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theanitaalvarez 's review for:
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
by Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy is probably the most post-modern book I’ve ever read. And it was written in the 1700s. So, yes, it is also a very weird book.
The premise for this book is pretty well-known: a man decides to tell his entire life, beginning from his birth. The thing is that the events of the day Tristram was born can only be explained by referring to events that happened before that. So… we get a really long book of “digressions” as he calls it. And it’s absolutely hilarious (in the sense of what a literature nerd can find hilarious, of course). Even if it’s not an easy book to read (the narrator beats around the bushes for almost the entire book), I actually had a lot of fun reading it.
Tristram is a funny narrator, but the other characters he describes in his story are no less amusing. I enjoyed particularly the bits that talked about his uncle Toby, who is supposed to be an old veteran of some war or another. And he’s funny because he relates everything in life with military terms. Though Walter Shandy, Tristram’s father, is another good one. I mean, his comments about life and death and education are great.
Of course, there are a lot of weird things in Tristram Shandy. At some points he illustrates what he is referring to (there are great drawings to express his disgressions, really) and there’s a point in which he adds a black page to mourn for the death of a character who dies (Yorick, the priest. And yes, his name alludes to Hamlet). There are chapters that are merely a paragraph, or even a line. See what I mean when I say that this book is very post-modern? I really mean it.
Most of the action here is centered around the birth. I think that Sterne might be trying to create some sort of parallel with the idea of writing. As his mother is giving birth to him, Tristam is trying to give birth to a great work of literature (which he does). Both enterprises are long, arduous and exhausting (in different ways, of course, but both are draining). I guess there is some sort of metafiction aspect in the whole book, given the fact that Tristram is constantly pointing at the medium he’s using (there’s a moment in which he directly addresses a female reader and tells her to reread the previous chapter). In a way, Sterne in this book predates the postmodern awareness of the medium and breaking the fourth wall (though, in this case, I’d say that more than breaking it, he smashes it to pieces). This book was a pleasant surprise, after all.
I’d recommend that if you want to give Tristram a try, get a very annotated version (the one I read, which I took from my university’s library, is the Penguin Classics’ edition and has lots of notes). The book constantly makes references to other books and so on, so if you haven’t brushed up your classics in a while, the notes are very useful.
The premise for this book is pretty well-known: a man decides to tell his entire life, beginning from his birth. The thing is that the events of the day Tristram was born can only be explained by referring to events that happened before that. So… we get a really long book of “digressions” as he calls it. And it’s absolutely hilarious (in the sense of what a literature nerd can find hilarious, of course). Even if it’s not an easy book to read (the narrator beats around the bushes for almost the entire book), I actually had a lot of fun reading it.
Tristram is a funny narrator, but the other characters he describes in his story are no less amusing. I enjoyed particularly the bits that talked about his uncle Toby, who is supposed to be an old veteran of some war or another. And he’s funny because he relates everything in life with military terms. Though Walter Shandy, Tristram’s father, is another good one. I mean, his comments about life and death and education are great.
Of course, there are a lot of weird things in Tristram Shandy. At some points he illustrates what he is referring to (there are great drawings to express his disgressions, really) and there’s a point in which he adds a black page to mourn for the death of a character who dies (Yorick, the priest. And yes, his name alludes to Hamlet). There are chapters that are merely a paragraph, or even a line. See what I mean when I say that this book is very post-modern? I really mean it.
Most of the action here is centered around the birth. I think that Sterne might be trying to create some sort of parallel with the idea of writing. As his mother is giving birth to him, Tristam is trying to give birth to a great work of literature (which he does). Both enterprises are long, arduous and exhausting (in different ways, of course, but both are draining). I guess there is some sort of metafiction aspect in the whole book, given the fact that Tristram is constantly pointing at the medium he’s using (there’s a moment in which he directly addresses a female reader and tells her to reread the previous chapter). In a way, Sterne in this book predates the postmodern awareness of the medium and breaking the fourth wall (though, in this case, I’d say that more than breaking it, he smashes it to pieces). This book was a pleasant surprise, after all.
I’d recommend that if you want to give Tristram a try, get a very annotated version (the one I read, which I took from my university’s library, is the Penguin Classics’ edition and has lots of notes). The book constantly makes references to other books and so on, so if you haven’t brushed up your classics in a while, the notes are very useful.