Sterne published ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman in 9 volumes between 1759 – 1766 at a time when the English novel was in its infancy – only a very few well-known texts pre-date it, notably, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Pamela (1714), Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Clarissa (1748). Most of Sterne’s predecessors utilized a diary or epistolary format, yet it is clear he wanted to experiment and even parody the new form and its avid readers. His predecessors were keen to tell a story through the eyes of the central character; thus, early novels have a discernible plot. Sterne dispenses with plot: Tristram Shandy is not for the faint-hearted.
The Unreliable Narrator
Tristram Shandy purports to have a plot, a story to tell, and, to a great extent, that is part of Sterne’s running gag at the expense of the poor befuddled reader. Sterne seems intrigued by the opportunity for character delineation afforded by first person narration, and with the process of narration itself as a literary device. He plays with the relationship that a fictional narrator may have with the reader. Tristram is a very unreliable and frustrating narrator.
He trifles with convention. For example, the reader address was a common and accepted inclusion in narrative, but Sterne (in the first person guise of Tristram) sends it soaring into the absurd:
“In the beginning of the last chapter, I informed you exactly when I was born; but I did not inform you how. No, that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.”
The reader soon learns that the narrator Tristram just can’t stick to one story – he goes off on wild tangents about anything. Thus, he leaves a piece of dialogue mid-sentence and does not come back to complete it for 60 pages. Sterne is having a lend of the reader.
The Physical Book as Nexus between Author and Reader
Sterne also seems intrigued by the physical book as nexus between writer and reader. He never allows you to forget that the book is a physical entity. In a foreshadowing of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (audience distancing), Sterne seems determined to drag the reader back out of the illusion of the created world to say: ’Ha ha…you’re just reading words on a page, silly.’ Consequently he leaves a page blank and invites the reader to draw an illustration of a particular scene; he prints an entire black page when Yorick the village parson dies [Swarthmore College’s Tristram Shandy website indicates that Yorick is seen as Sterne’s self-portrait – he was himself a parson].
Sterne draws attention to the text repeatedly: he deliberately leaves out a chapter and changes page numbers, misplaces another chapter and has some chapters which are one line or one short sentence only. He pauses at one point to draw a diagram of the plot so far and occasionally doodles on the page.
The whole is a very funny, if frustrating, exploration of the nexus between writer and reader and the product that each must share – the physical pages.
Satire in Sterne’s Novel
Sterne satirises almost everything – sermons, past philosophical works, passages that he virtually plagiarises and also sends up other writers and literary conventions. In one infamous passage, he takes the practice of asterisking out rude words to a ludicrous conclusion:
The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:—Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand,as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** *** ** *** ******?
I was five years old.—Susannah did not consider that nothing
was well hung in our family,—so slap came the sash down
like lightning upon us;—Nothing is left,—cried Susannah,—
nothing is left—for me, but to run my country.—
My uncle Toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so Susannah fled to it.
Any reading of Tristram Shandy is best done in light of the above discussion: it is a literary romp. It has no rules and breaks what few literary conventions were emerging. It is essentially Tristram’s autobiography, yet the autobiographical details are restricted to his conception, birth, accidental circumcision and very little else. The rest is waffle – much of it extremely entertaining, some of it tedious. Some readers will find Tristram Shandy worth the considerable effort it requires. Others won’t get past the first few pages. The text, as accessed and quoted for this article, is freely available on Project Gutenberg.
Sources:
- Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Project Gutenberg, release date: August 3, 2008.
