵 鈥ω� 趩賵賳 賴乇丿賵 賲賵馗賮 亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇 亘賵丿賳丿 鈥ω� 賵賯鬲蹖 賲乇丕 亘賴 賵噩賵丿 賲蹖丌賵乇丿賳丿貙 賲蹖丿丕賳爻鬲賳丿 趩賴 賲蹖讴賳賳丿貙 丕诏乇 趩賳丕賳讴賴 亘丕蹖丿貙 亘賴 丕蹖賳 丕賲乇 鬲賵噩賴 賲蹖讴乇丿賳丿貙 賵 賲蹖丿蹖丿賳丿貙 讴賴 趩賴 趩蹖夭賴丕貙 亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴丕乇卮丕賳 亘爻鬲诏蹖 丿丕乇丿貙 賵 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 倬丕蹖 亘賴 賵噩賵丿 丌賵乇丿賳 蹖讴 賲賵噩賵丿 賲毓賯賵賱貙 丿乇 賲蹖丕賳 丕爻鬲貙 亘賱讴賴貙 賲爻卅賱賴 蹖 鬲卮讴蹖賱貙 賵 鬲卮讴賱 賲賳丕爻亘 丨乇丕乇鬲 亘丿賳 丕蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿貙 賵 丕丨鬲賲丕賱丕賸 賳亘賵睾貙 賵 爻丕禺鬲賲丕賳 賲睾夭 丕賵 賴賲貙 賲胤乇丨 丕爻鬲貙 賵 丨鬲蹖 賲賲讴賳 丕爻鬲貙 爻乇賳賵卮鬲 賴賲賴 蹖 禺丕賳丿丕賳 丕蹖賳 賲賵噩賵丿貙 丕夭 丕禺賱丕胤貙 賵 丕賲蹖丕賱蹖 鬲丕孬蹖乇 倬匕蹖乇丿貙 讴賴 丌賳 賴賳诏丕賲 睾賱亘賴 丿丕卮鬲賳丿 ...貨 丕诏乇 亘賴 賵丕爻胤賴 蹖 丌賳 丿賵 丕爻亘 爻乇賰卮貙 賵 丌賳 乇丕賳賳丿賴 蹖 丿蹖賵丕賳賴 賳亘賵丿貙 讴賴 賲丕 乇丕貙 丕夭 芦丕爻鬲蹖賱鬲賳禄 亘賴 芦丕爻鬲丕賲賮賵乇丿禄 亘乇丿貙 丕蹖賳 賮讴乇 賴乇诏夭 亘賴 匕賴賳賲 乇丕賴 賳賲蹖蹖丕賮鬲貨 賲孬賱 亘乇賯 賲蹖乇賮鬲貙 蹖讴 爻乇丕卮蹖亘 爻賴 賲蹖賱 賵 賳蹖賲蹖 亘賵丿貙 讴賴 胤蹖 丌賳貙 亘賴 夭丨賲鬲 丕诏乇 倬丕蹖賲丕賳 亘丕 夭賲蹖賳 鬲賲丕爻 賲蹖蹖丕賮鬲貙 鈥ω� 亘爻 讴賴 丌賴賳诏 丨乇讴鬲賲丕賳 爻乇蹖毓 亘賵丿 ...貨 禺賱丕氐賴貙 賮讴乇蹖 亘賴 賲睾夭賲 丌賲丿貙 賵 賯賱亘 賴賲 丿乇 丌賳 賲卮丕乇賰鬲 賰乇丿)貨 倬丕蹖丕賳 賳賯賱
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 09/11/1399賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 06/10/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
June 3, 2023
When a very popular book from a different, distant era fades from view we wonder why? Published in nine installments in 1767 that would have continued except for the untimely author Laurence Sterne's demise...The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. An outrageous satire full of coarse double entente, sexual innuendo, by strangely a Church of England clergyman who was one of the founders of the British novel you can imagine the reactions.The center of the narrative is Walter Shandy and his brother Toby and their discussions about books, war , politics , or anything. Much of the story is the waiting for the main character the son to appear, Tristram, be born. The poor, nervous, concerned mother Elizabeth prefers the midwife than Doctor Slop a short man with a reputation for being a quack, bringing forceps does not give confidence. Walter the father reads plenty, an obviously wealthy landowner has the time, Toby a former wounded captain in the army slowly recovers in Walter's residence. He always tells war stories of his experiences to Walter, and Trim a friend , servant and corporal in the same military unit , they live again through the many sieges of enemy cities. The complicated plans fill the veterans Toby and Trim with joy and give them a reason to exist. And the bachelors finally discover women . Uncle Toby courting a widow Mrs. Wadman , Trim her loyal maid Bridget...
are rather amusing, giving modern audiences a glimpse into the past. Tame by today's standards if there are any, however it will please most people, the seekers of buried treasure, I was. Classics show us how the human race evolves but never quite changes , the good and the bad will be.
are rather amusing, giving modern audiences a glimpse into the past. Tame by today's standards if there are any, however it will please most people, the seekers of buried treasure, I was. Classics show us how the human race evolves but never quite changes , the good and the bad will be.
January 28, 2016
I failed big time in reviewing this.
Oh well.
I tried mentioning Sterne's style and his humor. I tried to include some of my favorite quotes and even show one of the cool drawings included. And I tried stating how much I loved it.
However, when I finished and read it, it didn't do the book any justice at all.
So all that's left for me to do is tell you to go read it.
Rating: 5 stars
This is one of those books we encounter in life that, despite being completely enchanted and raptured chapter after chapter, yet we wonder whether it's even possible to properly communicate these feelings to your fellow book addicts using only words. You, who is now reading this tentative review and who, unfortunately, have not yet heard much about , might about now be thinking that this is a profound, piercing read, that by making use of deep and emotional passages amazes us with its insights on life. If that's what you looking for in a book, you won't get it here. This is comedy!
Heavily influenced by and Cervantes and his humor, lightness and stand-alone stories, was still able to be original and create a masterpiece of his own, taking the humor he found in the stories of the knight-errant and his squire to a whole new level, gracefully and, I must say, obscenely鈥揳lthough he was careful enough to thinly disguise it all in metaphors and many *鈥搉ot that it avoided him any criticism. While so influenced by another work, Tristram Shandy is still highly original and consequently inspired itself many writers with his style. Some believe Sterne to have been the forerunner of many narrative devices used by authors such as and . Speaking of great writers, I should add that named Sterne his favorite author.
was released in nine volumes throughout seven years (Vols. 1 & 2 in 1759; Vols. 3 & 4 in 1761; Vols. 5 & 6 in 1762; Vols. 7 & 8 in 1765; and finally, Vol. 9 in 1767). Luckily for us it is now just one volume divided by its chapters and subchapters. The book, as its title suggests, aims to tell the story of Tristram Shandy鈥揾e is writing his own biography. Our Tristram, however, can't tell a story from beginning to end even if it meant to save his life. He feels he has to go back in order to give us plenty of details and his own birth only happens in Vol. 3. From that you can get an idea of what you're getting yourself into!
Sterne himself, in the quote above, summarized perfectly what one should expect to find in his book鈥搊r how one shouldn't expect anything as it's very unlikely that his inventive mind would be matched. Mightily original in the events depicted on the book, he takes it even further with many different design features and digressions. In the drawing below (by the writer himself), he explains his narrative course in the first four volumes, swearing by us that the fifth would be finer - but would you take his word for it?
Speaking of digressions, while it might be extremely irritating for many who hoped for chronological progress and a steady narrative, to my taste, it was the highlight of this experience. Not only because it was a lot of fun, but also because it felt close to home as it seemed like the way my grandmother tells her stories: even the simplest event as "I didn't sleep well at all last night" comes with the physical description of her neighboor who also has trouble sleeping who has a brother that's a pharmacist (insert his background life story here) and his third degree relations with our family and how tonight she'll finally sleep as she'll not forget to take her pills鈥搘hich was the reason of her insomnia.
By digressing so much, Tristram is merely following his train of thought, without making any effort to order those ideas for his reader's convenience. Isn't that a simpler version of the stream of consciouness technique so hailed in the next centuries? While the former device follows wherever the narrator mind takes him, but still describing the events in a logical order, the latter strips more layers and simply exposes the very thought in a loose manner.
So, I urge you: do have patience with him. He's worth it!
Film adaptation: well, what do you know? While I was reading the book I lamented that it was impossible to be filmed. Turns out it wasn't. is a film-within-a-film released in 2005 by bold director Michael Winterbottom that tells the story of two actors (Steve Coogan and Rob Byrdon, playing themselves) who are shooting an adaptation of Sterne鈥檚 novel, but the film (Tristram) fails terribly鈥搄ust as the book is about a man attempting to write his autobiography but never really succeeding while at it for he can鈥檛 properly tell his story without being distracted, the film is about an attempt at making a film. Winterbottom was happy in the majority of his choices and unlike many film adaptations I鈥檝e watched, this one actually works.
Review: is one of those books I had heard about but never planned to actually read any time soon. Luckily, I was tempted by a group read and found a copy of a rare Portuguese translation (it's been out of print in Brazil for years) at the last minute. It's now absolutely one of my favorites: 5 very assymetric stars.
Oh well.
I tried mentioning Sterne's style and his humor. I tried to include some of my favorite quotes and even show one of the cool drawings included. And I tried stating how much I loved it.
However, when I finished and read it, it didn't do the book any justice at all.
So all that's left for me to do is tell you to go read it.
Rating: 5 stars
Heavily influenced by and Cervantes and his humor, lightness and stand-alone stories, was still able to be original and create a masterpiece of his own, taking the humor he found in the stories of the knight-errant and his squire to a whole new level, gracefully and, I must say, obscenely鈥揳lthough he was careful enough to thinly disguise it all in metaphors and many *鈥搉ot that it avoided him any criticism. While so influenced by another work, Tristram Shandy is still highly original and consequently inspired itself many writers with his style. Some believe Sterne to have been the forerunner of many narrative devices used by authors such as and . Speaking of great writers, I should add that named Sterne his favorite author.
was released in nine volumes throughout seven years (Vols. 1 & 2 in 1759; Vols. 3 & 4 in 1761; Vols. 5 & 6 in 1762; Vols. 7 & 8 in 1765; and finally, Vol. 9 in 1767). Luckily for us it is now just one volume divided by its chapters and subchapters. The book, as its title suggests, aims to tell the story of Tristram Shandy鈥揾e is writing his own biography. Our Tristram, however, can't tell a story from beginning to end even if it meant to save his life. He feels he has to go back in order to give us plenty of details and his own birth only happens in Vol. 3. From that you can get an idea of what you're getting yourself into!
"What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,鈥斺€斺€檛is impossible for you to guess;鈥攊f you could,鈥擨 should blush; not as a relation,鈥攏ot as a man,鈥攏or even as a woman,鈥攂ut I should blush as an author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at anything. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,鈥擨 would tear it out of my book.."
Sterne himself, in the quote above, summarized perfectly what one should expect to find in his book鈥搊r how one shouldn't expect anything as it's very unlikely that his inventive mind would be matched. Mightily original in the events depicted on the book, he takes it even further with many different design features and digressions. In the drawing below (by the writer himself), he explains his narrative course in the first four volumes, swearing by us that the fifth would be finer - but would you take his word for it?
"Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;鈥斺€攖hey are the life, the soul of reading!鈥攖ake them out of this book, for instance,鈥攜ou might as well take the book along with them;鈥攐ne cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;鈥攈e steps forth like a bridegroom,鈥攂ids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail."
Speaking of digressions, while it might be extremely irritating for many who hoped for chronological progress and a steady narrative, to my taste, it was the highlight of this experience. Not only because it was a lot of fun, but also because it felt close to home as it seemed like the way my grandmother tells her stories: even the simplest event as "I didn't sleep well at all last night" comes with the physical description of her neighboor who also has trouble sleeping who has a brother that's a pharmacist (insert his background life story here) and his third degree relations with our family and how tonight she'll finally sleep as she'll not forget to take her pills鈥搘hich was the reason of her insomnia.
By digressing so much, Tristram is merely following his train of thought, without making any effort to order those ideas for his reader's convenience. Isn't that a simpler version of the stream of consciouness technique so hailed in the next centuries? While the former device follows wherever the narrator mind takes him, but still describing the events in a logical order, the latter strips more layers and simply exposes the very thought in a loose manner.
"You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also (...) if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out鈥攂ear with me,鈥攁nd let me go on, and tell my story my own way:鈥擮r, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,鈥攐r should sometimes put on a fool鈥檚 cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,鈥攄on鈥檛 fly off,鈥攂ut rather courteously 9 give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;鈥攁nd as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do anything,鈥攐nly keep your temper."
So, I urge you: do have patience with him. He's worth it!
Film adaptation: well, what do you know? While I was reading the book I lamented that it was impossible to be filmed. Turns out it wasn't. is a film-within-a-film released in 2005 by bold director Michael Winterbottom that tells the story of two actors (Steve Coogan and Rob Byrdon, playing themselves) who are shooting an adaptation of Sterne鈥檚 novel, but the film (Tristram) fails terribly鈥搄ust as the book is about a man attempting to write his autobiography but never really succeeding while at it for he can鈥檛 properly tell his story without being distracted, the film is about an attempt at making a film. Winterbottom was happy in the majority of his choices and unlike many film adaptations I鈥檝e watched, this one actually works.
Review: is one of those books I had heard about but never planned to actually read any time soon. Luckily, I was tempted by a group read and found a copy of a rare Portuguese translation (it's been out of print in Brazil for years) at the last minute. It's now absolutely one of my favorites: 5 very assymetric stars.
July 12, 2016
I would like to dedicate the following old review to a much missed GR friend, Bird Brian, who appears as a character in my review. He provided us with many hours of free entertainment with his great rants against every possible aspect of capitalism and the American government. But 50% of him left when Amazon bought GR, and the rest of him disappeared when the censorship controversy splurged all over our heads. And now he is not here to excoriate all the bad people and discover all the conspiracies.
****
NICHOLAS PARSONS: Welcome to "Just A Minute!"
THEME MUSIC
NP: Thank you, thank you, hello, my name is Nicholas Parsons. And as the Minute Waltz fades away once more it is my pleasure to welcome our many listeners, not only in this country but throughout the world. But also to welcome to the show this week four highly talented and individual players of this game. And once again they're going to show their invention, their verbal dexterity and their creative ingenuity as they speak on a subject that I give them for one minute, and they try and do that without hesitation, repetition or deviation. And this week our four contestants are Manny Rayner, Bird Brian, Paul Bryant and Ian Graye. Please welcome all four of them! (Applause). And we start this week with Manny Rayner 鈥� Manny, the subject is Tristram Shandy. Tell us something about that Manny, without hesitation, repetition or deviation starting now.
MANNY : This is a novel written between 1759 and 1765 鈥�
BUZZZ!
NP : And Bird Brian has challenged. What is your challenge?
BB : Repetition of 鈥渟eventeen鈥�.
MR : But that鈥檚 part of the designation of the year鈥� 1953, 1954鈥�
NP : A harsh challenge but I鈥檓 going to have to agree with Brian 鈥� so BB you have a point and you have the subject of Tristram Shandy and there are 56 seconds left.
BB : Ironically, given that Tristram Shandy is the epitome of deviation and digression, we here are supposed to discuss it without ourselves digressing 鈥� if I remember rightly it has been filmed as A Cock and Bull Story which was directed by Michael Winterbottom who also did Welcome to Sarajevo 鈥�
BUZZ!
NP : And Paul Bryant has challenged.
PB : Well, it was all getting so terribly dull I thought I鈥檇 press this buzzer just to wake us up again.
NP : But what is your challenge? Dullness is allowed in this panel game.
PB : Well鈥� he deviated by going on about Sarajevo. I could see he was just trying to drag politics into it again.
NP : Well no, he only mentioned one other film, I don鈥檛 think that was really deviating from the subject. So Brian you have a point for an incorrect challenge and you continue with Tristram Shandy with 22 seconds left.
BB : Er 鈥�
BUZZ!
Ian Graye : Hesitation.
NP : Oh definitely. You have to keep going in this game, loquacity is the thing. So Ian you have 21 seconds left with Tristram Shandy.
IG : This has got to be one of the most brilliant, funniest and 鈥�
Buzz!
NP : Er 鈥� who challenged there? Manny?
MR : Deviation. I can鈥檛 understand his accent.
NP: What?
MR : He could be talking about anything , how would we know.
NP : Well, er, he does have an Australian accent, of course, but I thought he was perfectly comprehensible鈥� let鈥檚 ask the audience. Audience 鈥� can you understand Ian Graye?
Audience : Mooo!
PB : It鈥檚 hopeless asking that lot, they鈥檙e just a lot of sheep.
Audience : Moo! Mooo!
NP : So Ian that was a wrong challenge, you have a point and the subject is back with you, 19 seconds left for Tristram Shandy.
Ian : Here is a novel that parodies many of the cliches of later novelists before they became 鈥�
Buzz!
PB : Repetition.
NP : Repetition?
PB : Yes, repetition of 鈥渘ovel鈥�.
Ian : No, I said 鈥渘ovel鈥� and novelist鈥� 鈥� two different words, like 鈥渨ood鈥� and 鈥渢ree鈥�, or is your dictionary different to mine?
NP : Yes, he did you know.
BB : Quite so.
NP : So, another point for another wrong challenge and you have the subject back, Ian, 13 seconds starting now.
IG : When I was 鈥�
Buzz!
MR : Deviation 鈥� he鈥檚 talking about himself now, not Tristram Shandy.
NP : A very clever challenge! So you get a point for that and the subject back with you, 11 seconds for Tristram Shandy.
MR : The full title is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which gives Lawrence Sterne ample leeway to throw a in lot of rabbiting about anything. I haven鈥檛 actually read this book 鈥�
Buzz!
NP : And Paul Bryant has challenged.
PB : Deviation 鈥� if he hasn鈥檛 read it he can鈥檛 say anything about it and ought to leave it to those of us who have.
NP : Well that鈥檚 er frankly ridiculous, I haven鈥檛 climbed Mount Everest but I can talk about it, I know facts about Mount Everest.
PB : Now you鈥檙e deviating. What鈥檚 Mount Everest got to do with it?
NP : But I鈥檓 the chairman, I鈥檓 allowed to repeat and hesitate and deviate. I relish my deviant status.
PB : You鈥檙e in cahoots with him! 鈥� Infamy, infamy, they鈥檝e all got it infamy!
NP : Be that as it may, the subject is back with Manny and there are only three seconds left starting now.
Manny : I fully intend to read this wonderful volume at the earliest 鈥�
WHISTLE
NP : And the sound of the whistle beautifully blown by our producer Samantha indicates the end of that 鈥� strenuous 鈥� round. Manny gets a point for speaking as the whistle went, and I can now reveal that the situation is that he is our joint leader with Ian, Bird Brian is next, and Paul Bryant yet to score. So we begin Round Two and the subject is Why I Am So Grumpy and Paul, you can begin with that, starting now.
July 26, 2021
鈥淪hall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?鈥�
鈥� Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
A POEM IN WHICH IS A CELEBRATION BY NEGATION
or, a repartee on jeopardy.
If on a friend鈥檚 bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.
鈥� Alexander Theroux*
I was (of course) destined to love this book. Just look at my love for/on Montaigne, Cervantes & Burton. J'adore big books full of absurdity and digressions and allusions. This is the ... THE ... grand-pappa of the modern novel; the paterfamilis of all things Shandy.
Looking into the black night after emerging with a book from my mother's womb, I dreamt of THIS book among the stars. Sterne's Tristam existed for me before I read it. It was like a song whose tune you hum in your head for years, before identifying the tune with an actual song. Tristram Shandy was playing in the background as I read Joyce, Nabokov, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Murakami, Pynchon, DFW, Rushdie, Woolf, etc. Hell, even Karl Marx loved this book.
But now, I find myself debating on whether I will be content with my Modern Library (Fokenflik intro and notes) version or if I need to go buy the or the .
IF this seems like an odd obsession after reading/finishing Tristram Shandy, perhaps you haven't read it. It just isn't one of those books you really escape from. I keep digressing back into the novel because you keep recognizing the novel in other novels and movies and people. I look at Mandelbrot sets and think THIS is Tristram Shandy with its digressions, repetitions, and spawn. I look at the endnotes of DFW and think, this IS a Shandian experiment. I look at Vonnegut's picture of an (pg 81) in BreakFast of Champions and think: this is a Shandian experiment.
Sterne was postModern before postModern was cool. Reading Tristram Shandy is like discovering that someone in the 18th century had already built a working computer, but that all it did was spit out a long sequence of digressions. Anyway, my wife informed me that she loved just watching me read (so this is now a voyeur review) Sterne because I would spit, giggle, choke, and squirm every page. I would wiggle and twist as Sterne would allude to the classics and twist the logic and satirize everyone from Robert Burton to Jonathan Swift to William Warburton. I can't say this novel isn't appreciated. Those who have read it get it, but it isn't appreciated enough. I imagine it will be like discovering Frank Zappa in 200 years. A future me will be looking at old YouTube videos and will think GOD why didn't more people appreciate him?
* props to Nathan N.R. Gaddis for uncovering/exposing this poem.
** I did get it. I occasionally pull it off the shelf and pet it, and cry, since Visual Editions is no longer a thing, but this book exists and I possess it.
*** I also bought the entire University of Florida Sterne output. Which, if my math serves me, is 9 volumes.
鈥� Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
A POEM IN WHICH IS A CELEBRATION BY NEGATION
or, a repartee on jeopardy.
If on a friend鈥檚 bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.
鈥� Alexander Theroux*
I was (of course) destined to love this book. Just look at my love for/on Montaigne, Cervantes & Burton. J'adore big books full of absurdity and digressions and allusions. This is the ... THE ... grand-pappa of the modern novel; the paterfamilis of all things Shandy.
Looking into the black night after emerging with a book from my mother's womb, I dreamt of THIS book among the stars. Sterne's Tristam existed for me before I read it. It was like a song whose tune you hum in your head for years, before identifying the tune with an actual song. Tristram Shandy was playing in the background as I read Joyce, Nabokov, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Murakami, Pynchon, DFW, Rushdie, Woolf, etc. Hell, even Karl Marx loved this book.
But now, I find myself debating on whether I will be content with my Modern Library (Fokenflik intro and notes) version or if I need to go buy the or the .
IF this seems like an odd obsession after reading/finishing Tristram Shandy, perhaps you haven't read it. It just isn't one of those books you really escape from. I keep digressing back into the novel because you keep recognizing the novel in other novels and movies and people. I look at Mandelbrot sets and think THIS is Tristram Shandy with its digressions, repetitions, and spawn. I look at the endnotes of DFW and think, this IS a Shandian experiment. I look at Vonnegut's picture of an (pg 81) in BreakFast of Champions and think: this is a Shandian experiment.
Sterne was postModern before postModern was cool. Reading Tristram Shandy is like discovering that someone in the 18th century had already built a working computer, but that all it did was spit out a long sequence of digressions. Anyway, my wife informed me that she loved just watching me read (so this is now a voyeur review) Sterne because I would spit, giggle, choke, and squirm every page. I would wiggle and twist as Sterne would allude to the classics and twist the logic and satirize everyone from Robert Burton to Jonathan Swift to William Warburton. I can't say this novel isn't appreciated. Those who have read it get it, but it isn't appreciated enough. I imagine it will be like discovering Frank Zappa in 200 years. A future me will be looking at old YouTube videos and will think GOD why didn't more people appreciate him?
* props to Nathan N.R. Gaddis for uncovering/exposing this poem.
** I did get it. I occasionally pull it off the shelf and pet it, and cry, since Visual Editions is no longer a thing, but this book exists and I possess it.
*** I also bought the entire University of Florida Sterne output. Which, if my math serves me, is 9 volumes.
Read
November 13, 2013The Shandian Spawn
鈥淚f on a friend鈥檚 bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
鈥淸Gaddis or Gass, Pynchon or McElroy,
David Foster Wallace, William T Vollmann,
Alexander Theroux or Gilbert Sorrentino,]
鈥淵ou are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.鈥�
鈥� Alexander Theroux [Erg盲nzung von "N.R."]
Do I really have to say that again?
But, so, let鈥檚 look at what Steven Moore claims to be the stream of spawn flowing forth from the narrative wealth of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
We begin at the very beginning, which is just after Sterne himself (this is not the proper way to begin ; one should begin at conception, back in Greece, Rome, China, India, Japan, etc, but that is what Moore鈥檚 Volume the First and much of Volume the Second were for) :: Voltaire鈥檚 Potpourri (1765), The Man with Forty Crowns (1768), and Lord Chesterfield鈥檚 Ears (1775) ; Diderot鈥檚 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master ; Xavier de Maistre鈥檚 Voyage around My Room ; some novels from the German likes of Wieland, Nicolai, Hippel, Wezel, Richter ; and the American novelist High Henry Brackenridge.
So much for the 18th century. Lets鈥� continue into the 19th and 20th centuries using more or less Mr Moore鈥檚 words, because it is Mr Moore鈥檚 list and I am only reproducing it here because MORE PEOPLE NEED TO READ MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS KIND OF BOOK! You know, this kind of book tends to get BURIED. -- Also, one should read ALL of both of Moore鈥檚 novel-books because there are even MORE books found there that you鈥檝e never heard of and with which you may find yourself IN LOVE.
