Tristram Shandy
by Laurence Sterne(1767)
Novelc. 550 pages
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”
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by Laurence Sterne(1767)
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”
Laurence Sterne(1767)
Laurence Sterne's 1759-1767 novel tells the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, beginning before his own conception and barely reaching his birth by volume three. Digressions become the method; the narrative constantly doubles back on itself; a black page mourns a death; a marbled page represents life's variety. Sterne anticipated every postmodern trick by two centuries and made it all funny. The novel is about the impossibility of storytelling and demonstrates that impossibility is itself a story worth telling.