The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne. 1. Impressions of Volumes One and Two.

CONCEPT

Laurence Sterne

My impression at this point is disordered, though not objectively so. Even though I have four days of the week off from work and two weeks to spend on Tristram Shandy, I'm still reading one volume each day, with a number of other responsibilities at the same time. There hasn't been a lot of time, then, to go back and clarify uncertainties or even ruminate over what parts of this book might mean.

IF ANY OF YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THIS BOOK, I WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR YOU TO SHARE YOUR INSIGHTS.

Anyway...

FIRST impression: DIGRESSION AND EXPANSE

The choice of the title, "the life and opinions of..." seems to the point, although I almost wonder if "the opinions and life of..." would not be more to the point.

First, allowing for the expansiveness of eighteenth-century prose, most of Tristram Shandy tends towards deliberate excess. The easiest examples are the digressions, which include expositions on Tristram's father Walter philosophy or his Uncle Toby's fascination with military fortifications after being wounded in battle. But I think an equally (or more) compelling example is in the prose. Whereas the chapters-long digressions broadly impact the tone, steering it towards alternately conversation of didacticism, the verbosity on the level of sentences and paragraphs has a more elusive function. For example, when Tristram discusses the manner in which Corporal Trim delivers Yoricks sermon:

He stood before them with his body swayed, and bend forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the horizon; --- which sound orators, to whom I address this, now very well, to be the true persuasive angle of incidence; -- in any other angle you may talk and preach; -- 'tis certain, -- and it is done every day; --but with what effect, -- I leave the world to judge!
The necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a half to a mathematical exactness, -- does it not shew us, by the way, -- how the arts and sciences mutually befriend each other?
How the duce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much as an acute angle from an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly; -- or whether it was chance or nature, or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented upon in that part of this cyclopaedia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, the bar, the coffee-house, the bedchamber, and fire-side, fall under consideration.

And so on, for another page-and-a-half. It is transparent that such passages are parodies, and that they affect our understanding of the narrative voice as well as the tone of the piece. They do not, however, contribute to our understanding of plot and character in the same way that the digressions do. This raises three questions:

Question: To what extent does this verbosity criticize the prose it parodies?

Question: Who, specifically, is being parodied?

Question: Does the verbosity serve any section in the text beyond parody?

SECOND impression: THERE IS A PLOT

I've heard some people say that this is a novel without a plot. I don't believe in novel's without plots (that's what makes them novels instead of meditations or homilies), I simply think that some definitions of "plot" are too narrow and unyielding to accommodate all novels.

That said, I don't think Tristram Shandy quite as freewheeling in this respect as I've heard. Notwithstanding how radical it was at the time of its publication (and the fact that it predicts many of the many literary experiments of the 20th century), there's nothing in its lack-of-plot-ness to rival, say, Markson's This is Not a Novel. I draw this conclusion partly from the division of the volumes.

While they each contain numerous (and debatably unrelated) digressions, and carefully preserve the sense of disorganization by ending both mid-thought and mid-speech, there is still a defining arc and action to each volume that is the beginning of most conservative definitions of "plot."

In Volume 1, this is the disaster of Tristram's conception, which occurs on the very first page. The conception 1) predicts Tristram's birth, the point we arrive at upon the end of the volume, 2) establishes a topic of debate, namely the fact that transparently innocent individuals will be manipulated and deceived, and 3) establishes a context in which the subject can be debated by a variety of characters. This "debate" does not happen in the traditional sense of action and reaction causing tension between characters: the statements, dialogues, and meditations are cobbled together. There is however a unity of presentation.

In some ways Tristram Shandy better adheres to a classical models that it's critics were most-likely vamping off. Namely, that an individual or situation is brought up not chronologically nor in relation to a specific unfolding situation, but when its inclusion is most useful to comment on the situation at hand.

This, alone, I think is sufficient argument that the novel has a plot, however, the fact that it meanders from Tristram's conception at the beginning of the first volume to his birth at the end, and that the second is completely concerned with the day of Tristram's birth, implies a chronological progression of events, even if the actual digressions to not bear this out.

As I said, I'm still at sea here. Please comment with any and all thoughts.

END OF POST.