BEGIN QUOTATION OF STEVEN MOORE (notice the quotation marks) ::
鈥淏eginning in the 19th century, the trickle turned into a stream: the Shandy family genes can be detected in Charles Lucas鈥檚 Infernal Quixote (1801), Nicolai Wergeland鈥檚 Petty Incidents in the Life of Haldor Smek (1805-10), Washington Irving鈥檚 History of New York (1809), Ferenc Verseghy鈥檚 Merry Life and Ridiculous Opinions of Gergely Kolomposi Szarvas (1814-15), Thomas Love Peacock鈥檚 Headlong Hall (1815), Lord Byron鈥檚 verse-novel Don Juan (1818-23), which he called 鈥榓 poetical T Shandy,鈥� E.T.A. Hoffmann鈥檚 Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22), several of American John Neal鈥檚 novels (Randolph, Errata, Authorship), Yakov de Sanglen鈥檚 Life and Opinions of a New Tristram (1825), Charles Nodier鈥檚 Story of the King of Bohemia and His Seven Castles (1830), 19-year-old Karl Marx鈥檚 Scorpion and Felix (1837, unfortunately incomplete), Robert Southey鈥檚 Doctor (1834-47), Thomas Carlyle鈥檚 Sartor Resartus (1836), Nicolai Gogol鈥檚 鈥楴ose鈥� (1836; Pushkin called Gogol 鈥榯he Russian Sterne鈥�), S酶ren Kierkegaard鈥檚 Either-Or/Stages on Life鈥檚 Way diptych (1843-45), Almedia Garrett鈥檚 Travels in My Homeland (1846), Herman Melville鈥檚 Mardi (1849) and Moby-Dick (1851), Lewis Carroll鈥檚 Alice in Wonderland (1865, 1871), Ippolito Nievo鈥檚 Castle of Fratta (1867), and earlier novels; J煤lio Dinis鈥檚 English Family (1868), Carlo Dossi鈥檚 Life of Alberto Pisani (1870), Gustave Flaubert鈥檚 Bouvard and P茅cuchet (1881), and in Joaquim Machado de Assis鈥檚 later novels. By the end of the century, Sterne鈥檚 spawn could be found throughout continental Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia.鈥�
[I鈥檓 still quoting Moore (notice the quotation marks) ; but here I鈥檓 gonna reformat into a columnar list, for read-abble鈥檚-sake, since I can鈥檛 reproduce the typesetting on Moore鈥檚 page which is intended to intimate the shape of an ever-widening river.]
鈥淚n the 20th century, the stream widened into a river, beginning with
Natsume Soseki鈥檚 I Am a Cat, and including
Miguel de Unamuno鈥檚 Mist,
Andrei Bely鈥檚 Petersburg,
James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (he cited Sterne when describing the latter),
Vikto Shklovsky鈥檚 Sentimental Journey,
Italo Svevo鈥檚 Confessions of Zeno,
Andre Gide鈥檚 Counterfeiters,
Luigi Pirandello鈥檚 One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand,
Alfred D枚blin鈥檚 Berlin Alexanderplatz,
Stanislaw Witkiewicz鈥檚 Insatiability,
Mikl贸s Szentkuthy鈥檚 Prae,
John Dos Passos鈥檚 USA,
Juan Filly鈥檚 Op Oloop and Faction,
Philip Wylie鈥檚 Finnley Wren and Opus 21,
Witold Gombrowicz鈥檚 Ferdydurke,
Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
Flann O鈥橞rien鈥檚 At Swim-Two-Birds,
Mikhail Bulgakov鈥檚 Master and Margarita,
Macedonio Fernandez鈥檚 Museum of Eterna鈥檚 Novel,
Kenneth Patchen鈥檚 Journal of Albion Moonlight,
Thomas Mann鈥檚 Doctor Faustus,
Felipe Alfau鈥檚 Chromos,
Louis Paul Boon鈥檚 Summer in Termuren,
G眉nter Grass鈥檚 Tin Drum and Flounder,
Jack Kerouac鈥檚 Old Angel Midnight (鈥楢nd Tristram Shraundy Shern, marvelous book鈥�),
Julio Cort谩zar鈥檚 Hopscotch,
Guillermo Cabrera Infante鈥檚 Three Trapped Tigers,
Richard Brautigan鈥檚 Trout Fishing in America,
William H. Gass鈥檚 Willie Masters鈥� Lonesome Wife and The Tunnel,
Steve Katz鈥檚 Exagggerations of Peter Prince,
Venedikt Erofeev鈥檚 Moscow to the End of the Line,
Ronald sukenick鈥檚 Up,
Kurt Vonnegut鈥檚 Slaughterhouse-Five,
Donald Harington鈥檚 Some Other Place. The Right Place.,
Chandler Brossard鈥檚 A Chimney Sweep Comes Clean,
Severo Sarduy鈥檚 Cobra,
Thomas Pynchon鈥檚 Gravity鈥檚 Rainbow,
Augusto Roa Bastos鈥檚 I the Supreme,
Jos茅 Lezama Lima鈥檚 Paradiso,
Raymond Federman鈥檚 Take It or Leave It,
Juan Goytisolo鈥檚 Juan the Landless,
Fernando del Paso鈥檚 Palinuro of Mexico,
Arno Schmidt鈥檚 Evening Edged in Gold,
Portuguese collaborators Manuel da Silva Ramos and Alface鈥檚 experimental novels,
David Markson鈥檚 Springer锟斤拷锟絪 Progress,
Georges Perec鈥檚 Life a User鈥檚 Manual,
Ign谩cio de Loyola Brand茫o鈥檚 Zero,
Italo Calvino鈥檚 If on a winter鈥檚 night a traveler,
Alfredo Bryce Echenique鈥檚 A World for Julius,
Gilbert Sorrentino鈥檚 Mulligan Stew,
Alexander Theroux鈥檚 Darconville鈥檚 Cat,
D. Keith Mano鈥檚 Take Five,
Salman Rushdies鈥� Midnight鈥檚 Children,
Genichiro Takahashi鈥檚 Sayonora, Gangsters,
Juli谩n R铆os鈥檚 Larva,
Aladair Gray鈥檚 1982, Janine and Old Men in Love
Aldo Busi鈥檚 Standard Life of an Ordinary Pantyhose Salesman,
George Garrett鈥檚 Poison Pen,
Carlos Fuentes鈥檚 Christopher Unborn,
Jacques Roubaud鈥檚 Great Fire of London,
Fernando Arrabal鈥檚 Extravagant Crusade of a Castrated Man in Love,
Thomas McGonigle鈥檚 Going to Patchogue,
David Foster Wallace鈥檚 novels
and some of William T. Vollmann鈥檚,
H茅ctor Abad Faciolince鈥檚 Joy of Being Awake,
Javier Mar铆as Dark Back of Time (written after he had translated Tristram Shandy into Spanish),
Haruki Murakami鈥檚 Wind-up Bird Chronicle,
Matthew Remski鈥檚 Silver,
Walter Moer鈥檚 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear,
Joseph Heller鈥檚 Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man,
several of Percival Everett鈥檚 novels,
Daniel Sada鈥檚 Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe,
Mark Z. Danielewski鈥檚 House of Leaves,
Robert Juan-Cantavella鈥檚 Otro,
Per H酶jholt鈥檚 Aruicula,
Robert Coover鈥檚 Lucky Pierre,
Steve Tomasula鈥檚 VAS,
Enrique Vila-Matas鈥檚 Montano鈥檚 Malady,
Jasper Fforde鈥檚 ffictions
Gordon Sheppard鈥檚 Ha!,
Paul Anderson鈥檚 Hunger鈥檚 Brides,
Adam Thirwell鈥檚 Politics,
Jeff VanderMeer鈥檚 City of Saints and Madmen,
James McCourt鈥檚 Now Voyagers,
Joshua Cohen鈥檚 Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto,
Evan Dara鈥檚 Easy Chain,
Lee Henerson鈥檚 Man Game,
Benjamin Zucker鈥檚 talmudic trilogy,
Matthew Roberson鈥檚 Impotent,
John McGreal鈥檚 Book of It,
Lawrence Sutin鈥檚 When to Go into the Water,
Adam Levin鈥檚 Instructions,
Arthur Phillip鈥檚 Tragedy of Arthur,
Sergio De La Pava鈥檚 Personae,
Tom Carson鈥檚 Daisy Buchanan鈥檚 Daughter,
Jan Brandt鈥檚 Gegen die Welt,
Mark Leyner鈥檚 Sugar Frosted Nutsack,
Will Self鈥檚 Umbrella,
Chris Eaton鈥檚 Chris Eaton --鈥�
[continues Moore] 鈥�-- I鈥檒l stop there, for as Calvino wrote in 1981, Tristram Shandy is the 鈥榰ndoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century.鈥欌€�
Moore goes on to make a 鈥渢hree degrees of separation or fewer to Laurence Sterne鈥� kind of a claim ; by way of such renown鈥檇 fictioneers as 鈥淏alzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, Eliot, and Twain.鈥�
BUT :: you鈥檒l notice what is not on this list ; same thing that鈥檚 not on many such lists ; in fact, it is missing the same thing which is missing on most of my lists -- female authors. Let鈥檚 listen in on Moore鈥檚 footnote about his anomoly ::
[I begin quoting Moore again ; notice the quotation marks] 鈥淭hat list, you鈥檝e probably noticed, is a total sausage fest; the daughters of Tristram Shandy might include Djuna Barnes鈥檚 Ryder,
Virginia Woolf鈥檚 Orlando,
Brigid Brophy鈥檚 In Transit,
Julieta Campos鈥檚 Fear of Losing Eurydice,
Gabrielle Burton鈥檚 Heartbreak Hotel,
Jaimy Gordon鈥檚 Shamp of the City-Solo,
Janice Galloway鈥檚 Trick Is to Keep Breathing (鈥楾his book resembles Tristram Shandy as rewritten by Sylvia Plath鈥� --NYTBR),
Sarah Schulman鈥檚 Empathy,
Jeanette Winterson鈥檚 Gut Symmetries,
Helen DeWitt鈥檚 Last Samurai,
Heather Woodbury鈥檚 What Ever,
Cintra Wilson鈥檚 Colors Insulting to Nature,
Vanessa Place鈥檚 La Medusa,
Nicola Barker鈥檚 Darkmans,
Emilie Autumn鈥檚 Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls,
Carol Hart鈥檚 History of the Novel in Ants,
Sheila Heti鈥檚 How Should a Person Be?,
certain novels by Kathy Acker,
Christine Brooke-Rose,
Rikki Ducornet,
Thalia Field,
Xiaolu Guo,
Carole Maso,
Ali Smith, and
Aritha Van Herk,
and some formally innovative YA novels by the likes of
Susie Day,
E. Lockhart, and
Lauren Myracle. But Sterne鈥檚 cocktail of comic erudition, slap-and-tickle sexuality, bittersweet sentimentalism, and achronological form doesn鈥檛 seem to attract many women writers -- or women readers, according to Professor Elizabeth Terries. She says in her career she鈥檚 taught Tristram Shandy to nearly 500 female students, and estimates 鈥榥ot more than twenty enjoyed reading Sterne鈥檚 work or will ever return to it.鈥欌€�
So.
The foregoing list -- which belongs to Mr Steven Moore and was originally published in his -- shall, in the near future, be incarnated yet again in the form of a Listopia list, curtesy of Friend Aubrey. I鈥檒l link to it from here at that time.
For a similar kind of Wonder=List (and much duplication), I鈥檝e got a Rabelaisian list over there in my Rabelais Review. You won鈥檛 have difficulty finding it. It鈥檚 fantastic!
鈥淚f on a friend鈥檚 bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,
鈥淸Gaddis or Gass, Pynchon or McElroy,
David Foster Wallace, William T Vollmann,
Alexander Theroux or Gilbert Sorrentino,]
鈥淵ou are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.鈥�
鈥� Alexander Theroux [Erg盲nzung von "N.R."]
Do I really have to say that again?
But, so, let鈥檚 look at what Steven Moore claims to be the stream of spawn flowing forth from the narrative wealth of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
We begin at the very beginning, which is just after Sterne himself (this is not the proper way to begin ; one should begin at conception, back in Greece, Rome, China, India, Japan, etc, but that is what Moore鈥檚 Volume the First and much of Volume the Second were for) :: Voltaire鈥檚 Potpourri (1765), The Man with Forty Crowns (1768), and Lord Chesterfield鈥檚 Ears (1775) ; Diderot鈥檚 Jacques the Fatalist and His Master ; Xavier de Maistre鈥檚 Voyage around My Room ; some novels from the German likes of Wieland, Nicolai, Hippel, Wezel, Richter ; and the American novelist High Henry Brackenridge.
So much for the 18th century. Lets鈥� continue into the 19th and 20th centuries using more or less Mr Moore鈥檚 words, because it is Mr Moore鈥檚 list and I am only reproducing it here because MORE PEOPLE NEED TO READ MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS KIND OF BOOK! You know, this kind of book tends to get BURIED. -- Also, one should read ALL of both of Moore鈥檚 novel-books because there are even MORE books found there that you鈥檝e never heard of and with which you may find yourself IN LOVE.
BEGIN QUOTATION OF STEVEN MOORE (notice the quotation marks) ::
鈥淏eginning in the 19th century, the trickle turned into a stream: the Shandy family genes can be detected in Charles Lucas鈥檚 Infernal Quixote (1801), Nicolai Wergeland鈥檚 Petty Incidents in the Life of Haldor Smek (1805-10), Washington Irving鈥檚 History of New York (1809), Ferenc Verseghy鈥檚 Merry Life and Ridiculous Opinions of Gergely Kolomposi Szarvas (1814-15), Thomas Love Peacock鈥檚 Headlong Hall (1815), Lord Byron鈥檚 verse-novel Don Juan (1818-23), which he called 鈥榓 poetical T Shandy,鈥� E.T.A. Hoffmann鈥檚 Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22), several of American John Neal鈥檚 novels (Randolph, Errata, Authorship), Yakov de Sanglen鈥檚 Life and Opinions of a New Tristram (1825), Charles Nodier鈥檚 Story of the King of Bohemia and His Seven Castles (1830), 19-year-old Karl Marx鈥檚 Scorpion and Felix (1837, unfortunately incomplete), Robert Southey鈥檚 Doctor (1834-47), Thomas Carlyle鈥檚 Sartor Resartus (1836), Nicolai Gogol鈥檚 鈥楴ose鈥� (1836; Pushkin called Gogol 鈥榯he Russian Sterne鈥�), S酶ren Kierkegaard鈥檚 Either-Or/Stages on Life鈥檚 Way diptych (1843-45), Almedia Garrett鈥檚 Travels in My Homeland (1846), Herman Melville鈥檚 Mardi (1849) and Moby-Dick (1851), Lewis Carroll鈥檚 Alice in Wonderland (1865, 1871), Ippolito Nievo鈥檚 Castle of Fratta (1867), and earlier novels; J煤lio Dinis鈥檚 English Family (1868), Carlo Dossi鈥檚 Life of Alberto Pisani (1870), Gustave Flaubert鈥檚 Bouvard and P茅cuchet (1881), and in Joaquim Machado de Assis鈥檚 later novels. By the end of the century, Sterne鈥檚 spawn could be found throughout continental Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia.鈥�
[I鈥檓 still quoting Moore (notice the quotation marks) ; but here I鈥檓 gonna reformat into a columnar list, for read-abble鈥檚-sake, since I can鈥檛 reproduce the typesetting on Moore鈥檚 page which is intended to intimate the shape of an ever-widening river.]
鈥淚n the 20th century, the stream widened into a river, beginning with
Natsume Soseki鈥檚 I Am a Cat, and including
Miguel de Unamuno鈥檚 Mist,
Andrei Bely鈥檚 Petersburg,
James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (he cited Sterne when describing the latter),
Vikto Shklovsky鈥檚 Sentimental Journey,
Italo Svevo鈥檚 Confessions of Zeno,
Andre Gide鈥檚 Counterfeiters,
Luigi Pirandello鈥檚 One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand,
Alfred D枚blin鈥檚 Berlin Alexanderplatz,
Stanislaw Witkiewicz鈥檚 Insatiability,
Mikl贸s Szentkuthy鈥檚 Prae,
John Dos Passos鈥檚 USA,
Juan Filly鈥檚 Op Oloop and Faction,
Philip Wylie鈥檚 Finnley Wren and Opus 21,
Witold Gombrowicz鈥檚 Ferdydurke,
Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
Flann O鈥橞rien鈥檚 At Swim-Two-Birds,
Mikhail Bulgakov鈥檚 Master and Margarita,
Macedonio Fernandez鈥檚 Museum of Eterna鈥檚 Novel,
Kenneth Patchen鈥檚 Journal of Albion Moonlight,
Thomas Mann鈥檚 Doctor Faustus,
Felipe Alfau鈥檚 Chromos,
Louis Paul Boon鈥檚 Summer in Termuren,
G眉nter Grass鈥檚 Tin Drum and Flounder,
Jack Kerouac鈥檚 Old Angel Midnight (鈥楢nd Tristram Shraundy Shern, marvelous book鈥�),
Julio Cort谩zar鈥檚 Hopscotch,
Guillermo Cabrera Infante鈥檚 Three Trapped Tigers,
Richard Brautigan鈥檚 Trout Fishing in America,
William H. Gass鈥檚 Willie Masters鈥� Lonesome Wife and The Tunnel,
Steve Katz鈥檚 Exagggerations of Peter Prince,
Venedikt Erofeev鈥檚 Moscow to the End of the Line,
Ronald sukenick鈥檚 Up,
Kurt Vonnegut鈥檚 Slaughterhouse-Five,
Donald Harington鈥檚 Some Other Place. The Right Place.,
Chandler Brossard鈥檚 A Chimney Sweep Comes Clean,
Severo Sarduy鈥檚 Cobra,
Thomas Pynchon鈥檚 Gravity鈥檚 Rainbow,
Augusto Roa Bastos鈥檚 I the Supreme,
Jos茅 Lezama Lima鈥檚 Paradiso,
Raymond Federman鈥檚 Take It or Leave It,
Juan Goytisolo鈥檚 Juan the Landless,
Fernando del Paso鈥檚 Palinuro of Mexico,
Arno Schmidt鈥檚 Evening Edged in Gold,
Portuguese collaborators Manuel da Silva Ramos and Alface鈥檚 experimental novels,
David Markson鈥檚 Springer锟斤拷锟絪 Progress,
Georges Perec鈥檚 Life a User鈥檚 Manual,
Ign谩cio de Loyola Brand茫o鈥檚 Zero,
Italo Calvino鈥檚 If on a winter鈥檚 night a traveler,
Alfredo Bryce Echenique鈥檚 A World for Julius,
Gilbert Sorrentino鈥檚 Mulligan Stew,
Alexander Theroux鈥檚 Darconville鈥檚 Cat,
D. Keith Mano鈥檚 Take Five,
Salman Rushdies鈥� Midnight鈥檚 Children,
Genichiro Takahashi鈥檚 Sayonora, Gangsters,
Juli谩n R铆os鈥檚 Larva,
Aladair Gray鈥檚 1982, Janine and Old Men in Love
Aldo Busi鈥檚 Standard Life of an Ordinary Pantyhose Salesman,
George Garrett鈥檚 Poison Pen,
Carlos Fuentes鈥檚 Christopher Unborn,
Jacques Roubaud鈥檚 Great Fire of London,
Fernando Arrabal鈥檚 Extravagant Crusade of a Castrated Man in Love,
Thomas McGonigle鈥檚 Going to Patchogue,
David Foster Wallace鈥檚 novels
and some of William T. Vollmann鈥檚,
H茅ctor Abad Faciolince鈥檚 Joy of Being Awake,
Javier Mar铆as Dark Back of Time (written after he had translated Tristram Shandy into Spanish),
Haruki Murakami鈥檚 Wind-up Bird Chronicle,
Matthew Remski鈥檚 Silver,
Walter Moer鈥檚 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear,
Joseph Heller鈥檚 Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man,
several of Percival Everett鈥檚 novels,
Daniel Sada鈥檚 Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe,
Mark Z. Danielewski鈥檚 House of Leaves,
Robert Juan-Cantavella鈥檚 Otro,
Per H酶jholt鈥檚 Aruicula,
Robert Coover鈥檚 Lucky Pierre,
Steve Tomasula鈥檚 VAS,
Enrique Vila-Matas鈥檚 Montano鈥檚 Malady,
Jasper Fforde鈥檚 ffictions
Gordon Sheppard鈥檚 Ha!,
Paul Anderson鈥檚 Hunger鈥檚 Brides,
Adam Thirwell鈥檚 Politics,
Jeff VanderMeer鈥檚 City of Saints and Madmen,
James McCourt鈥檚 Now Voyagers,
Joshua Cohen鈥檚 Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto,
Evan Dara鈥檚 Easy Chain,
Lee Henerson鈥檚 Man Game,
Benjamin Zucker鈥檚 talmudic trilogy,
Matthew Roberson鈥檚 Impotent,
John McGreal鈥檚 Book of It,
Lawrence Sutin鈥檚 When to Go into the Water,
Adam Levin鈥檚 Instructions,
Arthur Phillip鈥檚 Tragedy of Arthur,
Sergio De La Pava鈥檚 Personae,
Tom Carson鈥檚 Daisy Buchanan鈥檚 Daughter,
Jan Brandt鈥檚 Gegen die Welt,
Mark Leyner鈥檚 Sugar Frosted Nutsack,
Will Self鈥檚 Umbrella,
Chris Eaton鈥檚 Chris Eaton --鈥�
[continues Moore] 鈥�-- I鈥檒l stop there, for as Calvino wrote in 1981, Tristram Shandy is the 鈥榰ndoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century.鈥欌€�
Moore goes on to make a 鈥渢hree degrees of separation or fewer to Laurence Sterne鈥� kind of a claim ; by way of such renown鈥檇 fictioneers as 鈥淏alzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, Eliot, and Twain.鈥�
BUT :: you鈥檒l notice what is not on this list ; same thing that鈥檚 not on many such lists ; in fact, it is missing the same thing which is missing on most of my lists -- female authors. Let鈥檚 listen in on Moore鈥檚 footnote about his anomoly ::
[I begin quoting Moore again ; notice the quotation marks] 鈥淭hat list, you鈥檝e probably noticed, is a total sausage fest; the daughters of Tristram Shandy might include Djuna Barnes鈥檚 Ryder,
Virginia Woolf鈥檚 Orlando,
Brigid Brophy鈥檚 In Transit,
Julieta Campos鈥檚 Fear of Losing Eurydice,
Gabrielle Burton鈥檚 Heartbreak Hotel,
Jaimy Gordon鈥檚 Shamp of the City-Solo,
Janice Galloway鈥檚 Trick Is to Keep Breathing (鈥楾his book resembles Tristram Shandy as rewritten by Sylvia Plath鈥� --NYTBR),
Sarah Schulman鈥檚 Empathy,
Jeanette Winterson鈥檚 Gut Symmetries,
Helen DeWitt鈥檚 Last Samurai,
Heather Woodbury鈥檚 What Ever,
Cintra Wilson鈥檚 Colors Insulting to Nature,
Vanessa Place鈥檚 La Medusa,
Nicola Barker鈥檚 Darkmans,
Emilie Autumn鈥檚 Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls,
Carol Hart鈥檚 History of the Novel in Ants,
Sheila Heti鈥檚 How Should a Person Be?,
certain novels by Kathy Acker,
Christine Brooke-Rose,
Rikki Ducornet,
Thalia Field,
Xiaolu Guo,
Carole Maso,
Ali Smith, and
Aritha Van Herk,
and some formally innovative YA novels by the likes of
Susie Day,
E. Lockhart, and
Lauren Myracle. But Sterne鈥檚 cocktail of comic erudition, slap-and-tickle sexuality, bittersweet sentimentalism, and achronological form doesn鈥檛 seem to attract many women writers -- or women readers, according to Professor Elizabeth Terries. She says in her career she鈥檚 taught Tristram Shandy to nearly 500 female students, and estimates 鈥榥ot more than twenty enjoyed reading Sterne鈥檚 work or will ever return to it.鈥欌€�
So.
The foregoing list -- which belongs to Mr Steven Moore and was originally published in his -- shall, in the near future, be incarnated yet again in the form of a Listopia list, curtesy of Friend Aubrey. I鈥檒l link to it from here at that time.
For a similar kind of Wonder=List (and much duplication), I鈥檝e got a Rabelaisian list over there in my Rabelais Review. You won鈥檛 have difficulty finding it. It鈥檚 fantastic!
Want to read
December 14, 2023how do i get a book written about MY life and opinions
April 28, 2025
'It is not things themselves, but opinions concerning things, which disturb men'.
(From the title page of Tristram Shandy written in ancient Greek and translated by the author in his Notes. The motto is by Epictetus.)
(From the title page of Tristram Shandy written in ancient Greek and translated by the author in his Notes. The motto is by Epictetus.)
July 3, 2015
Dedication
This was a re-read of a novel that I first read when I was about 14 and that has stayed fresh in my mind ever since.
It was recommended to me by my cricket coach and favourite teacher, John Carr, who taught me English for five years and cemented my passion for Literature in the early 70鈥檚. His Master鈥檚 Thesis was on Evelyn Waugh鈥檚 "Sword of Honour鈥� Trilogy (which I鈥檝e also read and plan to re-read).
I was amused to learn from Steven Moore that one John Carr rushed out a fake version of volume 3 of "Tristram Shandy鈥� four months before Laurence Sterne had published his own version. Long live homage and fan fiction!
This review is dedicated to both John Carr鈥檚, one a teacher and the other a shit stirrer!
"Let Me Go On, and Tell My Story My Own Way鈥�
The version of the novel that I read was 528 pages long. Don鈥檛 be afraid of the perceived length. The chapters are short and easy to read, plus it鈥檚 a lot of fun, once you get into the rhythm of the writing. Like a slippery slide, the hardest part is getting on; the rest is all downhill.
If you read anything about "Tristram Shandy鈥�, you鈥檒l discover it is full of digressions. This is only partly true. The assessment assumes that there is a path from which the author departs. It鈥檚 probably more accurate to say that he never embarks on a set path in the first place.
If a line can be said to be the shortest distance between two points, Sterne never really sets out to get from A to B, or to do it efficiently or quickly. He simply sits down to tell his story his way, as if we readers were sitting across from him at a pub or smoking our pipes in front of a fireplace. He鈥檚 in no hurry, but equally importantly neither are we. He simply asks that we let him get on and tell his story his own way.
Left to his own devices, he is individualistic and unconventional, and so is his novel.
In Which the Author Turns a Story Into a Plot
Steven Moore differentiates between a story and a plot:
"The story consists of the events in a novel as they would occur in chronological order; the plot refers to the novelist鈥檚 particular arrangements of those events.鈥�
While Moore identifies the three key elements of the story, I don鈥檛 think they鈥檙e particularly important. What is most appealing is the methodology Sterne uses to convert them into a plot. For me, the most interesting aspects of the novel are the self-referential discussions of the writing of the novel and the relationship between author, work and reader.
These aspects are pure metafiction, and you could argue that no author has bettered them, before or after.
The Beauty of the Line (or the Line of Beauty)
The prevailing view of a narrative in a traditional realistic novel is linear. In the interests of efficiency and speed (i.e., distance travelled divided by time), the plot can be described in terms of a straight line.
A straight line has a mathematical and a scientific significance. However, it also has a moral, creative and social significance.
A straight line does not deviate to the left or the right. If we don鈥檛 deviate, we stay on the straight and narrow. Christians say it is the right path or the path of the righteous. Cicero describes it as "an emblem of moral rectitude鈥�.
If the line is vertical, it is upright or virtuous. If something falls from its top to its bottom, it experiences a divine gravitational force. By extension, the righteous feel gravitas.
Etymologically, all of these words are related: straight, direct, erect, right, upright, rectitude, righteous. The physical qualities morph into the moral and from there (via recht) into the legal.
Just as the right-handed ostracise the left-handed, the straight ostracise the bent, the crooked, the digressive and the divergent.
It鈥檚 this that Sterne rebels against.
He never sets out to follow the straight and narrow. His goal, so long as his neck remains flexible, is to follow his nose and his gaze, wherever they might lead him. And where he goes, so does his tale. It鈥檚 our pleasure and privilege to accompany him.
The Life of Beauty
Sterne takes a straight line and bends or curves it. He makes it more curvaceous, until it is closer to a line of beauty in the sense meant by Hogarth in his 鈥淎nalysis of Beauty鈥�.
To quote wiki:
"According to this theory, S-shaped curved lines signify liveliness and activity and excite the attention of the viewer as contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines, or right-angled intersecting lines, which signify stasis, death, or inanimate objects.鈥�
Thus, Sterne鈥檚 aversion for a straight line reflects an attraction to vitality, motion and dynamism.
"Tristram Shandy鈥� is nothing if not about vitality.
"So vary'd he, and of his tortuous train
Curl'd many a wanton wreath, in fight of Eve,
To lure her eye."
Milton
Of Riddles and Mysteries
Sterne鈥檚 objection to the straight line is also an objection to the logical processes that appear to govern our understanding of the world.
He doesn鈥檛 necessarily come across as a mystic. However, it seems that we need at least intuition to experience and enjoy the best that the world has to offer:
"We live amongst riddles and mysteries - the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into, and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.鈥�
Sterne objects to the plain, the joyless, the boring, that which lacks interest:
"There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain...[that presents nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty.]鈥�
Of Conquests and Concupiscence
While form might override content in "Tristram Shandy鈥�, it does rear its head in the last trimester of the novel, when it becomes clear that the true concern of the characters, both male and female, is sex. They are, one and all, seeking "something perhaps more than friendship, less than love,鈥� at least to start with.
In retrospect, much of the dialogue is just playful or flirtatious or "talking bawdy鈥�, as was the case with Sterne鈥檚 predecessor, Rabelais. The ultimate goal, for a male, is to tempt a pretty woman "into a conversation with a pinch of snuff鈥�:
"Why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance and sing and say his prayers and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?鈥�
Ironically, this was in France, which elsewhere Sterne would describe as "蹿辞耻迟谤别-濒补苍诲鈥�, though I confess I can鈥檛 give an accurate contemporary translation of the term.
Love and lust and amours (in which the reader longs for uncle Toby to get his oats) consist of thrusts and parries, just as much as any military battle. Fortifications and defences are broken down. Seductions follow campaigns and sieges (if you鈥檙e lucky).
Of the Love Between an Author and a Reader
So, ultimately, Sterne seems to argue, "talking of love is making it.鈥� If so, then you might well agree, what鈥檚 the hurry?
One lover鈥檚 digression is another鈥檚 foreplay. The point is to be aligned, if not vertically, at least horizontally.
Equally, the process of writing and reading follows some of the rules of attraction and love, at least to the extent that it depends on good communication and the sharing of the creative burdens between the two participants:
"Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation鈥he truest respect which you can pay to the reader鈥檚 understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.鈥�
Thus, when the pleasure is equally shared, it鈥檚 possible that Tristram wasn鈥檛 necessarily complaining when he moaned, 鈥渢he more I write, the more I shall have to write.鈥�
Perhaps what he really meant was that, the more I love, the more I shall have to love.
If this sounds like a "fertile fancy鈥� or mere exaggeration, then, like Sterne:
"I beg the reader will assist me here...鈥�
SOUNDTRACK:
Van Morrison - "Help Me" (from the live album "It's Too Late to Stop Now")
Van Morrison - "Help Me" (Live at Montreux Jazz, 2012)
Sonny Boy Williamson - "Help Me"
Christelle Berthon - "Help Me"
This was a re-read of a novel that I first read when I was about 14 and that has stayed fresh in my mind ever since.
It was recommended to me by my cricket coach and favourite teacher, John Carr, who taught me English for five years and cemented my passion for Literature in the early 70鈥檚. His Master鈥檚 Thesis was on Evelyn Waugh鈥檚 "Sword of Honour鈥� Trilogy (which I鈥檝e also read and plan to re-read).
I was amused to learn from Steven Moore that one John Carr rushed out a fake version of volume 3 of "Tristram Shandy鈥� four months before Laurence Sterne had published his own version. Long live homage and fan fiction!
This review is dedicated to both John Carr鈥檚, one a teacher and the other a shit stirrer!
"Let Me Go On, and Tell My Story My Own Way鈥�
The version of the novel that I read was 528 pages long. Don鈥檛 be afraid of the perceived length. The chapters are short and easy to read, plus it鈥檚 a lot of fun, once you get into the rhythm of the writing. Like a slippery slide, the hardest part is getting on; the rest is all downhill.
If you read anything about "Tristram Shandy鈥�, you鈥檒l discover it is full of digressions. This is only partly true. The assessment assumes that there is a path from which the author departs. It鈥檚 probably more accurate to say that he never embarks on a set path in the first place.
If a line can be said to be the shortest distance between two points, Sterne never really sets out to get from A to B, or to do it efficiently or quickly. He simply sits down to tell his story his way, as if we readers were sitting across from him at a pub or smoking our pipes in front of a fireplace. He鈥檚 in no hurry, but equally importantly neither are we. He simply asks that we let him get on and tell his story his own way.
Left to his own devices, he is individualistic and unconventional, and so is his novel.
In Which the Author Turns a Story Into a Plot
Steven Moore differentiates between a story and a plot:
"The story consists of the events in a novel as they would occur in chronological order; the plot refers to the novelist鈥檚 particular arrangements of those events.鈥�
While Moore identifies the three key elements of the story, I don鈥檛 think they鈥檙e particularly important. What is most appealing is the methodology Sterne uses to convert them into a plot. For me, the most interesting aspects of the novel are the self-referential discussions of the writing of the novel and the relationship between author, work and reader.
These aspects are pure metafiction, and you could argue that no author has bettered them, before or after.
The Beauty of the Line (or the Line of Beauty)
The prevailing view of a narrative in a traditional realistic novel is linear. In the interests of efficiency and speed (i.e., distance travelled divided by time), the plot can be described in terms of a straight line.
A straight line has a mathematical and a scientific significance. However, it also has a moral, creative and social significance.
A straight line does not deviate to the left or the right. If we don鈥檛 deviate, we stay on the straight and narrow. Christians say it is the right path or the path of the righteous. Cicero describes it as "an emblem of moral rectitude鈥�.
If the line is vertical, it is upright or virtuous. If something falls from its top to its bottom, it experiences a divine gravitational force. By extension, the righteous feel gravitas.
Etymologically, all of these words are related: straight, direct, erect, right, upright, rectitude, righteous. The physical qualities morph into the moral and from there (via recht) into the legal.
Just as the right-handed ostracise the left-handed, the straight ostracise the bent, the crooked, the digressive and the divergent.
It鈥檚 this that Sterne rebels against.
He never sets out to follow the straight and narrow. His goal, so long as his neck remains flexible, is to follow his nose and his gaze, wherever they might lead him. And where he goes, so does his tale. It鈥檚 our pleasure and privilege to accompany him.
The Life of Beauty
Sterne takes a straight line and bends or curves it. He makes it more curvaceous, until it is closer to a line of beauty in the sense meant by Hogarth in his 鈥淎nalysis of Beauty鈥�.
To quote wiki:
"According to this theory, S-shaped curved lines signify liveliness and activity and excite the attention of the viewer as contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines, or right-angled intersecting lines, which signify stasis, death, or inanimate objects.鈥�
Thus, Sterne鈥檚 aversion for a straight line reflects an attraction to vitality, motion and dynamism.
"Tristram Shandy鈥� is nothing if not about vitality.
"So vary'd he, and of his tortuous train
Curl'd many a wanton wreath, in fight of Eve,
To lure her eye."
Milton
Of Riddles and Mysteries
Sterne鈥檚 objection to the straight line is also an objection to the logical processes that appear to govern our understanding of the world.
He doesn鈥檛 necessarily come across as a mystic. However, it seems that we need at least intuition to experience and enjoy the best that the world has to offer:
"We live amongst riddles and mysteries - the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into, and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.鈥�
Sterne objects to the plain, the joyless, the boring, that which lacks interest:
"There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain...[that presents nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty.]鈥�
Of Conquests and Concupiscence
While form might override content in "Tristram Shandy鈥�, it does rear its head in the last trimester of the novel, when it becomes clear that the true concern of the characters, both male and female, is sex. They are, one and all, seeking "something perhaps more than friendship, less than love,鈥� at least to start with.
In retrospect, much of the dialogue is just playful or flirtatious or "talking bawdy鈥�, as was the case with Sterne鈥檚 predecessor, Rabelais. The ultimate goal, for a male, is to tempt a pretty woman "into a conversation with a pinch of snuff鈥�:
"Why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance and sing and say his prayers and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?鈥�
Ironically, this was in France, which elsewhere Sterne would describe as "蹿辞耻迟谤别-濒补苍诲鈥�, though I confess I can鈥檛 give an accurate contemporary translation of the term.
Love and lust and amours (in which the reader longs for uncle Toby to get his oats) consist of thrusts and parries, just as much as any military battle. Fortifications and defences are broken down. Seductions follow campaigns and sieges (if you鈥檙e lucky).
Of the Love Between an Author and a Reader
So, ultimately, Sterne seems to argue, "talking of love is making it.鈥� If so, then you might well agree, what鈥檚 the hurry?
One lover鈥檚 digression is another鈥檚 foreplay. The point is to be aligned, if not vertically, at least horizontally.
Equally, the process of writing and reading follows some of the rules of attraction and love, at least to the extent that it depends on good communication and the sharing of the creative burdens between the two participants:
"Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation鈥he truest respect which you can pay to the reader鈥檚 understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.鈥�
Thus, when the pleasure is equally shared, it鈥檚 possible that Tristram wasn鈥檛 necessarily complaining when he moaned, 鈥渢he more I write, the more I shall have to write.鈥�
Perhaps what he really meant was that, the more I love, the more I shall have to love.
If this sounds like a "fertile fancy鈥� or mere exaggeration, then, like Sterne:
"I beg the reader will assist me here...鈥�
SOUNDTRACK:
Van Morrison - "Help Me" (from the live album "It's Too Late to Stop Now")
Van Morrison - "Help Me" (Live at Montreux Jazz, 2012)
Sonny Boy Williamson - "Help Me"
Christelle Berthon - "Help Me"
July 27, 2024
WARNING: This review may be inappropriate for some readers.
Ah...18th century novels: you'll find some archaic language, some sayings and references you've never heard before. Here, at least we have endnotes to help with that; thanks to them and the author's wit, it is entirely possible to get most of the humor of Laurence Sterne and be entertained by his digressions.
Shandy is both a joy and a pain. It is not a page-turner. Yet, at times, I was excited to find out what would happen to Toby and Ms. Wadman, what might occur during the title character's birth or later travels. Then, I would have to scoff at myself for expecting Sterne to give us anything like a standard conclusion to even the most trivial of subplots. But as our narrator tells us, "Every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it."
It is an early example of meta-fiction. It is bawdy and satirical. Some call it a postmodern novel written 150 years before modernism. And after one has read it and compared it to writings by the likes of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, and Richard Flanagan, and considering that Arthur Schopenhauer counted it as his favorite English romance, it should be heralded as one of the most influential novels ever written.
About those old sayings and terms: the use of the word hobby comes from the term hobby-horse. A hobby-horse was a metaphor for a person's vocation or a pastime. Sterne had this to say: "...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?" Contained herein is a whole moral philosophy to which any rational human could subscribe. And another thing, the term "Gadzooks" is a corruption of "God's hooks," as in the crucifixion.
Future readers: when the going gets tough and you wonder why you're reading a work with no real plot from the 1750s, remember a quote from the book (Sterne is quoting Pliny the Younger): "I never read a book so bad I drew no profit from it."
Not only does Sterne make digressions on top of digressions, but he converses with his audience about when he will be getting down to the portion of the story he has mentioned and assured us he will tell. Whether he actually gets to the part he promises is another matter.
He addresses and redresses his critics. Late in the book, the narrator's illness is mentioned--it is presented as Tristram's illness--but through the endnotes, we know that Sterne was actually suffering from tuberculosis during the writing of the latter volumes.
To illustrate the roundabout nature of the book, I have Tristram's birth not occurring until about page 258.
Lovers of classics and the Western Canon will likely enjoy this one. It is a novel that questions the nature of novels. And as I've alluded, you are likely to see its influence on something you've previously read.
Just remember, though, that in essence, it is one long d*ck-joke.
Ah...18th century novels: you'll find some archaic language, some sayings and references you've never heard before. Here, at least we have endnotes to help with that; thanks to them and the author's wit, it is entirely possible to get most of the humor of Laurence Sterne and be entertained by his digressions.
Shandy is both a joy and a pain. It is not a page-turner. Yet, at times, I was excited to find out what would happen to Toby and Ms. Wadman, what might occur during the title character's birth or later travels. Then, I would have to scoff at myself for expecting Sterne to give us anything like a standard conclusion to even the most trivial of subplots. But as our narrator tells us, "Every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it."
It is an early example of meta-fiction. It is bawdy and satirical. Some call it a postmodern novel written 150 years before modernism. And after one has read it and compared it to writings by the likes of James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace, and Richard Flanagan, and considering that Arthur Schopenhauer counted it as his favorite English romance, it should be heralded as one of the most influential novels ever written.
About those old sayings and terms: the use of the word hobby comes from the term hobby-horse. A hobby-horse was a metaphor for a person's vocation or a pastime. Sterne had this to say: "...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?" Contained herein is a whole moral philosophy to which any rational human could subscribe. And another thing, the term "Gadzooks" is a corruption of "God's hooks," as in the crucifixion.
Future readers: when the going gets tough and you wonder why you're reading a work with no real plot from the 1750s, remember a quote from the book (Sterne is quoting Pliny the Younger): "I never read a book so bad I drew no profit from it."
Not only does Sterne make digressions on top of digressions, but he converses with his audience about when he will be getting down to the portion of the story he has mentioned and assured us he will tell. Whether he actually gets to the part he promises is another matter.
He addresses and redresses his critics. Late in the book, the narrator's illness is mentioned--it is presented as Tristram's illness--but through the endnotes, we know that Sterne was actually suffering from tuberculosis during the writing of the latter volumes.
To illustrate the roundabout nature of the book, I have Tristram's birth not occurring until about page 258.
Lovers of classics and the Western Canon will likely enjoy this one. It is a novel that questions the nature of novels. And as I've alluded, you are likely to see its influence on something you've previously read.
Just remember, though, that in essence, it is one long d*ck-joke.
November 18, 2024
倬蹖卮鈥属嗁堌簇�:
鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 丿乇 丿爻鬲貙 睾賳蹖賲鬲蹖爻鬲 讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 賯丿乇 丌賳 乇丕 亘爻蹖丕乇 丿丕賳爻鬲. 亘丕 丕蹖賳 丨丕賱 亘蹖鈥屫й屫必ж� 賳蹖爻鬲. 丕賲丕 趩賴 亘爻丕 讴賴 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丕蹖賳 丕蹖乇丕丿丕鬲 乇丕 亘丕蹖丿 丕夭 賯氐賵乇 賳丕卮乇 丿丕賳爻鬲! 賳丕讴丕賮蹖 亘賵丿賳 倬丕賳賵蹖爻鈥屬囏� 丿乇 鬲賵囟蹖丨 丕乇噩丕毓丕鬲 讴賱蹖丿蹖 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 噩丕 丕賮鬲丕丿賳 鬲氐丕賵蹖乇 讴鬲丕亘 丕夭 趩丕倬 (賳爻禺賴鈥屰� 賲賳 趩丕倬 卮卮賲 丕爻鬲) 賵 噩丕 丕賮鬲丕丿诏蹖 噩賲賱丕鬲蹖 趩賳丿 丕夭 鬲乇噩賲賴 賵 鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 丕卮鬲亘丕賴 倬丕乇賴鈥屫й� 丿蹖诏乇 (禺賵卮亘禺鬲丕賳賴 趩賳丿丕賳 噩丕蹖 賳诏乇丕賳蹖 賳蹖爻鬲 趩乇丕 讴賴 賲賵丕乇丿 讴賲 丕賴賲蹖鬲 賵 丕賳诏卮鬲鈥屫促呚ж辟嗀� 賵 鬲蹖睾 爻丕賳爻賵乇趩蹖 丿乇 丕蹖賳 鬲乇噩賲賴 乇丕賴 賳蹖丕賮鬲賴)貙 賲乇丕 亘乇 丌賳 丿丕卮鬲 讴賴 乇丕賴賳賲丕蹖蹖 诏乇丿丌賵乇蹖 讴賳賲 丕夭 賴乇 丌賳趩賴 讴賴 亘賴 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 丿乇 乇賲夭诏卮丕蹖蹖 賲鬲賳 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 蹖丕乇蹖 賲蹖鈥屫必池з嗀�.
丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屫堌з嗃屫� 亘賴 丌賳 丿爻鬲乇爻蹖 倬蹖丿丕 讴賳蹖丿.
賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳貙 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 乇丕 亘丕 丕賱賴丕賲 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 賳賵卮鬲賴 丕爻鬲. 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 亘禺丕胤乇 賮乇賲 賵 賲丿賱 乇賵丕蹖鬲卮貙 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丿乇 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 亘賵丿賳卮貙 賲囟丕賲蹖賳蹖 讴賴 丿乇 禺賱丕賱 诏賮鬲诏賵賴丕蹖卮 賲胤乇丨 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 賵 亘禺丕胤乇 賳賵毓 胤賳夭 賵 賳賯丿蹖 讴賴 亘賴 賲匕賴亘貙 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 賵 賮囟丕蹖 賮讴乇蹖 夭賲丕賳賴 丿丕乇丿貙 丕賵賱蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 賲丿乇賳 賲丨爻賵亘 賲蹖鈥屫促堌�. 趩乇丕 讴賴 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 亘乇禺賱丕賮 爻丕蹖乇蹖賳賽 丕賴賱 賯賱賲 丿賵乇丕賳 賵 倬蹖卮蹖賳蹖丕賳卮貙 丿乇爻 丕丿亘 賵 賮囟蹖賱鬲 賳賲蹖鈥屫囏� 胤乇賮丿丕乇蹖 賳賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 賯氐丿 乇爻蹖丿賳 亘賴 賴蹖趩 倬丕爻禺蹖 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 亘賴 毓賴丿賴鈥屰� 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 賲蹖鈥屭柏ж必� 讴賴 亘乇丿丕卮鬲 賵 鬲丕賵蹖賱丕鬲 禺賵丿 乇丕 丕夭 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 (丨丿丕賯賱 丿乇 噩賱丿 丕賵賱 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳). 乇賲丕賳鈥屬囏й� 賯亘賱 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲貙 丨鬲蹖 丕诏乇 趩賳蹖賳 賵蹖跇诏蹖鈥屫й� 乇丕 賴賲 丿乇 禺賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賳丿貙 丿乇 蹖讴 賯丕賱亘 賵丕賯毓鈥屭必й屫з嗁� 丕鬲賮丕賯 賳賲蹖鈥屫з佖ж嗀�. 蹖毓賳蹖 乇賵丕蹖鬲 鬲毓丕賲賱丕鬲 賵 賵丕賯毓蹖丕鬲 乇賵夭賲乇賴 賳亘賵丿賳丿 賵 亘乇丕蹖 賲孬丕賱貙 賲鬲賱 賵 賲孬賱貙 禺蹖丕賱蹖貙 丕爻胤賵乇賴鈥屫й� 蹖丕 丨賲丕爻蹖 亘賵丿賳丿.
丕夭 夭蹖乇 卮賳賱 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲貙 蹖讴蹖 丿賵 乇賲丕賳 丿蹖诏乇 賳蹖夭 爻乇 亘乇丕賵乇丿賳丿 讴賴 亘丕 賮乇丕鬲乇 亘乇丿賳 鬲讴賳蹖讴鈥屬囏й� 賳賵丌賵乇丕賳賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 噩賲賱賴 亘蹖賳丕賲鬲賳蹖鬲貙 賲鬲丕賮蹖讴卮賳 賵 賮乇丕丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 亘賵丿賳貙 讴賳丕蹖賴 賵 倬丕乇賵丿蹖貙 讴賴 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 亘賴 丕乇孬 亘乇丿丕卮鬲賴鈥屫з嗀� 亘賴 賳賵亘賴鈥屰� 禺賵丿 倬丿乇丕賳 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 倬爻鬲 賲丿乇賳 賲丨爻賵亘 賲蹖鈥屫促堎嗀�: 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 賵 爻倬爻 跇丕讴 賯囟丕賯丿乇蹖.
丕賲丕 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 丕爻鬲乇賳 鬲賳賴丕 賵丕賲丿丕乇 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 賳蹖爻鬲貨 亘丕 亘乇乇爻蹖 丕乇噩丕毓丕鬲 丿乇賵賳鈥屬呚嗃� 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 賲蹖鈥屫堌з� 诏賮鬲 讴賴 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕夭 鬲乇讴蹖亘 氐賳丕蹖毓 丕丿亘蹖 胤賳夭 賵 讴賳丕蹖賴貙 賴噩賵賳丕賲賴貙 亘蹖丕賳 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴 賵 噩爻鬲丕乇 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿丕賳賴 亘賵噩賵丿 丌賲丿賴 讴賴 亘丕賳蹖丕賳卮丕賳 亘賴 鬲乇鬲蹖亘貙 賲蹖诏賱 丿 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻貙 賮乇丕賳爻賵丕 乇丕亘賱賴貙 噩丕賳丕鬲丕賳 爻賵卅蹖賮鬲貙 賲蹖卮賱 丿賵 賲賵賳鬲賳蹖 賵 乇丕亘乇鬲 亘乇鬲賵賳 亘賵丿賴鈥屫з嗀�.
丕夭 丿賳蹖丕蹖 賮賱爻賮賴 賳蹖夭 丕爻鬲乇賳貙 噩丕賳 賱丕讴 乇丕 亘乇诏夭蹖丿賴 鬲丕 丿乇 禺賱丕賱 卮禺氐蹖鬲 倬乇丿丕夭蹖鈥屬囏� 賵 賲讴丕賱賲賴鈥屬囏� 亘賴 賳賯丿 亘乇禺蹖 丕夭 鬲賮讴乇丕鬲 丕賵 丿乇 賲賴賲鈥屫臂屬� 丕孬乇卮 "賲賯丕賱賴鈥屫й� 丿乇 亘丕亘 賮賴賲 亘卮乇" 亘倬乇丿丕夭丿.
丕夭 賳賯丿 賲賮賴賵賲 "鬲丿丕毓蹖 賲毓丕賳蹖"* 賱丕讴 亘丕 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 丿丕丿賳 讴賵讴 讴乇丿賳 爻丕毓鬲 亘賴 噩賱爻丕鬲 乇丕蹖夭賳蹖 丿乇 鬲禺鬲禺賵丕亘 賵丕賱鬲乇 丿乇 卮亘鈥屬囏й� 蹖讴卮賳亘賴貙 鬲丕 賳卮丕賳 丿丕丿賳 鬲賯丕亘賱 胤乇夭 鬲賮讴乇 賵 亘乇丿丕卮鬲鈥屬囏й� 卮禺氐蹖 丿賵 亘乇丕丿乇 亘賵丕爻胤賴鈥屰� 丕爻倬鈥屬囏й� 賴賵爻卮丕賳 亘丕 倬賱 夭丿賳 亘蹖賳 丿賵 丿賳蹖丕蹖 丕夭 夭賲蹖賳 鬲丕 丌爻賲丕賳 賲鬲賮丕賵鬲 賵丕賱鬲乇 賵 鬲賵亘蹖 卮賳丿蹖 賵 爻倬爻 鬲禺乇蹖亘 丌賳 亘賵爻蹖賱賴鈥屰� 丿讴鬲乇 丕爻賱丕倬 亘乇丕蹖 卮讴爻鬲賴鈥屫ㄙ嗀� 倬賱 亘蹖賳蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲貙 蹖丕 賳賯丿 丿蹖丿诏丕賴 賱丕讴 丿乇亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 夭亘丕賳 賵 鬲賮丕賵鬲 賲賮賴賵賲 讴賱賲丕鬲 丿乇 賯丕賱亘鈥屬囏й� 賲禺鬲賱賮 賲丨鬲賵丕蹖蹖 亘丕 倬蹖趩丕賳丿賳 讴賱賲賴鈥屰� 倬丕夭賱賮蹖 賵 賵丕丿丕卮鬲賳 亘賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 賳丕禺賵丿丕诏丕賴 丌賳 亘賴 賲賮丕賴蹖賲 噩賳爻蹖貙 丕爻鬲乇賳 乇賵丕蹖鬲蹖 賴賵卮賲賳丿丕賳賴 賵 倬賵蹖丕 倬丿蹖丿 丌賵乇丿賴 讴賴 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 爻乇诏乇賲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 亘賴 鬲賮讴乇 賳賯丕丿丕賳賴 賳蹖夭 賵丕賲蹖鈥屫ж必�.
丕爻鬲乇賳 丿乇 賳賯丿 賱丕讴 鬲丕 丌賳噩丕 倬蹖卮 乇賮鬲賴 讴賴 丿蹖亘丕噩賴鈥屰� 丿蹖乇賴賳诏丕賲 讴鬲丕亘 (賮氐賱 亘蹖爻鬲賲 噩賱丿 爻賵賲) 乇丕 鬲賲丕賲丕 亘賴 丕賳鬲賯丕丿 丕夭 丿蹖丿诏丕賴 丕賵 丿乇亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 禺乇丿 賵 鬲卮禺蹖氐** 丕禺鬲氐丕氐 丿賴丿.
鬲賮爻蹖乇 丿蹖亘丕噩賴:
丕賵賱 亘丕蹖丿 丿蹖丿 讴賴 鬲毓乇蹖賮 賱丕讴 丕夭 "禺乇丿" 賵 "鬲卮禺蹖氐" 趩賴 亘賵丿賴:
賱丕讴貙 wit 蹖丕 禺乇丿 乇丕 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 丕蹖丿賴鈥屬囏ж� 丕丿乇丕讴丕鬲貙 丕爻鬲丿賱丕賱丕鬲 賵 亘賴 胤賵乇 讴賱蹖 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 丿丕賳卮鈥屬囏� 賲蹖鈥屫з嗀池�.
丕賲丕 judgement 蹖丕 鬲卮禺蹖氐 乇丕 賯賵賴鈥屫й� 賲蹖鈥屫屫� 讴賴 讴賲讴 賲蹖鈥屭┴必� 丕夭 亘蹖賳 丕蹖賳 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屰� 丿丕賳卮鈥屬囏ж� 丕蹖丿賴鈥屬囏й屰� 讴賴 丿乇爻鬲 賵 賲賳胤亘賯 亘丕 賵丕賯毓蹖丕鬲 賵 賲賳胤賯 賴爻鬲賳丿 乇丕 噩丿丕 讴乇丿賴 賵 丕爻鬲賮丕丿賴 讴賳蹖賲.
丿乇 賳鬲蹖噩賴鈥屰� 丕蹖賳 鬲毓乇蹖賮貙 賱丕讴貙 噩丕蹖诏丕賴 鬲卮禺蹖氐 乇丕 亘乇鬲乇 賵 亘丕賱丕鬲乇 丕夭 禺乇丿 丿乇 賳馗乇 賲蹖鈥屭辟佖�.
丕爻鬲乇賳 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丿蹖亘丕噩賴 亘丕 鬲卮亘蹖賴 禺乇丿 賵 鬲卮禺蹖氐 亘賴 丿賵 賯購亘賴鈥屰� 蹖讴 氐賳丿賱蹖 讴賴 丕诏乇 蹖讴蹖 乇丕 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 丌賳鈥屰屭┷� 賳蹖夭 亘蹖禺賵丿 賵 亘賱丕丕爻鬲賮丕丿賴 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 爻毓蹖 丿丕乇丿 丕匕毓丕賳 讴賳丿 讴賴 丕蹖賳鈥屬囏� 賴乇 丿賵 亘乇丕蹖 鬲賮讴乇 賵 賮毓丕賱蹖鬲 匕賴賳蹖 亘賴 蹖讴 丕賳丿丕夭賴 賱丕夭賲賳丿 賵 丕诏乇 讴賲蹖鬲 蹖讴蹖 亘賱賳诏丿貙 丿蹖诏乇蹖 賳蹖夭 賱賳诏 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 賵 讴丕乇亘乇丿 賲爻鬲賯賱 丕夭 賴賲 賳丿丕乇賳丿.
丕賲丕 趩乇丕 丕爻鬲乇賳 丌賳賯丿乇 亘乇 賲丕賳賵乇 乇賵蹖 丕蹖賳 賲賵囟賵毓 丕氐乇丕乇 丿丕乇丿責
讴賱賲賴鈥屰� wit 賮賯胤 亘賴 賲毓賳丕蹖 禺乇丿 賳蹖爻鬲 賵 丿乇 禺賵丿卮 賲毓丕賳蹖 夭乇賳诏蹖貙 乇賳丿蹖貙 賲夭賴鈥屬矩必з嗃� 賵 賲夭丕丨 乇丕 賴賲 丿丕乇丿 賵 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 乇賵卮鈥屬囏й� 賲夭賴鈥屬矩必з嗃屫� 讴賳丕蹖蹖 賵 丿乇 賱賮丕賮賴 氐丨亘鬲 讴乇丿賳 丕爻鬲 亘乇丕蹖 賴賲蹖賳 丕爻鬲 讴賴 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫�: "丕诏乇 賴賲賴 氐丕丨亘 禺乇丿 亘夭乇诏 賲蹖鈥屫簇嗀� 賴賲賴鈥屫� 鬲賲爻禺乇 賲蹖鈥屫ㄙ堌� 賵 乇蹖卮禺賳丿 賵丨丕囟乇噩賵丕亘蹖."
賵 丕蹖賳 丕賱亘鬲賴 賴賲丕賳 趩蹖夭蹖爻鬲 讴賴 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賲賵噩 賲蹖鈥屫操嗀� 亘胤賵乇蹖讴賴 蹖讴爻乇賴 賴賳诏丕賲 禺賵丕賳丿賳 丌賳 亘丕 讴賳丕蹖賴貙 爻丕乇讴夭賲 賵 讴賱賲丕鬲 丿賵倬賴賱賵 賵 丕爻鬲毓丕乇賴 賵 賲賻噩丕夭 乇賵亘乇賵 賲蹖鈥屫促堐屬�.
丕賳诏丕乇 丕爻鬲乇賳 賯氐丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 賲丕 乇丕 賲鬲賵噩賴 丕蹖賳 賲賵囟賵毓 讴賳丿 讴賴 亘賱賴! 丕蹖賳 賯賵賴鈥屰� 鬲卮禺蹖氐 丕爻鬲 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫� 丿乇 趩丕乇趩賵亘 賲丨鬲賵丕貙 亘蹖賳 賲毓丕賳蹖鈥屫й� 讴賴 蹖讴 賵丕跇賴 蹖丕 蹖讴 毓亘丕乇鬲 鬲丿丕毓蹖 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 讴丿丕賲蹖讴 賲丿賳馗乇 丕爻鬲 蹖丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 丿乇賳馗乇 诏乇賮鬲賳 賴乇讴丿丕賲 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲毓丕賳蹖 趩诏賵賳賴 賲賮賴賵賲 乇丕 毓賵囟 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀�. 丕賲丕 丕诏乇 丕夭 丕賵賱 禺乇丿 賳蹖丕賲丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 賵丕跇賴 乇丕 丕蹖賳胤賵乇 鬲亘蹖蹖賳 賳讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿貙 鬲卮禺蹖氐 賴賲 丕蹖賳噩丕 讴丕乇蹖 亘乇丕蹖 丕賳噩丕賲 丿丕丿賳 賳丿丕卮鬲. 倬爻 丕蹖賳 丿賵 賱丕夭賲 賵 賲賱夭賵賲 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇賳丿 賵 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴鈥屰� 诏乇丕賲蹖 賱胤賮丕 賲賵賯毓 禺賵丕賳丿賳貙 賴乇 丿賵 乇丕 亘賴 讴丕乇 亘诏蹖乇 鬲丕 亘丕 馗乇丕蹖賮 賲鬲賳 賲賳 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丌卮賳丕 亘卮賵蹖!___
鬲讴賳蹖讴 丿蹖诏乇蹖 讴賴 卮禺氐蹖鬲鈥屬矩必ж槽� 賵 倬蹖乇賳诏 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 蹖讴 爻乇 賵 诏乇丿賳 亘丕賱丕鬲乇 亘乇丿賴貙 "诏乇蹖夭 夭丿賳" 丕爻鬲. 丿乇 鬲毓丕賲賱丕鬲 亘爻蹖丕乇賽 匕賴賳蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 賲鬲賮丕賵鬲 卮禺氐蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 讴鬲丕亘 亘丕 賴賲貙 丿乇 丕亘鬲丿丕 賱丕夭賲 丕爻鬲 讴賴 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 亘丕 丿賳蹖丕蹖 賴乇 蹖讴 丕夭 丌賳鈥屬囏� 丌卮賳丕蹖蹖 亘賴賲 亘夭賳丿 賵 倬蹖卮鈥屬佖必垛€屬囏й屰� 亘丿爻鬲 亘蹖丕賵乇丿. 亘乇丕蹖 賲孬丕賱 倬蹖卮 丕夭 丕蹖賳讴賴 丕賴賲蹖鬲 噩賲賱賴鈥屫й� 乇丕 讴賴 鬲丕 賳蹖賲賴 丕夭 丿賴丕賳 毓賲賵 鬲賵亘蹖 亘蹖乇賵賳 倬乇蹖丿賴 丿乇讴 讴賳蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 倬蹖卮蹖賳賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 毓賱丕蹖賯貙 禺賱賯蹖丕鬲 賵 胤乇夭 賮讴乇 丕賵 亘丿爻鬲 亘蹖丕賵乇蹖賲 賵 丿乇爻鬲 丿乇 賴賲蹖賳噩丕爻鬲 讴賴 乇丕賵蹖貙 丕丿丕賲賴鈥屰� 賲讴丕賱賲賴 乇丕 亘蹖賳 夭賲蹖賳 賵 賴賵丕 賲毓賱賯 賳诏賴 賲蹖鈥屫ж必� 鬲丕 亘丕 诏乇蹖夭蹖 亘賴 诏匕卮鬲賴貙 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 乇丕 亘丕 毓賲賵蹖 禺賵丿 丌卮賳丕 讴賳丿.
蹖丕 亘賴 賲丨囟 丕蹖賳讴賴 丨丕賱 倬丿乇 禺賵丿 乇丕 丕夭 卮蹖賵賴鈥屰� 亘丿賳蹖丕 丌賲丿賳卮 丿诏乇诏賵賳 鬲乇爻蹖賲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 亘乇丕蹖 鬲丿丕毓蹖 囟乇亘賴鈥屰� 爻賳诏蹖賳蹖 讴賴 亘賴 乇賵丨 賵 乇賵丕賳 倬丿乇 賵丕乇丿 卮丿賴貙 丌亘 丿爻鬲卮 丕爻鬲 夭賲蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屭柏ж必� 賵 亘賱丕賮丕氐賱賴 亘丕 诏乇蹖夭蹖貙 亘賴 卮乇丨 丿賳蹖丕蹖 丿乇賵賳蹖 倬丿乇卮 賵 鬲賵氐蹖賮 丕爻倬鈥屬囏й� 賴賵爻蹖 讴賴 丿乇 丌賳 賲蹖鈥屫ж操嗀� 賵 丕賴賲蹖鬲 丕爻賲鈥屬囏ж� 丿賲丕睾鈥屬囏ж� 鬲賵賱丿鈥屬囏� 賵 丌賲賵禺鬲賴鈥屬囏� 乇丕 鬲丕 爻乇丨丿丕鬲 丌賳 賲蹖鈥屭┴簇з嗁嗀� 賲蹖鈥屬矩必ж藏�.
鬲氐丕賵蹖乇 賳蹖夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 亘丕 亘丕夭鬲毓乇蹖賮 卮丿賳 丿乇 蹖讴 賯丕賱亘 夭亘丕賳蹖貙 賳賯卮 乇賵丕蹖鬲诏乇丕賳蹖 诏賵蹖丕鬲乇 丕夭 讴賱賲丕鬲 乇丕 丿丕乇賳丿. 丕爻鬲乇賳 亘丕 賯乇丕乇 丿丕丿賳 丕賱賲丕賳鈥屬囏й屰� 賮乇丕賲鬲賳蹖 賵 鬲亘丿蹖賱 丌賳鈥屬囏� 亘賴 丕噩夭丕蹖 蹖讴 夭亘丕賳貙 馗乇賮蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 丕丿亘蹖 乇丕 亘賴 趩丕賱卮 賲蹖鈥屭┴簇� 賵 亘蹖丕賳 乇丕 亘賴 賲乇丨賱賴鈥屰� 噩丿蹖丿蹖 賲蹖鈥屫ㄘ必�.
倬蹖鈥属嗁堌簇�:
禺賵丕賳丿賳 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 鬲賳賴丕 亘賴 賲禺丕胤亘丕賳 丨乇賮賴鈥屫й� 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 倬蹖卮賳賴丕丿 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 讴賴 匕賵賯 賵 丨賵氐賱賴鈥屰� 倬乇爻賴 夭丿賳 賵乇丕蹖 倬乇丿賴鈥屰� 賲鬲賳 乇丕 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮賳丿.
* Association of Ideas
** Wit & Judgement
鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 丿乇 丿爻鬲貙 睾賳蹖賲鬲蹖爻鬲 讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 賯丿乇 丌賳 乇丕 亘爻蹖丕乇 丿丕賳爻鬲. 亘丕 丕蹖賳 丨丕賱 亘蹖鈥屫й屫必ж� 賳蹖爻鬲. 丕賲丕 趩賴 亘爻丕 讴賴 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丕蹖賳 丕蹖乇丕丿丕鬲 乇丕 亘丕蹖丿 丕夭 賯氐賵乇 賳丕卮乇 丿丕賳爻鬲! 賳丕讴丕賮蹖 亘賵丿賳 倬丕賳賵蹖爻鈥屬囏� 丿乇 鬲賵囟蹖丨 丕乇噩丕毓丕鬲 讴賱蹖丿蹖 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 噩丕 丕賮鬲丕丿賳 鬲氐丕賵蹖乇 讴鬲丕亘 丕夭 趩丕倬 (賳爻禺賴鈥屰� 賲賳 趩丕倬 卮卮賲 丕爻鬲) 賵 噩丕 丕賮鬲丕丿诏蹖 噩賲賱丕鬲蹖 趩賳丿 丕夭 鬲乇噩賲賴 賵 鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 丕卮鬲亘丕賴 倬丕乇賴鈥屫й� 丿蹖诏乇 (禺賵卮亘禺鬲丕賳賴 趩賳丿丕賳 噩丕蹖 賳诏乇丕賳蹖 賳蹖爻鬲 趩乇丕 讴賴 賲賵丕乇丿 讴賲 丕賴賲蹖鬲 賵 丕賳诏卮鬲鈥屫促呚ж辟嗀� 賵 鬲蹖睾 爻丕賳爻賵乇趩蹖 丿乇 丕蹖賳 鬲乇噩賲賴 乇丕賴 賳蹖丕賮鬲賴)貙 賲乇丕 亘乇 丌賳 丿丕卮鬲 讴賴 乇丕賴賳賲丕蹖蹖 诏乇丿丌賵乇蹖 讴賳賲 丕夭 賴乇 丌賳趩賴 讴賴 亘賴 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 丿乇 乇賲夭诏卮丕蹖蹖 賲鬲賳 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 蹖丕乇蹖 賲蹖鈥屫必池з嗀�.
丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屫堌з嗃屫� 亘賴 丌賳 丿爻鬲乇爻蹖 倬蹖丿丕 讴賳蹖丿.
賱丕乇賳爻 丕爻鬲乇賳貙 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 乇丕 亘丕 丕賱賴丕賲 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 賳賵卮鬲賴 丕爻鬲. 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 亘禺丕胤乇 賮乇賲 賵 賲丿賱 乇賵丕蹖鬲卮貙 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丿乇 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 亘賵丿賳卮貙 賲囟丕賲蹖賳蹖 讴賴 丿乇 禺賱丕賱 诏賮鬲诏賵賴丕蹖卮 賲胤乇丨 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 賵 亘禺丕胤乇 賳賵毓 胤賳夭 賵 賳賯丿蹖 讴賴 亘賴 賲匕賴亘貙 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 賵 賮囟丕蹖 賮讴乇蹖 夭賲丕賳賴 丿丕乇丿貙 丕賵賱蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 賲丿乇賳 賲丨爻賵亘 賲蹖鈥屫促堌�. 趩乇丕 讴賴 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 亘乇禺賱丕賮 爻丕蹖乇蹖賳賽 丕賴賱 賯賱賲 丿賵乇丕賳 賵 倬蹖卮蹖賳蹖丕賳卮貙 丿乇爻 丕丿亘 賵 賮囟蹖賱鬲 賳賲蹖鈥屫囏� 胤乇賮丿丕乇蹖 賳賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 賯氐丿 乇爻蹖丿賳 亘賴 賴蹖趩 倬丕爻禺蹖 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 亘賴 毓賴丿賴鈥屰� 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 賲蹖鈥屭柏ж必� 讴賴 亘乇丿丕卮鬲 賵 鬲丕賵蹖賱丕鬲 禺賵丿 乇丕 丕夭 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 (丨丿丕賯賱 丿乇 噩賱丿 丕賵賱 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳). 乇賲丕賳鈥屬囏й� 賯亘賱 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲貙 丨鬲蹖 丕诏乇 趩賳蹖賳 賵蹖跇诏蹖鈥屫й� 乇丕 賴賲 丿乇 禺賵丿 丿丕卮鬲賳丿貙 丿乇 蹖讴 賯丕賱亘 賵丕賯毓鈥屭必й屫з嗁� 丕鬲賮丕賯 賳賲蹖鈥屫з佖ж嗀�. 蹖毓賳蹖 乇賵丕蹖鬲 鬲毓丕賲賱丕鬲 賵 賵丕賯毓蹖丕鬲 乇賵夭賲乇賴 賳亘賵丿賳丿 賵 亘乇丕蹖 賲孬丕賱貙 賲鬲賱 賵 賲孬賱貙 禺蹖丕賱蹖貙 丕爻胤賵乇賴鈥屫й� 蹖丕 丨賲丕爻蹖 亘賵丿賳丿.
丕夭 夭蹖乇 卮賳賱 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲貙 蹖讴蹖 丿賵 乇賲丕賳 丿蹖诏乇 賳蹖夭 爻乇 亘乇丕賵乇丿賳丿 讴賴 亘丕 賮乇丕鬲乇 亘乇丿賳 鬲讴賳蹖讴鈥屬囏й� 賳賵丌賵乇丕賳賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 噩賲賱賴 亘蹖賳丕賲鬲賳蹖鬲貙 賲鬲丕賮蹖讴卮賳 賵 賮乇丕丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 亘賵丿賳貙 讴賳丕蹖賴 賵 倬丕乇賵丿蹖貙 讴賴 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 亘賴 丕乇孬 亘乇丿丕卮鬲賴鈥屫з嗀� 亘賴 賳賵亘賴鈥屰� 禺賵丿 倬丿乇丕賳 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 倬爻鬲 賲丿乇賳 賲丨爻賵亘 賲蹖鈥屫促堎嗀�: 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 賵 爻倬爻 跇丕讴 賯囟丕賯丿乇蹖.
丕賲丕 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 卮賳丿蹖 丕爻鬲乇賳 鬲賳賴丕 賵丕賲丿丕乇 丕夭 丿賳 讴蹖卮賵鬲 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻 賳蹖爻鬲貨 亘丕 亘乇乇爻蹖 丕乇噩丕毓丕鬲 丿乇賵賳鈥屬呚嗃� 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 賲蹖鈥屫堌з� 诏賮鬲 讴賴 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕夭 鬲乇讴蹖亘 氐賳丕蹖毓 丕丿亘蹖 胤賳夭 賵 讴賳丕蹖賴貙 賴噩賵賳丕賲賴貙 亘蹖丕賳 禺乇丿賲賳丿丕賳賴 賵 噩爻鬲丕乇 丕賳丿蹖卮賲賳丿丕賳賴 亘賵噩賵丿 丌賲丿賴 讴賴 亘丕賳蹖丕賳卮丕賳 亘賴 鬲乇鬲蹖亘貙 賲蹖诏賱 丿 爻乇賵丕賳鬲爻貙 賮乇丕賳爻賵丕 乇丕亘賱賴貙 噩丕賳丕鬲丕賳 爻賵卅蹖賮鬲貙 賲蹖卮賱 丿賵 賲賵賳鬲賳蹖 賵 乇丕亘乇鬲 亘乇鬲賵賳 亘賵丿賴鈥屫з嗀�.
丕夭 丿賳蹖丕蹖 賮賱爻賮賴 賳蹖夭 丕爻鬲乇賳貙 噩丕賳 賱丕讴 乇丕 亘乇诏夭蹖丿賴 鬲丕 丿乇 禺賱丕賱 卮禺氐蹖鬲 倬乇丿丕夭蹖鈥屬囏� 賵 賲讴丕賱賲賴鈥屬囏� 亘賴 賳賯丿 亘乇禺蹖 丕夭 鬲賮讴乇丕鬲 丕賵 丿乇 賲賴賲鈥屫臂屬� 丕孬乇卮 "賲賯丕賱賴鈥屫й� 丿乇 亘丕亘 賮賴賲 亘卮乇" 亘倬乇丿丕夭丿.
丕夭 賳賯丿 賲賮賴賵賲 "鬲丿丕毓蹖 賲毓丕賳蹖"* 賱丕讴 亘丕 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 丿丕丿賳 讴賵讴 讴乇丿賳 爻丕毓鬲 亘賴 噩賱爻丕鬲 乇丕蹖夭賳蹖 丿乇 鬲禺鬲禺賵丕亘 賵丕賱鬲乇 丿乇 卮亘鈥屬囏й� 蹖讴卮賳亘賴貙 鬲丕 賳卮丕賳 丿丕丿賳 鬲賯丕亘賱 胤乇夭 鬲賮讴乇 賵 亘乇丿丕卮鬲鈥屬囏й� 卮禺氐蹖 丿賵 亘乇丕丿乇 亘賵丕爻胤賴鈥屰� 丕爻倬鈥屬囏й� 賴賵爻卮丕賳 亘丕 倬賱 夭丿賳 亘蹖賳 丿賵 丿賳蹖丕蹖 丕夭 夭賲蹖賳 鬲丕 丌爻賲丕賳 賲鬲賮丕賵鬲 賵丕賱鬲乇 賵 鬲賵亘蹖 卮賳丿蹖 賵 爻倬爻 鬲禺乇蹖亘 丌賳 亘賵爻蹖賱賴鈥屰� 丿讴鬲乇 丕爻賱丕倬 亘乇丕蹖 卮讴爻鬲賴鈥屫ㄙ嗀� 倬賱 亘蹖賳蹖 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲貙 蹖丕 賳賯丿 丿蹖丿诏丕賴 賱丕讴 丿乇亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 夭亘丕賳 賵 鬲賮丕賵鬲 賲賮賴賵賲 讴賱賲丕鬲 丿乇 賯丕賱亘鈥屬囏й� 賲禺鬲賱賮 賲丨鬲賵丕蹖蹖 亘丕 倬蹖趩丕賳丿賳 讴賱賲賴鈥屰� 倬丕夭賱賮蹖 賵 賵丕丿丕卮鬲賳 亘賴 丕乇鬲亘丕胤 賳丕禺賵丿丕诏丕賴 丌賳 亘賴 賲賮丕賴蹖賲 噩賳爻蹖貙 丕爻鬲乇賳 乇賵丕蹖鬲蹖 賴賵卮賲賳丿丕賳賴 賵 倬賵蹖丕 倬丿蹖丿 丌賵乇丿賴 讴賴 賳賴 鬲賳賴丕 爻乇诏乇賲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 亘賴 鬲賮讴乇 賳賯丕丿丕賳賴 賳蹖夭 賵丕賲蹖鈥屫ж必�.
丕爻鬲乇賳 丿乇 賳賯丿 賱丕讴 鬲丕 丌賳噩丕 倬蹖卮 乇賮鬲賴 讴賴 丿蹖亘丕噩賴鈥屰� 丿蹖乇賴賳诏丕賲 讴鬲丕亘 (賮氐賱 亘蹖爻鬲賲 噩賱丿 爻賵賲) 乇丕 鬲賲丕賲丕 亘賴 丕賳鬲賯丕丿 丕夭 丿蹖丿诏丕賴 丕賵 丿乇亘丕乇賴鈥屰� 禺乇丿 賵 鬲卮禺蹖氐** 丕禺鬲氐丕氐 丿賴丿.
鬲賮爻蹖乇 丿蹖亘丕噩賴:
丕賵賱 亘丕蹖丿 丿蹖丿 讴賴 鬲毓乇蹖賮 賱丕讴 丕夭 "禺乇丿" 賵 "鬲卮禺蹖氐" 趩賴 亘賵丿賴:
賱丕讴貙 wit 蹖丕 禺乇丿 乇丕 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 丕蹖丿賴鈥屬囏ж� 丕丿乇丕讴丕鬲貙 丕爻鬲丿賱丕賱丕鬲 賵 亘賴 胤賵乇 讴賱蹖 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 丿丕賳卮鈥屬囏� 賲蹖鈥屫з嗀池�.
丕賲丕 judgement 蹖丕 鬲卮禺蹖氐 乇丕 賯賵賴鈥屫й� 賲蹖鈥屫屫� 讴賴 讴賲讴 賲蹖鈥屭┴必� 丕夭 亘蹖賳 丕蹖賳 賲噩賲賵毓賴鈥屰� 丿丕賳卮鈥屬囏ж� 丕蹖丿賴鈥屬囏й屰� 讴賴 丿乇爻鬲 賵 賲賳胤亘賯 亘丕 賵丕賯毓蹖丕鬲 賵 賲賳胤賯 賴爻鬲賳丿 乇丕 噩丿丕 讴乇丿賴 賵 丕爻鬲賮丕丿賴 讴賳蹖賲.
丿乇 賳鬲蹖噩賴鈥屰� 丕蹖賳 鬲毓乇蹖賮貙 賱丕讴貙 噩丕蹖诏丕賴 鬲卮禺蹖氐 乇丕 亘乇鬲乇 賵 亘丕賱丕鬲乇 丕夭 禺乇丿 丿乇 賳馗乇 賲蹖鈥屭辟佖�.
丕爻鬲乇賳 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丿蹖亘丕噩賴 亘丕 鬲卮亘蹖賴 禺乇丿 賵 鬲卮禺蹖氐 亘賴 丿賵 賯購亘賴鈥屰� 蹖讴 氐賳丿賱蹖 讴賴 丕诏乇 蹖讴蹖 乇丕 賳丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 丌賳鈥屰屭┷� 賳蹖夭 亘蹖禺賵丿 賵 亘賱丕丕爻鬲賮丕丿賴 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 爻毓蹖 丿丕乇丿 丕匕毓丕賳 讴賳丿 讴賴 丕蹖賳鈥屬囏� 賴乇 丿賵 亘乇丕蹖 鬲賮讴乇 賵 賮毓丕賱蹖鬲 匕賴賳蹖 亘賴 蹖讴 丕賳丿丕夭賴 賱丕夭賲賳丿 賵 丕诏乇 讴賲蹖鬲 蹖讴蹖 亘賱賳诏丿貙 丿蹖诏乇蹖 賳蹖夭 賱賳诏 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 賵 讴丕乇亘乇丿 賲爻鬲賯賱 丕夭 賴賲 賳丿丕乇賳丿.
丕賲丕 趩乇丕 丕爻鬲乇賳 丌賳賯丿乇 亘乇 賲丕賳賵乇 乇賵蹖 丕蹖賳 賲賵囟賵毓 丕氐乇丕乇 丿丕乇丿責
讴賱賲賴鈥屰� wit 賮賯胤 亘賴 賲毓賳丕蹖 禺乇丿 賳蹖爻鬲 賵 丿乇 禺賵丿卮 賲毓丕賳蹖 夭乇賳诏蹖貙 乇賳丿蹖貙 賲夭賴鈥屬矩必з嗃� 賵 賲夭丕丨 乇丕 賴賲 丿丕乇丿 賵 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 乇賵卮鈥屬囏й� 賲夭賴鈥屬矩必з嗃屫� 讴賳丕蹖蹖 賵 丿乇 賱賮丕賮賴 氐丨亘鬲 讴乇丿賳 丕爻鬲 亘乇丕蹖 賴賲蹖賳 丕爻鬲 讴賴 鬲乇蹖爻鬲乇丕賲 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫�: "丕诏乇 賴賲賴 氐丕丨亘 禺乇丿 亘夭乇诏 賲蹖鈥屫簇嗀� 賴賲賴鈥屫� 鬲賲爻禺乇 賲蹖鈥屫ㄙ堌� 賵 乇蹖卮禺賳丿 賵丨丕囟乇噩賵丕亘蹖."
賵 丕蹖賳 丕賱亘鬲賴 賴賲丕賳 趩蹖夭蹖爻鬲 讴賴 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賲賵噩 賲蹖鈥屫操嗀� 亘胤賵乇蹖讴賴 蹖讴爻乇賴 賴賳诏丕賲 禺賵丕賳丿賳 丌賳 亘丕 讴賳丕蹖賴貙 爻丕乇讴夭賲 賵 讴賱賲丕鬲 丿賵倬賴賱賵 賵 丕爻鬲毓丕乇賴 賵 賲賻噩丕夭 乇賵亘乇賵 賲蹖鈥屫促堐屬�.
丕賳诏丕乇 丕爻鬲乇賳 賯氐丿 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮丿 賲丕 乇丕 賲鬲賵噩賴 丕蹖賳 賲賵囟賵毓 讴賳丿 讴賴 亘賱賴! 丕蹖賳 賯賵賴鈥屰� 鬲卮禺蹖氐 丕爻鬲 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫� 丿乇 趩丕乇趩賵亘 賲丨鬲賵丕貙 亘蹖賳 賲毓丕賳蹖鈥屫й� 讴賴 蹖讴 賵丕跇賴 蹖丕 蹖讴 毓亘丕乇鬲 鬲丿丕毓蹖 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 讴丿丕賲蹖讴 賲丿賳馗乇 丕爻鬲 蹖丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 丿乇賳馗乇 诏乇賮鬲賳 賴乇讴丿丕賲 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賲毓丕賳蹖 趩诏賵賳賴 賲賮賴賵賲 乇丕 毓賵囟 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀�. 丕賲丕 丕诏乇 丕夭 丕賵賱 禺乇丿 賳蹖丕賲丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 賵丕跇賴 乇丕 丕蹖賳胤賵乇 鬲亘蹖蹖賳 賳讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿貙 鬲卮禺蹖氐 賴賲 丕蹖賳噩丕 讴丕乇蹖 亘乇丕蹖 丕賳噩丕賲 丿丕丿賳 賳丿丕卮鬲. 倬爻 丕蹖賳 丿賵 賱丕夭賲 賵 賲賱夭賵賲 蹖讴丿蹖诏乇賳丿 賵 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴鈥屰� 诏乇丕賲蹖 賱胤賮丕 賲賵賯毓 禺賵丕賳丿賳貙 賴乇 丿賵 乇丕 亘賴 讴丕乇 亘诏蹖乇 鬲丕 亘丕 馗乇丕蹖賮 賲鬲賳 賲賳 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丌卮賳丕 亘卮賵蹖!___
鬲讴賳蹖讴 丿蹖诏乇蹖 讴賴 卮禺氐蹖鬲鈥屬矩必ж槽� 賵 倬蹖乇賳诏 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 蹖讴 爻乇 賵 诏乇丿賳 亘丕賱丕鬲乇 亘乇丿賴貙 "诏乇蹖夭 夭丿賳" 丕爻鬲. 丿乇 鬲毓丕賲賱丕鬲 亘爻蹖丕乇賽 匕賴賳蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 賲鬲賮丕賵鬲 卮禺氐蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 讴鬲丕亘 亘丕 賴賲貙 丿乇 丕亘鬲丿丕 賱丕夭賲 丕爻鬲 讴賴 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 亘丕 丿賳蹖丕蹖 賴乇 蹖讴 丕夭 丌賳鈥屬囏� 丌卮賳丕蹖蹖 亘賴賲 亘夭賳丿 賵 倬蹖卮鈥屬佖必垛€屬囏й屰� 亘丿爻鬲 亘蹖丕賵乇丿. 亘乇丕蹖 賲孬丕賱 倬蹖卮 丕夭 丕蹖賳讴賴 丕賴賲蹖鬲 噩賲賱賴鈥屫й� 乇丕 讴賴 鬲丕 賳蹖賲賴 丕夭 丿賴丕賳 毓賲賵 鬲賵亘蹖 亘蹖乇賵賳 倬乇蹖丿賴 丿乇讴 讴賳蹖賲貙 亘丕蹖丿 倬蹖卮蹖賳賴鈥屫й� 丕夭 毓賱丕蹖賯貙 禺賱賯蹖丕鬲 賵 胤乇夭 賮讴乇 丕賵 亘丿爻鬲 亘蹖丕賵乇蹖賲 賵 丿乇爻鬲 丿乇 賴賲蹖賳噩丕爻鬲 讴賴 乇丕賵蹖貙 丕丿丕賲賴鈥屰� 賲讴丕賱賲賴 乇丕 亘蹖賳 夭賲蹖賳 賵 賴賵丕 賲毓賱賯 賳诏賴 賲蹖鈥屫ж必� 鬲丕 亘丕 诏乇蹖夭蹖 亘賴 诏匕卮鬲賴貙 禺賵丕賳賳丿賴 乇丕 亘丕 毓賲賵蹖 禺賵丿 丌卮賳丕 讴賳丿.
蹖丕 亘賴 賲丨囟 丕蹖賳讴賴 丨丕賱 倬丿乇 禺賵丿 乇丕 丕夭 卮蹖賵賴鈥屰� 亘丿賳蹖丕 丌賲丿賳卮 丿诏乇诏賵賳 鬲乇爻蹖賲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 亘乇丕蹖 鬲丿丕毓蹖 囟乇亘賴鈥屰� 爻賳诏蹖賳蹖 讴賴 亘賴 乇賵丨 賵 乇賵丕賳 倬丿乇 賵丕乇丿 卮丿賴貙 丌亘 丿爻鬲卮 丕爻鬲 夭賲蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屭柏ж必� 賵 亘賱丕賮丕氐賱賴 亘丕 诏乇蹖夭蹖貙 亘賴 卮乇丨 丿賳蹖丕蹖 丿乇賵賳蹖 倬丿乇卮 賵 鬲賵氐蹖賮 丕爻倬鈥屬囏й� 賴賵爻蹖 讴賴 丿乇 丌賳 賲蹖鈥屫ж操嗀� 賵 丕賴賲蹖鬲 丕爻賲鈥屬囏ж� 丿賲丕睾鈥屬囏ж� 鬲賵賱丿鈥屬囏� 賵 丌賲賵禺鬲賴鈥屬囏� 乇丕 鬲丕 爻乇丨丿丕鬲 丌賳 賲蹖鈥屭┴簇з嗁嗀� 賲蹖鈥屬矩必ж藏�.
鬲氐丕賵蹖乇 賳蹖夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘貙 亘丕 亘丕夭鬲毓乇蹖賮 卮丿賳 丿乇 蹖讴 賯丕賱亘 夭亘丕賳蹖貙 賳賯卮 乇賵丕蹖鬲诏乇丕賳蹖 诏賵蹖丕鬲乇 丕夭 讴賱賲丕鬲 乇丕 丿丕乇賳丿. 丕爻鬲乇賳 亘丕 賯乇丕乇 丿丕丿賳 丕賱賲丕賳鈥屬囏й屰� 賮乇丕賲鬲賳蹖 賵 鬲亘丿蹖賱 丌賳鈥屬囏� 亘賴 丕噩夭丕蹖 蹖讴 夭亘丕賳貙 馗乇賮蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 丕丿亘蹖 乇丕 亘賴 趩丕賱卮 賲蹖鈥屭┴簇� 賵 亘蹖丕賳 乇丕 亘賴 賲乇丨賱賴鈥屰� 噩丿蹖丿蹖 賲蹖鈥屫ㄘ必�.
"I wrote a careless kind of civil, nonsensical, good-humored Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good 鈥� And all your heads too, 鈥� provided you understand it" (VI, xvii)
倬蹖鈥属嗁堌簇�:
禺賵丕賳丿賳 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 鬲賳賴丕 亘賴 賲禺丕胤亘丕賳 丨乇賮賴鈥屫й� 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 倬蹖卮賳賴丕丿 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 讴賴 匕賵賯 賵 丨賵氐賱賴鈥屰� 倬乇爻賴 夭丿賳 賵乇丕蹖 倬乇丿賴鈥屰� 賲鬲賳 乇丕 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮賳丿.
* Association of Ideas
** Wit & Judgement
February 18, 2017
Hindsight is a beaut! I should have written separate reviews for each of the original nine Shandy volumes, since I just spend about two days just trying to put some order into my multitudinous notes and now I have enough material and food for thought for at least nine reviews. This book is a glorious, licentious, philosophical mess designed right from the start in a labyrinthine manner by one of the brightest and sharpest wits of our literary pantheon. I thought, when I first noticed the glowing reviews of my friends, that they were using hyperbole when they claimed this to be one of the very first post-modernist, experimental novels, but it quickly became apparent that they were right : from Salman Rushdie to Italo Calvino or from David Foster Wallace to Louis de Bernieres, Blackadders or Monty Pythons, you can't help noticing the same rambling narrative structure, the satirical tone, the joy of absurdist humour, the pseudo-scientific rants and the bawdy, low-brow content riding side by side with moving, insightful glimpses at universal truths about human nature.
What was less obvious, and became clear only with the help of the plentiful Penguin footnotes, is how much Laurence Sterne is not an accidental genius, but very much a man of his times and a canny magpie who has little remorse in lifting the best ideas, characters and even wholesale paragraphs from the works of his contemporaries and forerunners. Rabelais is a primary source, as is Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", but there are numerous references and 'borrowings' from Swift, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Locke and the Greek or Roman classics. Sterne's achievement is not only to integrate all these disparate sources into his discourse, but to provide a critical, pertinent commentary on the salient points and on the shortcomings of each. Also worth noting is Sterne love for the English language, the playful anarchy of his pleonasms, archaism and nonce words.
Probably, had I been forced to read this in highschool, I would have hated it with a vengeance. It's dense, it has no plot (it takes three volumes for the main character to be born), you need a heavy dictionary close at hand and Sterne's phrase construction would make Faulkner envious. Some of the views embraced by Sterne are less palatable than others - attacks on atheists, mysoginy, theories linking racial profiles to climate, his disparaging of the French and of Catholics, etc. Even now, in my almost dottage, the lecture was occasionaly a chore and soporific, but the joy of making sense of a bawdy joke or a heart to heart conversation directly addressed to the readership ("may it please your worships!") more than made up for the effort put in. Had Sterne been granted a reprieve from the merciless illness that put him in an early grave and written the forty Shandy volumes he had promised us, I'm sure I would have eventually read them all. (I still wonder how Trim would have finished his tale of the King of Bohemia)
What is the book really about? It says right on the cover : the life and times of Tristram Shandy, and alter ego of the author, a man of his times born under an unlucky star (his father's 'homunculus' got distracted right after it left the starting gate) and bad luck seems to follow Tristram all through his journey through life. Another alter-ego of the author is the pastor Yorick, a transparent reference to "Hamlet"and a self-portrait of Sterne as the tragic court jester who is the only one capable of speaking truth to power. For the internet age, I have a third analogy of the author as an early incarnation of that virtual animal, the perfect troll, a thorn in the side ("obstreperated" is Sterne's choice of descriptor) of his pompous, rigid minded and pious contemporaries:
Tristram's father, mother and especially his uncle Toby with an assortment doctors, lawyers, clerics, chambermaids, valets, etc. provide the bulk of the narrative, with authorial intervention and breaking of the fourth wall providing the rest. Hobby Horses, or the miriad ways people engage in passionate and/or silly endeavours, are another common thread that meanders through the pages of all nine volumes.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
Having finished my woefully short introduction and being too lazy to embark on a detailed analysis of the themes and, still pertinent today, satirical observations of the autor, I decided to let his words speak for themselves. Let's see how many of my favorite passages I can include in the space allocated by 欧宝娱乐 for a proper review!
[If your worships feel like skipping the long section of quotes, here's a one line clincher : "By the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible!" ]
>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<
On the subject of non-linear narration and digressions:
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule, - straightforward... for instance from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to the left - he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey's end; ... but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no way avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually solliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panygericks to post at his door:
Pasquinades at that:
... All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from.
Speaking of mules, here's sample of Sterne's bawdy jokes:
My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to the most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out her for his own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so he talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke, and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in Obadiah, it so fell out, that my father's expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.
My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of Obadiah - and that there never would be an end of the disaster.
- See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what have you done!
- It was not me, said Obadiah.
- How do I know that? replied my father.
To continue with the literary theory, in defence of meandering, according to Tristram Shandy:
'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste which has crept into thousands beside herself, - of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart to them --- The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along. [...] I wish it may have its effects, and that all good people, both male and female, from her example, may be taught to think as well as read.
also,
Digressions, incontenstably, are the sun-shine --- they are the life, the soul of reading --- take them out of this book for instance, you might as well take the book along with them - one cold eternal winter would reign on every page of it; restore them to the writer ... he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids All Hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
Throwing the gauntlet at his critics who complained about the lack of plot and the rambling nature of the novel, Sterne accuses them of intellectual laziness. Dare I bring James Joyce in here too, and mention Shandy as a precursor of the stream of consicence novel? Pourquoi pas:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human Understanding? --- Don't anser me rashly, because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it, and many have read it who understand it not: --- If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words what the book is. - It is a history. --- A history! of who? what? where? when? --- Don't hurry yourself. --- It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysic circle.
In defense of satire and in response to those critics who say that wit and judgement in this world never go together, Sterne replies: so are farting and hiccuping , adding that:
... an illustration is no argument, - nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism; - but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it, - so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.
Sterne's crusade against backward thinking and fake puritanism continues by quoting la Rochefoucauld : Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. and Epictetus : We are tormented with the opinions we have of things, and not by things themselves. (alternate translation : Not practicalities trouble human beings, but dogmas concerning them )
The back and forth with the critics with regard with satirical, bawdy writing includes both defense and attack:
Certainly there is a difference between Bitterness and Saltness, that is, between the malignity and the festivity of wit, --- the one is mere quickness of apprehension, void of humanity, and is a talent of the devil; the other comes down from the Father of Spirits, so pure and abstracted from persons, that willingly it hurts no man ...
vs (in a recap of the first eight volumes),
What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it. Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of Jack asses? --- How they view'd and review'd us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley! --- And when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight - good God! what a braying did they all set up together!
Before I continue, I believe Sterne's praise of Cervantes also belongs in this section on satire:
True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro' its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round.
To be honest, Sterne's taste in risque humour would raise a few eyebrows even today. Here's valet Trim receiving a massage from a Beguine in Flanders, after being injured in the knee:
I perceived, then, I was beginning to be in love ---
As she continued rub-rub-rubbing - I felt it spread from under her hand, an' please your honour, to every part of my frame ---
The more she rubb'd, and the longer strokes she took --- the more the fire kindled in my veins --- till at length, by two or three strokes longer than the rest --- my passion rose to the highest pitch --- I seiz'd her hand ---
--- And then, thou clapped'st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle Toby --- and madest a speech.
Whether the corporal's amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle Toby described it, is not material; it is enough that it contain'd in it the essence of all the love-romances which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world.
Uncle Toby is an innocent, one of Sterne's favorite characters in the novel, the side of the balance that compensates for all the malign fools the author probably encountered in life. Here's a passionate defense of Toby:
Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head! Thou envied'st no man's comforts, - insulted'st no man's opinions, - thou blackened'st no man's character, - devoured'st no man's bread; gently with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way; - for each one's service [funeral] thou had shed a tear, - for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.
Still, innocents make great foils for the jokes of their friends:
Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.
--- Right end, --- quoth my uncle Toby, muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice, form'd by a bad joint in the chimney-piece. --- Right end of a woman! --- I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is, than the man in the moon; --- and if I was to think, continued my uncle Toby, (keeping his eye still fix'd upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I should not be able to find it.
Maybe widow Wadham can help Toby find his way around the gentler sex ( I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most compleat systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world. )... Sterne's issues a stern warning though:
A daughter of Eve, for such was widow Wadman, and 'tis all the character I intend to give of her - "That she was a perfect woman" - had better be fifty leagues off, or in her warm bed, or playing with a case-knife, or any thing you please - than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and all the furniture is her own.
There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman has power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one - but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him - till by reiterated acts of such combinations, he gets foisted into her inventory ---
- And then good night.
Sterne, for all his bawdy jokes and slightly mysoginistic comments on women, would not live in a world without love (a passage borrowed from Rabelais):
Love is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most
Agitating
Bewitching
Confounded
Devilish affairs of life - the most
Extravagant
Futilitous
Galligaskinish
Handy-dandyish
Iracundulous (here is no K to it) and
Lyrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most
Misgiving
Ninnyhammerinh
Obstipating
Pragmatical
Stridulous
Ridiculous - though by the bye the R should have gone first -
But in short 'tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle Toby upon the close of a long dissertation upon the subject -
"you can scarce," said he, "combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without a hypallage" ...
What's that? cried my uncle Toby.
The cart before the horse, replied my father ---
--- And what has he to do there? cried my uncle Toby ---
Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in --- or let it alone.
Uncle Toby is a fine illustration of wit without malice, and Sterne's position is made clear in more than one passionate defense of temperance and forgiveness:
... being determined as long as I live and write (which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish, than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all dinner time, --- "Go, - go poor devil," quoth he, - get thee gone, - why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me."
Toby is also a great illustration of the power of Hobby-Horses - in his case pyroballogy and castle sieges- which can be benign (in his case) or dangerous (in a lot of the other characters)
When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion, --- or, in other words, when his Hobby Horse grows headstrong, --- farewell cool reason and fair discretion! (a borrowing from Jonathan Swift)
also,
A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do to each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies, and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE --- by long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill'd as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold; so that if you are able to give a clear description of the nature of one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.
In other words, most people are ful of s--t, and their hobbies (power, intolerance, lying, sophism, stamp collecting or whoring) are a good pointer to their true character. But look at the beam in your own eye before you point out the straw in that of your neighbors:
De gustibus non est disputandum : Have not the wisest men in all ages - not excepting Solomon himself - have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES; their running horses, their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, their maggots and their butterflies? ... 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?
similarly,
My hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him --- 'Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour - a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick - an uncle Toby's siege - or an any thing, which man makes a shift to get a stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life - 'Tis as useful a beast as it is in the whole creation - nor do I see how the world could do without it ---
Words to live by, sadly thrown by the roadside in this modern times we are living right now, when so many people are trying to impose their hobby-horses on everybody else. But let us continue with Tristram's misadventures, this improbable hero doomed right from the start:
I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, she has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil, yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could fairly get at me, the ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.
[to be continued]
What was less obvious, and became clear only with the help of the plentiful Penguin footnotes, is how much Laurence Sterne is not an accidental genius, but very much a man of his times and a canny magpie who has little remorse in lifting the best ideas, characters and even wholesale paragraphs from the works of his contemporaries and forerunners. Rabelais is a primary source, as is Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", but there are numerous references and 'borrowings' from Swift, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Locke and the Greek or Roman classics. Sterne's achievement is not only to integrate all these disparate sources into his discourse, but to provide a critical, pertinent commentary on the salient points and on the shortcomings of each. Also worth noting is Sterne love for the English language, the playful anarchy of his pleonasms, archaism and nonce words.
Probably, had I been forced to read this in highschool, I would have hated it with a vengeance. It's dense, it has no plot (it takes three volumes for the main character to be born), you need a heavy dictionary close at hand and Sterne's phrase construction would make Faulkner envious. Some of the views embraced by Sterne are less palatable than others - attacks on atheists, mysoginy, theories linking racial profiles to climate, his disparaging of the French and of Catholics, etc. Even now, in my almost dottage, the lecture was occasionaly a chore and soporific, but the joy of making sense of a bawdy joke or a heart to heart conversation directly addressed to the readership ("may it please your worships!") more than made up for the effort put in. Had Sterne been granted a reprieve from the merciless illness that put him in an early grave and written the forty Shandy volumes he had promised us, I'm sure I would have eventually read them all. (I still wonder how Trim would have finished his tale of the King of Bohemia)
What is the book really about? It says right on the cover : the life and times of Tristram Shandy, and alter ego of the author, a man of his times born under an unlucky star (his father's 'homunculus' got distracted right after it left the starting gate) and bad luck seems to follow Tristram all through his journey through life. Another alter-ego of the author is the pastor Yorick, a transparent reference to "Hamlet"and a self-portrait of Sterne as the tragic court jester who is the only one capable of speaking truth to power. For the internet age, I have a third analogy of the author as an early incarnation of that virtual animal, the perfect troll, a thorn in the side ("obstreperated" is Sterne's choice of descriptor) of his pompous, rigid minded and pious contemporaries:
Tristram's father, mother and especially his uncle Toby with an assortment doctors, lawyers, clerics, chambermaids, valets, etc. provide the bulk of the narrative, with authorial intervention and breaking of the fourth wall providing the rest. Hobby Horses, or the miriad ways people engage in passionate and/or silly endeavours, are another common thread that meanders through the pages of all nine volumes.
>><<>><<>><<>><<
Having finished my woefully short introduction and being too lazy to embark on a detailed analysis of the themes and, still pertinent today, satirical observations of the autor, I decided to let his words speak for themselves. Let's see how many of my favorite passages I can include in the space allocated by 欧宝娱乐 for a proper review!
[If your worships feel like skipping the long section of quotes, here's a one line clincher : "By the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible!" ]
>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<
On the subject of non-linear narration and digressions:
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule, - straightforward... for instance from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside either to the right hand or to the left - he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey's end; ... but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no way avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually solliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panygericks to post at his door:
Pasquinades at that:
... All which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from.
Speaking of mules, here's sample of Sterne's bawdy jokes:
My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to the most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out her for his own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so he talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke, and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in Obadiah, it so fell out, that my father's expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.
My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of Obadiah - and that there never would be an end of the disaster.
- See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what have you done!
- It was not me, said Obadiah.
- How do I know that? replied my father.
To continue with the literary theory, in defence of meandering, according to Tristram Shandy:
'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste which has crept into thousands beside herself, - of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart to them --- The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along. [...] I wish it may have its effects, and that all good people, both male and female, from her example, may be taught to think as well as read.
also,
Digressions, incontenstably, are the sun-shine --- they are the life, the soul of reading --- take them out of this book for instance, you might as well take the book along with them - one cold eternal winter would reign on every page of it; restore them to the writer ... he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids All Hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
Throwing the gauntlet at his critics who complained about the lack of plot and the rambling nature of the novel, Sterne accuses them of intellectual laziness. Dare I bring James Joyce in here too, and mention Shandy as a precursor of the stream of consicence novel? Pourquoi pas:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human Understanding? --- Don't anser me rashly, because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it, and many have read it who understand it not: --- If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words what the book is. - It is a history. --- A history! of who? what? where? when? --- Don't hurry yourself. --- It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysic circle.
In defense of satire and in response to those critics who say that wit and judgement in this world never go together, Sterne replies: so are farting and hiccuping , adding that:
... an illustration is no argument, - nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism; - but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it, - so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all.
Sterne's crusade against backward thinking and fake puritanism continues by quoting la Rochefoucauld : Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind. and Epictetus : We are tormented with the opinions we have of things, and not by things themselves. (alternate translation : Not practicalities trouble human beings, but dogmas concerning them )
The back and forth with the critics with regard with satirical, bawdy writing includes both defense and attack:
Certainly there is a difference between Bitterness and Saltness, that is, between the malignity and the festivity of wit, --- the one is mere quickness of apprehension, void of humanity, and is a talent of the devil; the other comes down from the Father of Spirits, so pure and abstracted from persons, that willingly it hurts no man ...
vs (in a recap of the first eight volumes),
What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it. Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of Jack asses? --- How they view'd and review'd us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley! --- And when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight - good God! what a braying did they all set up together!
Before I continue, I believe Sterne's praise of Cervantes also belongs in this section on satire:
True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro' its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round.
To be honest, Sterne's taste in risque humour would raise a few eyebrows even today. Here's valet Trim receiving a massage from a Beguine in Flanders, after being injured in the knee:
I perceived, then, I was beginning to be in love ---
As she continued rub-rub-rubbing - I felt it spread from under her hand, an' please your honour, to every part of my frame ---
The more she rubb'd, and the longer strokes she took --- the more the fire kindled in my veins --- till at length, by two or three strokes longer than the rest --- my passion rose to the highest pitch --- I seiz'd her hand ---
--- And then, thou clapped'st it to thy lips, Trim, said my uncle Toby --- and madest a speech.
Whether the corporal's amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle Toby described it, is not material; it is enough that it contain'd in it the essence of all the love-romances which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world.
Uncle Toby is an innocent, one of Sterne's favorite characters in the novel, the side of the balance that compensates for all the malign fools the author probably encountered in life. Here's a passionate defense of Toby:
Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head! Thou envied'st no man's comforts, - insulted'st no man's opinions, - thou blackened'st no man's character, - devoured'st no man's bread; gently with faithful Trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way; - for each one's service [funeral] thou had shed a tear, - for each man's need, thou hadst a shilling.
Still, innocents make great foils for the jokes of their friends:
Methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong.
--- Right end, --- quoth my uncle Toby, muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice, form'd by a bad joint in the chimney-piece. --- Right end of a woman! --- I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more which it is, than the man in the moon; --- and if I was to think, continued my uncle Toby, (keeping his eye still fix'd upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I should not be able to find it.
Maybe widow Wadham can help Toby find his way around the gentler sex ( I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most compleat systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world. )... Sterne's issues a stern warning though:
A daughter of Eve, for such was widow Wadman, and 'tis all the character I intend to give of her - "That she was a perfect woman" - had better be fifty leagues off, or in her warm bed, or playing with a case-knife, or any thing you please - than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and all the furniture is her own.
There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman has power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one - but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him - till by reiterated acts of such combinations, he gets foisted into her inventory ---
- And then good night.
Sterne, for all his bawdy jokes and slightly mysoginistic comments on women, would not live in a world without love (a passage borrowed from Rabelais):
Love is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most
Agitating
Bewitching
Confounded
Devilish affairs of life - the most
Extravagant
Futilitous
Galligaskinish
Handy-dandyish
Iracundulous (here is no K to it) and
Lyrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most
Misgiving
Ninnyhammerinh
Obstipating
Pragmatical
Stridulous
Ridiculous - though by the bye the R should have gone first -
But in short 'tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle Toby upon the close of a long dissertation upon the subject -
"you can scarce," said he, "combine two ideas together upon it, brother Toby, without a hypallage" ...
What's that? cried my uncle Toby.
The cart before the horse, replied my father ---
--- And what has he to do there? cried my uncle Toby ---
Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in --- or let it alone.
Uncle Toby is a fine illustration of wit without malice, and Sterne's position is made clear in more than one passionate defense of temperance and forgiveness:
... being determined as long as I live and write (which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish, than my uncle Toby gave the fly which buzz'd about his nose all dinner time, --- "Go, - go poor devil," quoth he, - get thee gone, - why should I hurt thee? This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me."
Toby is also a great illustration of the power of Hobby-Horses - in his case pyroballogy and castle sieges- which can be benign (in his case) or dangerous (in a lot of the other characters)
When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion, --- or, in other words, when his Hobby Horse grows headstrong, --- farewell cool reason and fair discretion! (a borrowing from Jonathan Swift)
also,
A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do to each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies, and that by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the HOBBY-HORSE --- by long journies and much friction, it so happens that the body of the rider is at length fill'd as full of HOBBY-HORSICAL matter as it can hold; so that if you are able to give a clear description of the nature of one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other.
In other words, most people are ful of s--t, and their hobbies (power, intolerance, lying, sophism, stamp collecting or whoring) are a good pointer to their true character. But look at the beam in your own eye before you point out the straw in that of your neighbors:
De gustibus non est disputandum : Have not the wisest men in all ages - not excepting Solomon himself - have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES; their running horses, their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, their maggots and their butterflies? ... 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?
similarly,
My hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him --- 'Tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour - a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddle-stick - an uncle Toby's siege - or an any thing, which man makes a shift to get a stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life - 'Tis as useful a beast as it is in the whole creation - nor do I see how the world could do without it ---
Words to live by, sadly thrown by the roadside in this modern times we are living right now, when so many people are trying to impose their hobby-horses on everybody else. But let us continue with Tristram's misadventures, this improbable hero doomed right from the start:
I have been the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will not wrong her by saying, she has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil, yet with all the good temper in the world, I affirm it of her, That in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could fairly get at me, the ungracious Duchess has pelted me with a set of pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small Hero sustained.
[to be continued]
July 19, 2014
I wanted to like this, I really did. Sterne is a hugely inventive, hugely capable writer. Maybe he doesn't go in for the batshit linguistic free-for-all that people like James Joyce do, but he is every bit as bizarre and technically innovative. You could recognize one of his wildly digressive, over-mannered sentences in a heartbeat. But I still couldn't stand Tristam Shandy. Not because it's 'bad' per se, (parts of it are extremely engaging and genuinely funny in a way that basically no writing from the 18th century is engaging or funny) but because it seemed like the work of a huge talent essentially dicking around for hundreds and hundreds of pages on what felt like, to me, a gimmick. Don't get me wrong, if modern literature has proven anything it's that huge, digressive chunks of text have a totally valid and at times, even stunning place in fiction and non-fiction alike. But a digression, however audacious or clever, is still a movement away from something, and Tristram Shandy doesn't really have anything to move away from, or back to. It's got no center. Maybe I'm not a conceptually ambitious enough reader to appreciate something this free-floating, but this book makes even the most fanatically post-modern fiction seem 'tame' by comparison. Tons of newer novels try to make it painfully clear just how decentralized they are, how utterly discursive and free from the confines of our often admittedly stodgy literary traditions they can be. Sterne wrote something that actually is those things, and while that might be clever on his part, it's just not enough. Not from someone who obviously has the chops to do so much more.
July 11, 2017
The name of this review in its saved document is 鈥淩eview Tristram Shandy NEEDS A FULLER REVIEW鈥�. Hence this fuller review, dashed off in a few minutes, or tens or twenties or thirties of minutes. Which of course reminds us, as Montaigne once wrote, 鈥淭he hour of parleying is dangerous.鈥� But given that truth, what am I to say about my own parleying with Sterne, if it goes on beyond an hour? or achieves its end in less than an hour? By whom would this danger be faced? By I the writer? Or by you the reader? And what danger would need confrontation? The danger of boredom? The danger of falling off a chair? The danger of mistakenly imbibing the Amanita bisporigera (destroying angel as it鈥檚 known commonly)? Perhaps, to cut to the chase and make once again a reference to Stern himself, by obliquely referring to one of his favorite sources of quotations, the danger of
melancholy!?
We shall perhaps return to these sharp questions. Or perhaps not. At any rate 鈥�
4 1/2. I can't quite up this to a 5 since - well, of course I could, and perhaps should. After all, five in the Bible is significant because God鈥檚 creation - 'man' 鈥� and 鈥榳oman鈥� too, we are told - has five fingers, five senses and five toes; not four and one-half of each 鈥� nor does man and woman in fact have five hands or five feet 鈥� though of course when we speak of the length, that is height, of a man or woman the achievement of having five feet, or even more, is by no means unusual. And thus to continue, five is the number of God's grace, and by giving Sterne鈥檚 book five stars 鈥� which by the by I will in fact allow myself to do at this late date, so in that manner to confront the Lord with a five star rating, and challenge Him 鈥� or is it Her? 鈥� to bless this review with bountiful victuals 鈥� aha, haha, and la-de-da, that slip reveals that eating, or at least the thought of snacking, has slipped into my mind, slipped out of my belly perhaps, wriggled upwards through the grams, ounces, pounds, stone [note the correct plural used for the units Sterne himself would have used for measuring the massivity of men/women/anything-else] of my flesh straight into the noncorporeal organ of thought; which circumstance reminds us of Gluttony, and the harm which is visited upon both body and soul by that Cardinal sin, so that, in Burton鈥檚 words, 鈥淎s a lamp is choked with a multitude of oil, or a little fire with overmuch wood quite extinguished, so is the natural heat with immoderate eating strangled in the body. Perniciosa sentina est abdomen insaturabile, which means 鈥渢hat goes double for immoderate snacking鈥�. And verily, I hence cross out my original reason for withholding the blessed five thus ---->>by my criteria I'd have to believe I might read it a second time, and I don't think that's likely, more because of the length than anything else.
However, a problem here arises, for I have in effect crossed out as well the very phrase which appears in bold as the first few words of this modest paragraph. Thus I implore the reader to substitute, in their own mind (or whatever they use for thinking/perceiving) the words Five stars. 4 1/2. I can't quite up this to a 5 since for that "very phrase" referred to in the previous sentence.
But we will return to this repast/riposte later. Or perhaps not. Anyway 鈥�
It is a very impressive piece of literature, and extremely funny in many, many parts. And here I can again strike out -----> Hopefully I will write a more illuminating review at some point.
because, this more illuminating review is here present and accounted for, my confidence in this increased illumination, or light if you will, illustrating as Montaigne said, that 鈥渢his strong confidence can only be manifested, natural and entire, by those who are not terrified by the thought of death 鈥︹€�
Be that as it may, let us put aside thoughts of death for the present, and return to them aplenty later. But maybe we won鈥檛, it is something of a downer, which recalls the subject/topic/thesis/adumbration/ what-have-you of melancholy 鈥� leading to the great Burton and his comment on natural death, that 鈥淐alenus and his Indians hated of old to die a natural death: the Circumcellions and Donatists, loathing life, compelled others to make them away: but these are false and pagan positions, profane Stoical paradoxes, wicked examples; it boots not what heathen philosophers determine in this kind, they are impious, abominable, and upon a wrong ground鈥�. He could as well have said 鈥渦pon a wrong hobby horse鈥�, but regardless, the question becomes, if we hark back to Gluttony, whether or not death by Gluttony is a natural or unnatural death.
I started reading it as an e-book, and persevered through Volume V chapter III, almost half way. At that point I bought a used copy of the Oxford World's Classics edition, which in the number and arcane references of its notes made me think of Joyce's Ulysses. I highly recommend this edition, which also includes a 25 page introduction (not yet read by me), an eight page bibliography, and those 60+ pages of Explanatory Notes (in small print). I can aver that that piece of narrative seems quite apposite to a review, hence find no inclination to strike it from the increased illumination cast on it in the presence of this enlarged review. But speaking of large reviews, my thoughts range to large reviews I have penned (well of course 鈥減enned鈥� is inaccurate, we in modern times use not pens for composition or to hold free-range animals) 鈥� but let 鈥減enned鈥� stand, if the pen fall down the thoughts will stray away 鈥� which phrase, though not actually used in the review, does bring to mind the essay/review/narrative/story I penned/wrote/typed/composed/brought-to-light/whatever/blah-blah-blah about the book , and specifically within that review/narrative/story/essay the lengthy quotation I presented from the author鈥檚 brilliant story/chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, and more specifically, the final section of that story, introduced with the words, 鈥�And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back.鈥� Which was naturally what that phrase 鈥渟tray away鈥� would, I think, remind anyone of.
By this time, I think I've wrapped all loose ends of this review around each other, tangled into an impenetrable knot, such that readers will gratefully escape further comments, unless they already have escaped - in which case they and I are equally in the dark about my ultimate motives.
On that note 鈥� B-flat it sounds like 鈥� I鈥檒l turn off the illumination, much as I would enjoy continuing this beyond whatever time it has taken, but heedful of Montaigne鈥檚 warning about parleying and danger, I will leave the review as it now stands 鈥� or falls.
If you enjoy 18th century classics (or earlier ones, such as Montaigne, Burton, Bacon - because of Sterne鈥檚 references to his antecedents), you should be all means give this a try.
We shall perhaps return to these sharp questions. Or perhaps not. At any rate 鈥�
4 1/2. I can't quite up this to a 5 since - well, of course I could, and perhaps should. After all, five in the Bible is significant because God鈥檚 creation - 'man' 鈥� and 鈥榳oman鈥� too, we are told - has five fingers, five senses and five toes; not four and one-half of each 鈥� nor does man and woman in fact have five hands or five feet 鈥� though of course when we speak of the length, that is height, of a man or woman the achievement of having five feet, or even more, is by no means unusual. And thus to continue, five is the number of God's grace, and by giving Sterne鈥檚 book five stars 鈥� which by the by I will in fact allow myself to do at this late date, so in that manner to confront the Lord with a five star rating, and challenge Him 鈥� or is it Her? 鈥� to bless this review with bountiful victuals 鈥� aha, haha, and la-de-da, that slip reveals that eating, or at least the thought of snacking, has slipped into my mind, slipped out of my belly perhaps, wriggled upwards through the grams, ounces, pounds, stone [note the correct plural used for the units Sterne himself would have used for measuring the massivity of men/women/anything-else] of my flesh straight into the noncorporeal organ of thought; which circumstance reminds us of Gluttony, and the harm which is visited upon both body and soul by that Cardinal sin, so that, in Burton鈥檚 words, 鈥淎s a lamp is choked with a multitude of oil, or a little fire with overmuch wood quite extinguished, so is the natural heat with immoderate eating strangled in the body. Perniciosa sentina est abdomen insaturabile, which means 鈥渢hat goes double for immoderate snacking鈥�. And verily, I hence cross out my original reason for withholding the blessed five thus ---->>
But we will return to this repast/riposte later. Or perhaps not. Anyway 鈥�
It is a very impressive piece of literature, and extremely funny in many, many parts. And here I can again strike out ----->
Be that as it may, let us put aside thoughts of death for the present, and return to them aplenty later. But maybe we won鈥檛, it is something of a downer, which recalls the subject/topic/thesis/adumbration/ what-have-you of melancholy 鈥� leading to the great Burton and his comment on natural death, that 鈥淐alenus and his Indians hated of old to die a natural death: the Circumcellions and Donatists, loathing life, compelled others to make them away: but these are false and pagan positions, profane Stoical paradoxes, wicked examples; it boots not what heathen philosophers determine in this kind, they are impious, abominable, and upon a wrong ground鈥�. He could as well have said 鈥渦pon a wrong hobby horse鈥�, but regardless, the question becomes, if we hark back to Gluttony, whether or not death by Gluttony is a natural or unnatural death.
I started reading it as an e-book, and persevered through Volume V chapter III, almost half way. At that point I bought a used copy of the Oxford World's Classics edition, which in the number and arcane references of its notes made me think of Joyce's Ulysses. I highly recommend this edition, which also includes a 25 page introduction (not yet read by me), an eight page bibliography, and those 60+ pages of Explanatory Notes (in small print). I can aver that that piece of narrative seems quite apposite to a review, hence find no inclination to strike it from the increased illumination cast on it in the presence of this enlarged review. But speaking of large reviews, my thoughts range to large reviews I have penned (well of course 鈥減enned鈥� is inaccurate, we in modern times use not pens for composition or to hold free-range animals) 鈥� but let 鈥減enned鈥� stand, if the pen fall down the thoughts will stray away 鈥� which phrase, though not actually used in the review, does bring to mind the essay/review/narrative/story I penned/wrote/typed/composed/brought-to-light/whatever/blah-blah-blah about the book , and specifically within that review/narrative/story/essay the lengthy quotation I presented from the author鈥檚 brilliant story/chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, and more specifically, the final section of that story, introduced with the words, 鈥�And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back.鈥� Which was naturally what that phrase 鈥渟tray away鈥� would, I think, remind anyone of.
By this time, I think I've wrapped all loose ends of this review around each other, tangled into an impenetrable knot, such that readers will gratefully escape further comments, unless they already have escaped - in which case they and I are equally in the dark about my ultimate motives.
On that note 鈥� B-flat it sounds like 鈥� I鈥檒l turn off the illumination, much as I would enjoy continuing this beyond whatever time it has taken, but heedful of Montaigne鈥檚 warning about parleying and danger, I will leave the review as it now stands 鈥� or falls.
If you enjoy 18th century classics (or earlier ones, such as Montaigne, Burton, Bacon - because of Sterne鈥檚 references to his antecedents), you should be all means give this a try.
February 27, 2020
I am reminded of the popular idea within biology of the "Precambrian rabbit" - that is, a bunny found fossilised within a much earlier geological stratum - considered something that would be so out of place as to call into question the entire Theory of Evolution. Tristram Shandy is like a literary Precambrian rabbit. Here is a work of pure postmodernism, published in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Whereas even with other "revolutionary" works one can usually still trace a line of incremental innovation as styles are popularised and movements take hold, Tristram Shandy seems to appear fully formed and lacking the usual explanatory pedigree. It is (language aside) so unlike the works of its time and so very much like those that would become popular two hundred years later, that it's difficult to know what to make of it, except to acknowledge that perhaps in our quest to neatly define and categorise history we can sometimes overestimate the achievements of the recent past, and overlook the incredible capacity for human creativity that has been with us from the beginning.
December 28, 2014
May it please your honours, and you, Madam, who certainly inspired the reading if not the reviewing of this book with your own * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *; as I tend not to dabble in the 18th Century. This seminal tale, waxing autobiographical, takes three of the nine volumes at play before our narrator is coaxed out and erroneously christened. My own arrival was unremarkable----if somewhat delayed; My mother, prone to superstition and intuitive causality, -----she would, for instance, blame NASA for every weather event -----indicted a serviceman鈥檚 yellow jaundice for the tardiness of my conception. I was, in short, a pleasant surprise; a phrase which would not thereafter be renewed in describing me.
The christening was another matter, however. The naming went as intended, unlike the unfortunate Tristram;----I was to be a junior. I asked my father, years later, what the last name meant鈥攁 jumble of letters rendered pronounceable by some hurried Ellis Island functionary. I was hoping for DEFENDER OF THE FAITH or LONE WARRIOR IN BATTLE; something snazzy;----BUT, no, he said, it came from the Polish word for horseradish. My grandmother, who came to the U.S. from Poland alone at age 13, would smile at our obligatory annual visit and call me YAN-TUSH, apparently a Polish endearment for JUNIOR, but what is roughly translated as little stem. So, you know, I have that going for me.
The godparents were carefully chosen. Uncle Butch, with steel-blue eyes and white knuckles, chewed his cheroots and very much liked his beer and whiskey chaser. My christening would be the first ---- excepting the time he stole an ambulance in England during WWII to go visit his brother, my father, and create an international incident;------ and last time he ventured more than five miles from his abode. Aunt Mary did not, and does not, walk into a room; she makes an entrance, Hollywood style. Aunt Mary did not have Uncle Butch鈥檚 problem with the brown liquid, but she was not opposed and was certainly an enabler. It was the second day of the party when they were entrusted with ME;---- in flowing white: for the walk to the church. They feigned sober as they entered, and would have pulled it off had not Father Walter asked where the baby was. They had, it seems, misplaced your narrator. The exact period of my unsupervision is uncertain --- accounts vary ---- and this in no way is an excuse for my subsequent misbehavior nor my naming, which, as I reported, was no accident. HOWEVER; I鈥檝e a tendency to digression, which makes me a suitable reader for one who takes 300 pages to be born. Digressions, incontestably, are the sun-shine:----they are the life, the soul of reading;- - -take them out of this book for instance; - - you might as well take the book along with them;---
But I digress.
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, ----though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, ---the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
This is a carnival ride of a book; a journey of head-spinning and wry smiles and knowing winks; teaching us we play at War and work at Love. Sterne is indebted to Cervantes and presages Dickens. So, thank-ee Madam; for * * * * * * * ; the 18th C. That was then and This is now; ----except when they鈥檙e the same.
The christening was another matter, however. The naming went as intended, unlike the unfortunate Tristram;----I was to be a junior. I asked my father, years later, what the last name meant鈥攁 jumble of letters rendered pronounceable by some hurried Ellis Island functionary. I was hoping for DEFENDER OF THE FAITH or LONE WARRIOR IN BATTLE; something snazzy;----BUT, no, he said, it came from the Polish word for horseradish. My grandmother, who came to the U.S. from Poland alone at age 13, would smile at our obligatory annual visit and call me YAN-TUSH, apparently a Polish endearment for JUNIOR, but what is roughly translated as little stem. So, you know, I have that going for me.
The godparents were carefully chosen. Uncle Butch, with steel-blue eyes and white knuckles, chewed his cheroots and very much liked his beer and whiskey chaser. My christening would be the first ---- excepting the time he stole an ambulance in England during WWII to go visit his brother, my father, and create an international incident;------ and last time he ventured more than five miles from his abode. Aunt Mary did not, and does not, walk into a room; she makes an entrance, Hollywood style. Aunt Mary did not have Uncle Butch鈥檚 problem with the brown liquid, but she was not opposed and was certainly an enabler. It was the second day of the party when they were entrusted with ME;---- in flowing white: for the walk to the church. They feigned sober as they entered, and would have pulled it off had not Father Walter asked where the baby was. They had, it seems, misplaced your narrator. The exact period of my unsupervision is uncertain --- accounts vary ---- and this in no way is an excuse for my subsequent misbehavior nor my naming, which, as I reported, was no accident. HOWEVER; I鈥檝e a tendency to digression, which makes me a suitable reader for one who takes 300 pages to be born. Digressions, incontestably, are the sun-shine:----they are the life, the soul of reading;- - -take them out of this book for instance; - - you might as well take the book along with them;---
But I digress.
Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, ----though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, ---the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
This is a carnival ride of a book; a journey of head-spinning and wry smiles and knowing winks; teaching us we play at War and work at Love. Sterne is indebted to Cervantes and presages Dickens. So, thank-ee Madam; for * * * * * * * ; the 18th C. That was then and This is now; ----except when they鈥檙e the same.
November 4, 2012
This edition from expands upon, or at least emphasises, the typographical fancies Sterne deployed for his maddening nine-book digressive epic. Combining black and red font effects (all the dashes and chapter titles are in red), with unique artistic stunts (the infamous black page is replaced by a strikethrough design, various font frolics are exaggerated in amusing ways, and one page includes a 鈥榤oisture鈥� effect using semi-laminate bubbles over the text), the book isn鈥檛 perhaps as radical as it appears, but it mainlines some creativity into otherwise bland Penguin or OUP editions. Other effects include Slawkenbergius鈥檚 tale printed on a parchment-like gray background (in red font!), a folded page which has to be 鈥榗losed鈥� to read the text on the other side, and an enhancement of Sterne鈥檚 barmy plotline squiggles that attempt to map a coherent path for the book. The edition is lacking in explanatory notes, meaning a new reader interested in keeping up with the Latin, Greek and French asides, or the avalanche of obscure references that come thicker and faster as the book鈥攗m, progresses?鈥攄igresses, will need to have a Penguin or OUP edition handy. (I read this constantly flipping back to the OUP ed for notes鈥攅ventually I gave up). Tristram Shandy, as you will discover, may be a book of digressions and wild goose chases, but it demands Zen-like concentration for both the scholasticism and the difficult 18thC English. I hope to prove a better reader on the second spin. Michael Winterbottom made with Steve Coogan.
September 24, 2024
小褉邪蟹褍 芯谐芯胁芯褉褞褋褜, 褔褌芯 褟 薪械 褋褌邪胁谢褞 锌械褉械写 褋芯斜芯泄 蟹邪写邪褔褍 胁褋械芯斜褗械屑谢褞褖械 锌褉芯邪薪邪谢懈蟹懈褉芯胁邪褌褜 锌褉芯懈蟹胁械写械薪懈械 - 褍卸 褋谢懈褕泻芯屑 斜芯谢褜褕邪褟 褝褌芯 锌芯 芯斜褗械屑褍 懈 屑邪褋褕褌邪斜褍 褉邪斜芯褌邪 懈 薪械 蟹薪邪褞, 胁芯蟹屑芯卸薪邪 谢懈 芯薪邪. 袪芯屑邪薪, 薪邪锌懈褋邪薪薪褘泄 胁 褋械褉械写懈薪械 胁芯褋械屑薪邪写褑邪褌芯谐芯 胁械泻邪, 锌芯褉邪卸邪械褌 芯斜懈谢懈械屑 薪芯胁邪褌芯褉褋泻懈褏 锌褉懈械屑芯胁, 褔褌芯 褏邪褉邪泻褌械褉懈蟹褍械褌 邪胁褌芯褉邪, 泻邪泻 褋屑械谢芯谐芯 褔械谢芯胁械泻邪, 薪械 芯谐谢褟写褘胁邪褞褖械谐芯褋褟 薪邪 邪胁褌芯褉懈褌械褌褘 懈 褋谢芯卸懈胁褕懈械褋褟 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉薪褘械 褌褉邪写懈褑懈懈 懈 褋胁芯斜芯写薪芯谐芯 胁 褋胁芯械屑 褌胁芯褉褔械褋泻芯屑 胁褘褉邪卸械薪懈懈.
袩褉械卸写械 胁褋械谐芯, 褝褌芯 锌械褉胁褘泄 胁 懈褋褌芯褉懈懈 屑械褌邪褉芯屑邪薪, 芯泻邪蟹邪胁褕懈泄 懈 锌褉芯写芯谢卸邪褞褖懈泄 芯泻邪蟹褘胁邪褌褜 斜芯谢褜褕芯械 胁谢懈褟薪懈械 薪邪 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉褍. 袛胁邪 邪胁褌芯褉邪, 写胁邪 谐芯谢芯褋邪, 写懈邪谢芯谐 褋 褔懈褌邪褌械谢械屑. 袧芯 褝褌芯 写邪谢械泻芯 薪械 胁褋械. 袩芯卸邪谢褍泄, 褝褌芯 懈 锌械褉胁褘泄 邪薪褌懈褉芯屑邪薪. 小褞卸械褌邪 胁 泻谢邪褋褋懈褔械褋泻芯屑 锌芯薪懈屑邪薪懈懈 薪械褌, 泻芯械-褔褌芯 懈蟹 褉邪蟹薪褘褏 褔邪褋褌械泄 褉芯屑邪薪邪 屑褘 芯斜褉褘胁芯褔薪芯 屑芯卸械屑 褍蟹薪邪褌褜, 薪芯 屑褘 写邪卸械 薪械 蟹薪邪械屑, 泻褌芯 褌邪泻邪褟 袛卸械薪薪懈, 泻芯褌芯褉褍褞 邪胁褌芯褉 孝褉懈褋褌褉邪屑 写芯胁芯谢褜薪芯 褔邪褋褌芯 褍锌芯屑懈薪邪械褌. 袙褉械屑褟 胁 褉芯屑邪薪械 褌邪泻卸械 薪械芯斜褘褔薪芯 - 邪胁褌芯褉 孝褉懈褋褌褉邪屑 褋 屑械谢褜褔邪泄褕懈屑懈 写械褌邪谢褟屑懈 芯锌懈褋褘胁邪械褌 褋芯斜褘褌懈褟 写芯 褋胁芯械谐芯 褉芯卸写械薪懈褟 褋 胁褋械蟹薪邪泄褋褌胁芯屑 邪胁褌芯褉邪, 胁褘蟹褘胁邪褞褖懈屑 褍谢褘斜泻褍. 小邪褌懈褉懈褔械褋泻邪褟 薪邪锌褉邪胁谢械薪薪芯褋褌褜 褉芯屑邪薪邪 锌褉械写锌芯谢邪谐邪械褌 薪邪褋屑械褕泻懈 薪邪写 邪泻褌褍邪谢褜薪褘屑懈 锌褉芯斜谢械屑邪屑懈 褋芯胁褉械屑械薪薪芯褋褌懈 小褌械褉薪邪, 薪芯 写芯胁芯谢褜薪芯 褔邪褋褌芯 褔懈褌邪褌械谢褜 蟹邪写褍屑褘胁邪械褌褋褟, 褔褌芯 褝褌懈 锌褉芯斜谢械屑褘 胁械褔薪褘. 校 褉芯屑邪薪邪 芯褌泻褉褘褌褘泄 褎懈薪邪谢 褋 懈蟹写械胁邪褌械谢褜褋泻芯-薪邪褋屑械褕谢懈胁芯泄 懈, 芯写薪芯胁褉械屑械薪薪芯, 褎懈谢芯褋芯褎褋泻芯泄 芯褌褋褘谢泻芯泄 泻 褋泻邪蟹泻械 锌褉芯 斜械谢芯谐芯 斜褘褔泻邪. 小褌械褉薪 褝泻褋锌械褉懈屑械薪褌懈褉褍械褌 懈 褋 褎芯褉屑芯泄 - 锌械褔邪褌薪褘屑 褌械泻褋褌芯屑 - 锌褍褋褌褘械 谐谢邪胁褘 懈 褋褌褉邪薪懈褑褘, 屑薪芯谐芯褌芯褔懈褟 屑芯谐褍褌 谢械谐泻芯 褋斜懈褌褜 褋 褌芯谢泻褍. 袙芯褌 褌邪泻芯胁 褝褌芯褌 薪械芯斜褘褔薪褘泄 褉芯屑邪薪. 袙 褉芯屑邪薪械 芯谐褉芯屑薪芯械 泻芯谢懈褔械褋褌胁芯 芯褌褋褘谢芯泻 泻 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉薪褘屑 锌褉芯懈蟹胁械写械薪懈褟屑, 薪芯 芯写薪芯泄 懈蟹 胁邪卸薪械泄褕懈褏 褟胁谢褟械褌褋褟 芯斜褉邪褖械薪懈械 泻 芯斜褉邪蟹褍 袡芯褉懈泻邪 懈蟹 袚邪屑谢械褌邪, 褏芯褌褟 懈 袛芯薪 袣懈褏芯褌 锌芯谢褜蟹褍械褌褋褟 薪械褋芯屑薪械薪薪芯泄 谢褞斜芯胁褜褞 小褌械褉薪邪.
袩褉械卸写械 胁褋械谐芯, 褝褌芯 锌械褉胁褘泄 胁 懈褋褌芯褉懈懈 屑械褌邪褉芯屑邪薪, 芯泻邪蟹邪胁褕懈泄 懈 锌褉芯写芯谢卸邪褞褖懈泄 芯泻邪蟹褘胁邪褌褜 斜芯谢褜褕芯械 胁谢懈褟薪懈械 薪邪 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉褍. 袛胁邪 邪胁褌芯褉邪, 写胁邪 谐芯谢芯褋邪, 写懈邪谢芯谐 褋 褔懈褌邪褌械谢械屑. 袧芯 褝褌芯 写邪谢械泻芯 薪械 胁褋械. 袩芯卸邪谢褍泄, 褝褌芯 懈 锌械褉胁褘泄 邪薪褌懈褉芯屑邪薪. 小褞卸械褌邪 胁 泻谢邪褋褋懈褔械褋泻芯屑 锌芯薪懈屑邪薪懈懈 薪械褌, 泻芯械-褔褌芯 懈蟹 褉邪蟹薪褘褏 褔邪褋褌械泄 褉芯屑邪薪邪 屑褘 芯斜褉褘胁芯褔薪芯 屑芯卸械屑 褍蟹薪邪褌褜, 薪芯 屑褘 写邪卸械 薪械 蟹薪邪械屑, 泻褌芯 褌邪泻邪褟 袛卸械薪薪懈, 泻芯褌芯褉褍褞 邪胁褌芯褉 孝褉懈褋褌褉邪屑 写芯胁芯谢褜薪芯 褔邪褋褌芯 褍锌芯屑懈薪邪械褌. 袙褉械屑褟 胁 褉芯屑邪薪械 褌邪泻卸械 薪械芯斜褘褔薪芯 - 邪胁褌芯褉 孝褉懈褋褌褉邪屑 褋 屑械谢褜褔邪泄褕懈屑懈 写械褌邪谢褟屑懈 芯锌懈褋褘胁邪械褌 褋芯斜褘褌懈褟 写芯 褋胁芯械谐芯 褉芯卸写械薪懈褟 褋 胁褋械蟹薪邪泄褋褌胁芯屑 邪胁褌芯褉邪, 胁褘蟹褘胁邪褞褖懈屑 褍谢褘斜泻褍. 小邪褌懈褉懈褔械褋泻邪褟 薪邪锌褉邪胁谢械薪薪芯褋褌褜 褉芯屑邪薪邪 锌褉械写锌芯谢邪谐邪械褌 薪邪褋屑械褕泻懈 薪邪写 邪泻褌褍邪谢褜薪褘屑懈 锌褉芯斜谢械屑邪屑懈 褋芯胁褉械屑械薪薪芯褋褌懈 小褌械褉薪邪, 薪芯 写芯胁芯谢褜薪芯 褔邪褋褌芯 褔懈褌邪褌械谢褜 蟹邪写褍屑褘胁邪械褌褋褟, 褔褌芯 褝褌懈 锌褉芯斜谢械屑褘 胁械褔薪褘. 校 褉芯屑邪薪邪 芯褌泻褉褘褌褘泄 褎懈薪邪谢 褋 懈蟹写械胁邪褌械谢褜褋泻芯-薪邪褋屑械褕谢懈胁芯泄 懈, 芯写薪芯胁褉械屑械薪薪芯, 褎懈谢芯褋芯褎褋泻芯泄 芯褌褋褘谢泻芯泄 泻 褋泻邪蟹泻械 锌褉芯 斜械谢芯谐芯 斜褘褔泻邪. 小褌械褉薪 褝泻褋锌械褉懈屑械薪褌懈褉褍械褌 懈 褋 褎芯褉屑芯泄 - 锌械褔邪褌薪褘屑 褌械泻褋褌芯屑 - 锌褍褋褌褘械 谐谢邪胁褘 懈 褋褌褉邪薪懈褑褘, 屑薪芯谐芯褌芯褔懈褟 屑芯谐褍褌 谢械谐泻芯 褋斜懈褌褜 褋 褌芯谢泻褍. 袙芯褌 褌邪泻芯胁 褝褌芯褌 薪械芯斜褘褔薪褘泄 褉芯屑邪薪. 袙 褉芯屑邪薪械 芯谐褉芯屑薪芯械 泻芯谢懈褔械褋褌胁芯 芯褌褋褘谢芯泻 泻 谢懈褌械褉邪褌褍褉薪褘屑 锌褉芯懈蟹胁械写械薪懈褟屑, 薪芯 芯写薪芯泄 懈蟹 胁邪卸薪械泄褕懈褏 褟胁谢褟械褌褋褟 芯斜褉邪褖械薪懈械 泻 芯斜褉邪蟹褍 袡芯褉懈泻邪 懈蟹 袚邪屑谢械褌邪, 褏芯褌褟 懈 袛芯薪 袣懈褏芯褌 锌芯谢褜蟹褍械褌褋褟 薪械褋芯屑薪械薪薪芯泄 谢褞斜芯胁褜褞 小褌械褉薪邪.
November 6, 2016
螤蟻蠋蟿伪 伪蟺蠈 蠈位伪鈥� 螛伪 蟽伪蟼 蟺伪蟻伪魏伪位慰蠉蟽伪 谓伪 蔚蟺喂蟽魏蔚蠁胃蔚委蟿蔚 蟿畏谓 蟽蔚位委未伪 蟿慰蠀 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪, 蔚未蠋 蟽蟿慰 欧宝娱乐, 蟺蟻慰魏蔚喂渭苇谓慰蠀 谓伪 未蔚委蟿蔚 蟿慰 蟺慰蟻蟿蟻伪委蟿慰 蟿慰蠀. 螤伪蟻伪蟿畏蟻萎蟽蟿蔚 蟿慰 蟺蟻蠈蟽蠅蟺慰 蟿慰蠀 魏伪喂 蟽蟿畏谓 蟽蠀谓苇蠂蔚喂伪 蠁伪谓蟿伪蟽蟿蔚委蟿蔚 蟿慰谓 谓伪 纬蟻维蠁蔚喂 慰位蠈魏位畏蟻慰 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 渭蔚 伪蠀蟿蠈 伪魏蟻喂尾蠋蟼 蟿慰 尾位苇渭渭伪.
螒蠀蟿萎谓 畏 委蟽蠅蟼 蟺伪喂蠂谓喂未喂维蟻喂魏畏 渭伪蟿喂维, 蟿慰 渭维位位慰谓 蟺慰谓畏蟻蠈 蟿慰蠀 蠂伪渭蠈纬蔚位慰 魏伪喂 纬蔚谓喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻伪 蟿慰 蠉蠁慰蟼 蟿慰蠀, 渭蔚蟿伪蠁苇蟻蔚蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 渭蔚蟿伪蟿蟻苇蟺蔚蟿伪喂 蟽蟿慰 蠉蠁慰蟼 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀.
螕蟻伪渭渭苇谓慰 蟿慰谓 18慰 伪喂蠋谓伪, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蠈蟺蠅蟼 渭伪蟼 伪谓伪蠁苇蟻蔚喂 慰 委未喂慰蟼 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 蟽蟿畏谓 蔚喂蟽伪纬蠅纬萎 蟿慰蠀 苇蠂蔚喂 苇谓伪谓 魏伪喂 渭蠈谓慰 蟽魏慰蟺蠈. 螡伪 魏维谓蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏 谓伪 蠂伪渭慰纬蔚位维蟽蔚喂. 螝维蟿喂 蟿慰 慰蟺慰委慰 蟽蔚 苇渭蔚谓伪 蟺苇蟿蠀蠂蔚 魏伪喂 渭蔚 蟿慰 蟺伪蟻伪蟺维谓蠅.
螌蟺蠅蟼 渭伪蟼 蟺位畏蟻慰蠁慰蟻蔚委 魏伪喂 慰 蟿委蟿位慰蟼, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蟺伪蟻慰蠀蟽喂维味蔚喂 蟿畏谓 味蠅萎 魏伪喂 蟿喂蟼 伪蟺蠈蠄蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 韦巍螜危韦巍螒螠 危螒螡韦螜. 螆谓伪谓 萎蟻蠅伪 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 伪蟻蠂萎 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀 渭伪蟼 蟽蠀蟽蟿萎谓蔚喂 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 蟺伪蟿苇蟻伪 蟿慰蠀, 蟿慰谓 胃蔚委慰 蟿慰蠀 魏伪喂 未喂维蠁慰蟻伪 维位位伪 慰喂魏慰纬蔚谓蔚喂伪魏维 蟺蟻蠈蟽蠅蟺伪 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 伪魏蠈渭伪 谓伪 苇蠂蔚喂 纬蔚谓谓畏胃蔚委. 螕喂伪 蟿畏谓 伪魏蟻委尾蔚喂伪 慰 萎蟻蠅伪蟼 伪蠀蟿蠈蟼, 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 蟽蠉渭蠁蠅谓伪 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 蟿委蟿位慰 胃伪 苇蟺蟻蔚蟺蔚 谓伪 蔚委谓伪喂 慰 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎蟼, 纬蔚谓谓喂苇蟿伪喂 渭蔚蟿维 蟿畏谓 渭苇蟽畏 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀. (螖畏位伪未萎 蟺蔚蟻委蟺慰蠀 蟽蟿畏谓 400 蟽蔚位委未伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿喂蟼 700). 螕蔚谓喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻伪 胃伪 苇位蔚纬伪 蠈蟿喂 未蔚谓 蔚渭蠁伪谓委味蔚蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 蟺慰位蠉鈥� 螡伪喂, 伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 慰 蟿委蟿位慰蟼 蟽蔚 伪蠀蟿蠈 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 苇蠂蔚喂 蟽魏慰蟺蠈 谓伪 魏维谓蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏 谓伪 纬蔚位维蟽蔚喂, 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 未蔚谓 伪谓蟿伪蟺慰魏蟻委谓蔚蟿伪喂 蔚蟺伪蟻魏蠋蟼 渭蔚 蟿慰 蟺蔚蟻喂蔚蠂蠈渭蔚谓慰 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀.
韦慰 尾喂尾位委慰 胃伪 苇位蔚纬伪 未蔚谓 苇蠂蔚喂 蟽蠀纬魏蔚魏蟻喂渭苇谓畏 蟺位慰魏萎 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 蟺伪蟻慰蠀蟽喂维味蔚喂 魏蠀蟻委蠅蟼 未喂维蠁慰蟻蔚蟼 蟽魏畏谓苇蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 味蠅萎 蟿慰蠀 蟺伪蟿苇蟻伪 魏伪喂 蟿慰蠀 胃蔚委慰蠀 蟿慰蠀 芦蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎禄. 螣喂 伪蠁畏纬萎蟽蔚喂蟼 伪蠀蟿苇蟼 未喂伪魏蠈蟺蟿慰谓蟿伪喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟽蠂蠈位喂伪 魏伪喂 蟺伪蟻伪蟿畏蟻萎蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪, 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 蟺伪委蟻谓慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟿慰谓 蟻蠈位慰 蟿慰蠀 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎/蟺伪蟻伪蟿畏蟻畏蟿萎/伪蠁畏纬畏蟿萎 韦巍螜危韦巍螒螠 危螒螡韦螜 蟽蠂慰位喂维味蔚喂 魏伪喂 蟽伪蟿喂蟻委味蔚喂 蟽蠂蔚未蠈谓 蟿伪 蟺维谓蟿伪.
螣 Laurence Sterne 蟺蔚蟻喂纬蟻维蠁蔚喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟽蟿蔚委蔚蟼 魏伪蟿伪蟽蟿维蟽蔚喂蟼 魏伪喂 纬蔚位慰委蔚蟼 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委蔚蟼 渭蔚 蠁喂位慰蟽慰蠁喂魏蠈 蟺蔚蟻喂蔚蠂蠈渭蔚谓慰 (渭蔚 渭喂伪 胃蔚蟻尾伪谓蟿喂魏萎 蟽慰尾伪蟻蠈蟿畏蟿伪) 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 尉蔚蠁蔚蠉纬蔚喂 伪蟺蠈 蟿伪 蠈蟻喂伪. 危伪蟿喂蟻委味慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟿伪 蟺维谓蟿伪 芦伪蟺慰未蔚喂魏谓蠉蔚喂禄 蟺蠈蟽慰 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈 蔚委谓伪喂 蟿慰 蠈谓慰渭伪 伪位位维 魏伪喂 蟿慰 渭苇纬蔚胃慰蟼 蟿畏蟼 渭蠉蟿畏蟼 纬喂伪 蟿畏谓 蟺慰蟻蔚委伪 蔚谓蠈蟼 伪谓胃蟻蠋蟺慰蠀 魏伪蟿伪未喂魏维味慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟽蟿畏谓 蟽蠀谓苇蠂蔚喂伪 蟿慰谓 芦维蟿蠀蠂慰 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎禄.
螒谓慰委纬蔚喂 蟺慰位位苇蟼 蟺伪蟻蔚谓胃苇蟽蔚喂蟼 蟺蔚蟻谓蠋谓蟿伪蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿慰 胃苇渭伪 螒 蟽蟿慰 螔, 慰喂 慰蟺慰委蔚蟼 未喂伪蟻魏慰蠉谓 伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 慰位蠈魏位畏蟻伪 魏蔚蠁维位伪喂伪 (萎 魏伪喂 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻伪). 危蟿畏谓 蟽蠀谓苇蠂蔚喂伪 尉蔚魏喂谓维蔚喂 魏伪喂谓慰蠉蟻喂慰 魏蔚蠁维位伪喂慰 渭蔚 渭喂伪 渭蠈谓慰 蟺蟻蠈蟿伪蟽畏 蟺蟻慰魏蔚喂渭苇谓慰蠀 谓伪 蔚谓畏渭蔚蟻蠋蟽蔚喂 蟿慰 魏慰喂谓蠈 蠈蟿喂 蔚蟺喂蟽蟿蟻苇蠁蔚喂 蟽蟿慰 胃苇渭伪 螒.
螒蠁萎谓蔚喂 魏蔚谓维 蟽蟿喂蟼 蟽蔚位委未蔚蟼 萎 蟽蔚 蟺蟻慰蟿维蟽蔚喂蟼 蟺蟻慰魏蔚喂渭苇谓慰蠀 谓伪 蟽蠀渭蟺位畏蟻蠋蟽蔚喂 慰 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏蟼 蠈蟺蠅蟼 伪蠀蟿蠈蟼 蔚蟺喂胃蠀渭蔚委 魏伪喂 纬蔚谓喂魏维 蠀蟺维蟻蠂蔚喂 渭喂伪 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟽蟿蔚委伪 蔚蟺喂魏慰喂谓蠅谓委伪 渭蔚蟿伪尉蠉 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪- 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏.
韦苇位慰蟼, 位维蟿蟻蔚蠄伪 蟿慰谓 蟿蟻蠈蟺慰 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 慰蟺慰委慰 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 魏伪蟿维蠁蔚蟻蔚 谓伪 伪蠁萎蟽蔚喂 蟺慰谓畏蟻维 蠀蟺慰谓慰慰蠉渭蔚谓伪 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 纬委谓蔚喂 蠂蠀未伪委慰蟼 魏伪喂 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 蟺蟻慰蟽尾维位蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏.
螘尉伪喂蟻蔚蟿喂魏蠈 尾喂尾位委慰 蟺慰蠀 伪谓 魏伪蟿伪位维尾蔚喂蟼 魏伪喂 蟽蠀谓畏胃委蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰谓 蟿蟻蠈蟺慰 伪蠁萎纬畏蟽萎蟼 蟿慰蠀 胃伪 蟽蔚 魏维谓蔚喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 纬蔚位维蟼. 螠蔚 苇尉蠀蟺谓慰, 蟺慰谓畏蟻蠈, 伪位位维 魏伪喂 未喂伪蠂蟻慰谓喂魏蠈 蠂喂慰蠉渭慰蟻 魏伪蟿维蠁蔚蟻蔚 谓伪 渭蔚委谓蔚喂 蟺维谓蟿伪 蔚蟺委魏伪喂蟻慰 魏伪喂 蟿伪蠀蟿蠈蠂蟻慰谓伪 蟺喂慰 渭蟺蟻慰蟽蟿维 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 蔚蟺慰蠂萎 蟺慰蠀 未喂伪尾维味蔚蟿伪喂 (伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 蟿蠋蟻伪!).
违.螕.1 螚 渭蔚蟿维蠁蟻伪蟽畏 蟿畏蟼 螆蠁畏蟼 螝伪位位喂蠁伪蟿委未畏 蔚委谓伪喂 纬喂伪 维位位畏 渭喂伪 蠁慰蟻维 蔚魏蟺位畏魏蟿喂魏萎.
违.螕.2 螉蟽蠅蟼 胃伪 蔚魏蟿喂渭畏胃蔚委 蟺伪蟻伪蟺维谓蠅 伪蟺蠈 维蟿慰渭伪 蟺慰蠀 苇蠂慰蠀谓 未喂伪尾维蟽蔚喂 蟿慰谓 螖慰谓 螝喂蠂蠋蟿畏 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 蠀蟺维蟻蠂慰蠀谓 蟺慰位位苇蟼 伪谓伪蠁慰蟻苇蟼 蟽蟿慰 蠈谓慰渭伪 魏伪喂 蟽蟿畏谓 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委伪 蟿慰蠀 伪位位维 蔚蟺委蟽畏蟼 魏伪喂 纬喂伪蟿委 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 渭喂渭蔚委蟿伪喂 慰喂魏蔚喂慰胃蔚位蠋蟼 蟿慰 伪蠁畏纬畏渭伪蟿喂魏蠈 蟿慰蠀 蟽蟿蠀位.
螒蠀蟿萎谓 畏 委蟽蠅蟼 蟺伪喂蠂谓喂未喂维蟻喂魏畏 渭伪蟿喂维, 蟿慰 渭维位位慰谓 蟺慰谓畏蟻蠈 蟿慰蠀 蠂伪渭蠈纬蔚位慰 魏伪喂 纬蔚谓喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻伪 蟿慰 蠉蠁慰蟼 蟿慰蠀, 渭蔚蟿伪蠁苇蟻蔚蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 渭蔚蟿伪蟿蟻苇蟺蔚蟿伪喂 蟽蟿慰 蠉蠁慰蟼 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀.
螕蟻伪渭渭苇谓慰 蟿慰谓 18慰 伪喂蠋谓伪, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蠈蟺蠅蟼 渭伪蟼 伪谓伪蠁苇蟻蔚喂 慰 委未喂慰蟼 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 蟽蟿畏谓 蔚喂蟽伪纬蠅纬萎 蟿慰蠀 苇蠂蔚喂 苇谓伪谓 魏伪喂 渭蠈谓慰 蟽魏慰蟺蠈. 螡伪 魏维谓蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏 谓伪 蠂伪渭慰纬蔚位维蟽蔚喂. 螝维蟿喂 蟿慰 慰蟺慰委慰 蟽蔚 苇渭蔚谓伪 蟺苇蟿蠀蠂蔚 魏伪喂 渭蔚 蟿慰 蟺伪蟻伪蟺维谓蠅.
螌蟺蠅蟼 渭伪蟼 蟺位畏蟻慰蠁慰蟻蔚委 魏伪喂 慰 蟿委蟿位慰蟼, 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 蟺伪蟻慰蠀蟽喂维味蔚喂 蟿畏谓 味蠅萎 魏伪喂 蟿喂蟼 伪蟺蠈蠄蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 韦巍螜危韦巍螒螠 危螒螡韦螜. 螆谓伪谓 萎蟻蠅伪 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 伪蟻蠂萎 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀 渭伪蟼 蟽蠀蟽蟿萎谓蔚喂 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 蟺伪蟿苇蟻伪 蟿慰蠀, 蟿慰谓 胃蔚委慰 蟿慰蠀 魏伪喂 未喂维蠁慰蟻伪 维位位伪 慰喂魏慰纬蔚谓蔚喂伪魏维 蟺蟻蠈蟽蠅蟺伪 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 伪魏蠈渭伪 谓伪 苇蠂蔚喂 纬蔚谓谓畏胃蔚委. 螕喂伪 蟿畏谓 伪魏蟻委尾蔚喂伪 慰 萎蟻蠅伪蟼 伪蠀蟿蠈蟼, 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 蟽蠉渭蠁蠅谓伪 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 蟿委蟿位慰 胃伪 苇蟺蟻蔚蟺蔚 谓伪 蔚委谓伪喂 慰 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎蟼, 纬蔚谓谓喂苇蟿伪喂 渭蔚蟿维 蟿畏谓 渭苇蟽畏 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀. (螖畏位伪未萎 蟺蔚蟻委蟺慰蠀 蟽蟿畏谓 400 蟽蔚位委未伪 伪蟺蠈 蟿喂蟼 700). 螕蔚谓喂魏蠈蟿蔚蟻伪 胃伪 苇位蔚纬伪 蠈蟿喂 未蔚谓 蔚渭蠁伪谓委味蔚蟿伪喂 魏伪喂 蟺慰位蠉鈥� 螡伪喂, 伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 慰 蟿委蟿位慰蟼 蟽蔚 伪蠀蟿蠈 蟿慰 尾喂尾位委慰 苇蠂蔚喂 蟽魏慰蟺蠈 谓伪 魏维谓蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏 谓伪 纬蔚位维蟽蔚喂, 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 未蔚谓 伪谓蟿伪蟺慰魏蟻委谓蔚蟿伪喂 蔚蟺伪蟻魏蠋蟼 渭蔚 蟿慰 蟺蔚蟻喂蔚蠂蠈渭蔚谓慰 蟿慰蠀 尾喂尾位委慰蠀.
韦慰 尾喂尾位委慰 胃伪 苇位蔚纬伪 未蔚谓 苇蠂蔚喂 蟽蠀纬魏蔚魏蟻喂渭苇谓畏 蟺位慰魏萎 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 蟺伪蟻慰蠀蟽喂维味蔚喂 魏蠀蟻委蠅蟼 未喂维蠁慰蟻蔚蟼 蟽魏畏谓苇蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 味蠅萎 蟿慰蠀 蟺伪蟿苇蟻伪 魏伪喂 蟿慰蠀 胃蔚委慰蠀 蟿慰蠀 芦蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎禄. 螣喂 伪蠁畏纬萎蟽蔚喂蟼 伪蠀蟿苇蟼 未喂伪魏蠈蟺蟿慰谓蟿伪喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟽蠂蠈位喂伪 魏伪喂 蟺伪蟻伪蟿畏蟻萎蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰蠀 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪, 慰 慰蟺慰委慰蟼 蟺伪委蟻谓慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟿慰谓 蟻蠈位慰 蟿慰蠀 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎/蟺伪蟻伪蟿畏蟻畏蟿萎/伪蠁畏纬畏蟿萎 韦巍螜危韦巍螒螠 危螒螡韦螜 蟽蠂慰位喂维味蔚喂 魏伪喂 蟽伪蟿喂蟻委味蔚喂 蟽蠂蔚未蠈谓 蟿伪 蟺维谓蟿伪.
螣 Laurence Sterne 蟺蔚蟻喂纬蟻维蠁蔚喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟽蟿蔚委蔚蟼 魏伪蟿伪蟽蟿维蟽蔚喂蟼 魏伪喂 纬蔚位慰委蔚蟼 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委蔚蟼 渭蔚 蠁喂位慰蟽慰蠁喂魏蠈 蟺蔚蟻喂蔚蠂蠈渭蔚谓慰 (渭蔚 渭喂伪 胃蔚蟻尾伪谓蟿喂魏萎 蟽慰尾伪蟻蠈蟿畏蟿伪) 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 尉蔚蠁蔚蠉纬蔚喂 伪蟺蠈 蟿伪 蠈蟻喂伪. 危伪蟿喂蟻委味慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟿伪 蟺维谓蟿伪 芦伪蟺慰未蔚喂魏谓蠉蔚喂禄 蟺蠈蟽慰 蟽畏渭伪谓蟿喂魏蠈 蔚委谓伪喂 蟿慰 蠈谓慰渭伪 伪位位维 魏伪喂 蟿慰 渭苇纬蔚胃慰蟼 蟿畏蟼 渭蠉蟿畏蟼 纬喂伪 蟿畏谓 蟺慰蟻蔚委伪 蔚谓蠈蟼 伪谓胃蟻蠋蟺慰蠀 魏伪蟿伪未喂魏维味慰谓蟿伪蟼 蟽蟿畏谓 蟽蠀谓苇蠂蔚喂伪 蟿慰谓 芦维蟿蠀蠂慰 蟺蟻蠅蟿伪纬蠅谓喂蟽蟿萎禄.
螒谓慰委纬蔚喂 蟺慰位位苇蟼 蟺伪蟻蔚谓胃苇蟽蔚喂蟼 蟺蔚蟻谓蠋谓蟿伪蟼 伪蟺蠈 蟿慰 胃苇渭伪 螒 蟽蟿慰 螔, 慰喂 慰蟺慰委蔚蟼 未喂伪蟻魏慰蠉谓 伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 慰位蠈魏位畏蟻伪 魏蔚蠁维位伪喂伪 (萎 魏伪喂 蟺蔚蟻喂蟽蟽蠈蟿蔚蟻伪). 危蟿畏谓 蟽蠀谓苇蠂蔚喂伪 尉蔚魏喂谓维蔚喂 魏伪喂谓慰蠉蟻喂慰 魏蔚蠁维位伪喂慰 渭蔚 渭喂伪 渭蠈谓慰 蟺蟻蠈蟿伪蟽畏 蟺蟻慰魏蔚喂渭苇谓慰蠀 谓伪 蔚谓畏渭蔚蟻蠋蟽蔚喂 蟿慰 魏慰喂谓蠈 蠈蟿喂 蔚蟺喂蟽蟿蟻苇蠁蔚喂 蟽蟿慰 胃苇渭伪 螒.
螒蠁萎谓蔚喂 魏蔚谓维 蟽蟿喂蟼 蟽蔚位委未蔚蟼 萎 蟽蔚 蟺蟻慰蟿维蟽蔚喂蟼 蟺蟻慰魏蔚喂渭苇谓慰蠀 谓伪 蟽蠀渭蟺位畏蟻蠋蟽蔚喂 慰 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏蟼 蠈蟺蠅蟼 伪蠀蟿蠈蟼 蔚蟺喂胃蠀渭蔚委 魏伪喂 纬蔚谓喂魏维 蠀蟺维蟻蠂蔚喂 渭喂伪 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 伪蟽蟿蔚委伪 蔚蟺喂魏慰喂谓蠅谓委伪 渭蔚蟿伪尉蠉 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪- 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏.
韦苇位慰蟼, 位维蟿蟻蔚蠄伪 蟿慰谓 蟿蟻蠈蟺慰 渭蔚 蟿慰谓 慰蟺慰委慰 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 魏伪蟿维蠁蔚蟻蔚 谓伪 伪蠁萎蟽蔚喂 蟺慰谓畏蟻维 蠀蟺慰谓慰慰蠉渭蔚谓伪 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 纬委谓蔚喂 蠂蠀未伪委慰蟼 魏伪喂 蠂蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 蟺蟻慰蟽尾维位蔚喂 蟿慰谓 伪谓伪纬谓蠋蟽蟿畏.
螘尉伪喂蟻蔚蟿喂魏蠈 尾喂尾位委慰 蟺慰蠀 伪谓 魏伪蟿伪位维尾蔚喂蟼 魏伪喂 蟽蠀谓畏胃委蟽蔚喂蟼 蟿慰谓 蟿蟻蠈蟺慰 伪蠁萎纬畏蟽萎蟼 蟿慰蠀 胃伪 蟽蔚 魏维谓蔚喂 蟽蠀谓蔚蠂蠋蟼 纬蔚位维蟼. 螠蔚 苇尉蠀蟺谓慰, 蟺慰谓畏蟻蠈, 伪位位维 魏伪喂 未喂伪蠂蟻慰谓喂魏蠈 蠂喂慰蠉渭慰蟻 魏伪蟿维蠁蔚蟻蔚 谓伪 渭蔚委谓蔚喂 蟺维谓蟿伪 蔚蟺委魏伪喂蟻慰 魏伪喂 蟿伪蠀蟿蠈蠂蟻慰谓伪 蟺喂慰 渭蟺蟻慰蟽蟿维 伪蟺蠈 蟿畏谓 蔚蟺慰蠂萎 蟺慰蠀 未喂伪尾维味蔚蟿伪喂 (伪魏蠈渭伪 魏伪喂 蟿蠋蟻伪!).
违.螕.1 螚 渭蔚蟿维蠁蟻伪蟽畏 蟿畏蟼 螆蠁畏蟼 螝伪位位喂蠁伪蟿委未畏 蔚委谓伪喂 纬喂伪 维位位畏 渭喂伪 蠁慰蟻维 蔚魏蟺位畏魏蟿喂魏萎.
违.螕.2 螉蟽蠅蟼 胃伪 蔚魏蟿喂渭畏胃蔚委 蟺伪蟻伪蟺维谓蠅 伪蟺蠈 维蟿慰渭伪 蟺慰蠀 苇蠂慰蠀谓 未喂伪尾维蟽蔚喂 蟿慰谓 螖慰谓 螝喂蠂蠋蟿畏 渭喂伪蟼 魏伪喂 蠀蟺维蟻蠂慰蠀谓 蟺慰位位苇蟼 伪谓伪蠁慰蟻苇蟼 蟽蟿慰 蠈谓慰渭伪 魏伪喂 蟽蟿畏谓 喂蟽蟿慰蟻委伪 蟿慰蠀 伪位位维 蔚蟺委蟽畏蟼 魏伪喂 纬喂伪蟿委 慰 蟽蠀纬纬蟻伪蠁苇伪蟼 渭喂渭蔚委蟿伪喂 慰喂魏蔚喂慰胃蔚位蠋蟼 蟿慰 伪蠁畏纬畏渭伪蟿喂魏蠈 蟿慰蠀 蟽蟿蠀位.
September 7, 2023
L鈥攄! said my mother, what is all this story about?鈥�
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick 鈥擜nd one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick 鈥擜nd one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.
June 7, 2018
螤慰位蠉 喂未喂伪委蟿蔚蟻慰-蟺蟻蠅蟿蠈蟿蠀蟺慰 尾喂尾位委慰.
螛伪 渭蟺慰蟻慰蠉蟽蔚 谓伪 伪谓萎魏蔚喂 蟽蟿畏谓 蔚尉萎蟼 蠁伪谓蟿伪蟽蟿喂魏萎 蟿蟻喂位慰纬委伪:
- 螕伪蟻纬伪谓蟿慰蠉伪蟼 魏伪喂 螤伪谓蟿伪纬魏蟻蠀苇位
- 韦蟻委蟽蟿蟻伪渭 危维谓蟿喂
- 螣未蠀蟽蟽苇伪蟼
围蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 苇蠂蔚喂 魏维蟿喂 伪尉喂慰蟽畏渭蔚委蠅蟿慰 蟽蟿畏谓 蟺位慰魏萎 蟿慰蠀, 蟺伪蟻蠈位伪 伪蠀蟿维 蔚委谓伪喂 未喂伪蟽魏蔚未伪蟽蟿喂魏蠈 魏伪喂 渭蔚 蟽蠀蠂谓苇蟼 未蠈蟽蔚喂蟼 蠁喂位慰蟽慰蠁委伪蟼.
螛伪 渭蟺慰蟻慰蠉蟽蔚 谓伪 伪谓萎魏蔚喂 蟽蟿畏谓 蔚尉萎蟼 蠁伪谓蟿伪蟽蟿喂魏萎 蟿蟻喂位慰纬委伪:
- 螕伪蟻纬伪谓蟿慰蠉伪蟼 魏伪喂 螤伪谓蟿伪纬魏蟻蠀苇位
- 韦蟻委蟽蟿蟻伪渭 危维谓蟿喂
- 螣未蠀蟽蟽苇伪蟼
围蠅蟻委蟼 谓伪 苇蠂蔚喂 魏维蟿喂 伪尉喂慰蟽畏渭蔚委蠅蟿慰 蟽蟿畏谓 蟺位慰魏萎 蟿慰蠀, 蟺伪蟻蠈位伪 伪蠀蟿维 蔚委谓伪喂 未喂伪蟽魏蔚未伪蟽蟿喂魏蠈 魏伪喂 渭蔚 蟽蠀蠂谓苇蟼 未蠈蟽蔚喂蟼 蠁喂位慰蟽慰蠁委伪蟼.
October 28, 2019
- A glorious comedy of errors,
- A story on storytellers and storytelling,
- A riot of authorial asides, silly interruptions and hilarious direct adresses to you reader,
- A portrait of the writer as an outstanding conversationalist :)
Soundtrack :
Lillibullero - Barry Lyndon OST
- A story on storytellers and storytelling,
- A riot of authorial asides, silly interruptions and hilarious direct adresses to you reader,
- A portrait of the writer as an outstanding conversationalist :)
Soundtrack :
Lillibullero - Barry Lyndon OST
March 16, 2018
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel that is somehow greatly entertaining and impossibly infuriating at the same time.
Tristram, our narrator and author, is quite partial to tangents. Actually, no. A true tangent has to touch the circle at one point. Tristram completely bypasses the circle. This is a novel about a man trying to write a novel. However, he is quite easily distracted. Just when there's a bare semblance of a plot, Tristram goes off on a reel about something else. For example: Tristram tries to write about his birth, he goes slightly off-topic, we finally witness his birth around page 150.
For some, this novel would be absolute hell. And at points, I was of that mindset. But then Sterne would come through with some of the most ridiculous and hilarious scenes that all is eventually forgiven. There are chapters in here that are some of the funniest I've ever read (Tristram's accidental circumcision for example). And these parts really prop up the entire novel. It is first and foremost a farce and a social satire, or a cock and bull story.
If you are thinking of tackling Tristram Shandy then in the words of the Scouts: be prepared. You'll hate this novel and you'll love this novel. In the end they'll balance out. That dichotomy is something of Tristram's HOBBY-HORSE.
Tristram, our narrator and author, is quite partial to tangents. Actually, no. A true tangent has to touch the circle at one point. Tristram completely bypasses the circle. This is a novel about a man trying to write a novel. However, he is quite easily distracted. Just when there's a bare semblance of a plot, Tristram goes off on a reel about something else. For example: Tristram tries to write about his birth, he goes slightly off-topic, we finally witness his birth around page 150.
For some, this novel would be absolute hell. And at points, I was of that mindset. But then Sterne would come through with some of the most ridiculous and hilarious scenes that all is eventually forgiven. There are chapters in here that are some of the funniest I've ever read (Tristram's accidental circumcision for example). And these parts really prop up the entire novel. It is first and foremost a farce and a social satire, or a cock and bull story.
If you are thinking of tackling Tristram Shandy then in the words of the Scouts: be prepared. You'll hate this novel and you'll love this novel. In the end they'll balance out. That dichotomy is something of Tristram's HOBBY-HORSE.
June 21, 2011
There is so much in this novel one hardly knows where to begin, which is Sterne's hilarious problem for the first 300 pages or so. Tristram Shandy is a comic masterpiece, like Fielding's Tom Jones, which arose barely after the invention of the genre. Even Sterne's name almost seems a play on words and it's easy to see why great minds who followed Sterne like Nietzsche (Note "The Ass Festival" in Zarathustra), Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), James Joyce (Ulysses) and J.P. Donleavy (Darcy Dancer, Gentleman, The Singular Man, Balthazar B., The Ginger Man, Saddest Summer of Samuel S.) admired immensely and were influenced by him. One has to love the way that Toby explains to Mrs. Wadman where he was wounded during one of her sieges of his fortress. One has to laugh at Sterne's tearing out of chapters, allowing the reader to pencil in his favorite profanities, making sense of pages of black ink, marbled patterns, blank pages and squiggled lines marking little ups and downs -- as obscure as the raw meaning of life itself. He writes chapters about whiskers, noses, buttons and nothing. I especially enjoyed the dedications to famous persons before several of his volumes. The epigrams were delicious and the careful reader is rewarded on every page for paying close attention to Sterne's often subtle comic style. Sterne certainly opened up the genre with an experimental literary style in which he created a vibrant, raucous, hilarious novel still relevant 300 years after it was penned. I can't say enough about the contribution of this comic gem to the literary works that followed, especially in Ireland. If you're a serious reader with a sense of humor, you'll be amused and enlightened by Sterne's intrepid wit.
Read
July 29, 2022Like with so many other readers, this early-modern book (1759-1767) in me aroused feelings of alternating irritation and amusement. The irritation of course is related to the endless digressions, which Sterne consciously uses as a figure of style, but which does at times drive you crazy. And the amusement especially has to do with the comical situations he describes, the small human features of his characters, and the pseudo-learned style in which this book is written. The humorous elements tumble over each other, and drive the satirical content of this book almost to the level of the Don Quixote. It should not come as a surprise that the references to Cervantes and Rabelais are often very explicit.
I must confess that I have not read this book in its entirety (that's why I don't give it a rating). After the first two volumes I skipped large parts, but I kept reading until the end. And then I noticed that Sterne's digressions became somewhat more limited, that he referred much more frequently to his own poor health, and that his life story became more and more a travelogue. Only the antipathetic, often misogynistic statements of his father, and the military hobby horse of his much more sympathetic uncle Toby, remain recurring elements.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often identified as the first writer to write a true autobiography (in his Confessions). It was published in 1770. With this Tristram Shandy Sterne was almost 10 years ahead of him, but at the same time it is a mockery of a genre that would one day come firmly into the canon of Western literature.
I must confess that I have not read this book in its entirety (that's why I don't give it a rating). After the first two volumes I skipped large parts, but I kept reading until the end. And then I noticed that Sterne's digressions became somewhat more limited, that he referred much more frequently to his own poor health, and that his life story became more and more a travelogue. Only the antipathetic, often misogynistic statements of his father, and the military hobby horse of his much more sympathetic uncle Toby, remain recurring elements.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often identified as the first writer to write a true autobiography (in his Confessions). It was published in 1770. With this Tristram Shandy Sterne was almost 10 years ahead of him, but at the same time it is a mockery of a genre that would one day come firmly into the canon of Western literature.
February 16, 2021
Sterne invented a certain kind of modernity--the sexually allusive, apparently offhand, discontinuous, immediate....His prose, often written under the burden of tuberculosis, and even the despair of his wife, achieves an appearance that is genial and carefree. Uncle Toby is one of the great characters in English fiction.
Sterne confesses that the more he writes, the further behind in the story he gets. A wonderful concept, and true for an expansive mind like his. One can think of others for whom this may also be true: Joyce, in particular. But possibly also TS Eliot. John Updike? Whitman? Carl Sandburg in his poetry, not in his Lincoln.
Remarkably Sterne wrote a quarter millenium ago, yet his truest confreres are fairly recent. Perhaps more remarkably, Sterne set the standard for hilarity, an unsurpassed standard for clerical humor. Did I say that? Surely his humor is not clerical, yet he was a cleric. Just as surely, Robert Herrick's poetry, except in his Noble Numbers, is not clerical, though he was a cleric. And John Donne's poetry.
Oh dear, we have stumbled on the English Conundrum. It is inconceivable for a priest--an Irish priest, an Italian priest--to have written Tristram Shandy. Even America, which also educated principally ministers, failed to produce clerically-educated, literary humor like Sterne's.
A clergyman, Sterne certainly knew how seriousness was enhanced by stance and by robes. Robes can carry the cleric who "carries" (or wears) them. Thus, he defines seriousness, "Gravity [is] a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind."* Yorick says this proverb should be graven in gold. Robes add to the mysteriousness of the carriage, and the hiding of mental defect.
* Probably adapted from LaRochefoucauld, Maximes, 257.
As a note, my undergrad Shakespeare teacher (38 plays in year course) Theodore Baird wrote an article on Sterne, "The time scheme of TS and a source" which may have been published in the Norton Critical TS. (Baird owned the only FL Wright house in New England, built in 1940 for $5,000. Still stands at 37 Shays Street, Amherst, MA.)
Sterne confesses that the more he writes, the further behind in the story he gets. A wonderful concept, and true for an expansive mind like his. One can think of others for whom this may also be true: Joyce, in particular. But possibly also TS Eliot. John Updike? Whitman? Carl Sandburg in his poetry, not in his Lincoln.
Remarkably Sterne wrote a quarter millenium ago, yet his truest confreres are fairly recent. Perhaps more remarkably, Sterne set the standard for hilarity, an unsurpassed standard for clerical humor. Did I say that? Surely his humor is not clerical, yet he was a cleric. Just as surely, Robert Herrick's poetry, except in his Noble Numbers, is not clerical, though he was a cleric. And John Donne's poetry.
Oh dear, we have stumbled on the English Conundrum. It is inconceivable for a priest--an Irish priest, an Italian priest--to have written Tristram Shandy. Even America, which also educated principally ministers, failed to produce clerically-educated, literary humor like Sterne's.
A clergyman, Sterne certainly knew how seriousness was enhanced by stance and by robes. Robes can carry the cleric who "carries" (or wears) them. Thus, he defines seriousness, "Gravity [is] a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind."* Yorick says this proverb should be graven in gold. Robes add to the mysteriousness of the carriage, and the hiding of mental defect.
* Probably adapted from LaRochefoucauld, Maximes, 257.
As a note, my undergrad Shakespeare teacher (38 plays in year course) Theodore Baird wrote an article on Sterne, "The time scheme of TS and a source" which may have been published in the Norton Critical TS. (Baird owned the only FL Wright house in New England, built in 1940 for $5,000. Still stands at 37 Shays Street, Amherst, MA.)
October 16, 2022
Tristram Shandy鈥檚 life story, or would be if the said Shandy could stop digressing. I discovered this eighteenth century bawdy satire while at university a million years ago and fell in love with it. All these years later it remains a fun read, but it has lost some of its magic for me. If you have never read it, it is definitely worth doing so. The five stars I would have given it back then has become a solid three.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,757 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.