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    Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
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    Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
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    Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
    Ebook827 pages13 hours

    Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey

    By Laurence Sterne

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Tristram Shandy provoked a literary sensation when it first appeared in a series of installments between 1759 and 1767. The ribald, high-spirited book prompted Diderot to hail Sterne as 'the English Rabelais.' An ingeniously structured novel (about writing a novel) that fascinates like a verbal game of chess, Tristram Shandy is both a joyful celebration of the infinite possibilities of the art of fiction and a wry demonstration of its limitations. Many view this picaresque masterpiece as the precursor of the modern novel.

    A Sentimental Journey, which came out in 1768, begins as a travelogue. Yet it ends as a treasury of portraits, sketches, and philosophical musings, for as Virginia Woolf observed: 'A Sentimental Journey, for all its levity and wit, is based upon something fundamentally philosophic--the philosophy of pleasure.'
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateFeb 10, 1999
    ISBN9780679641964
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    Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
    Author

    Laurence Sterne

    Irish-born Laurence Sterne was an eighteenth century English author and Anglican clergyman. Though he is perhaps best known as a novelist, Sterne also wrote memoirs, articles on local politics, and a large number of sermons for which he was quite well known during his lifetime. Sterne’s works include The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, and the satire A Political Romance (also known as The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat). Sterne died in 1768 at the age of 54.

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    Reviews for Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey

    4/5

    1,006 ratings45 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Silliness. Stuff and nonsense.
      Inspired, metatextual, unbeatable silliness.
    • 4/5
      It's very funny, but the punctuation style (particularly the lack of speech marks) made it quite difficult to follow in places. Still, I think it was worth the effort.
    • 3/5
      Phew! This book is funny, absurd, and exhausting. And has one of the best last lines ever--but did it need 600 pages to get there? There is so much going on in this novel, yet there is also very little. Tristram isn't even born until well into the book. His father Walter, his mother, his Uncle Toby (who really seems to be the main character), Toby's assistant/corporal Trim, Yorick, Dr Slop, Susanna, the Widow Waldman, Bridget, Obadiah. The war injuries, the mocked up towns in the garden, the doctor vs the midwife, Tristram's broken nose and wrong name, the clothing, the travel in France. Just everything. This is definitely dated based on the number of footnotes needed to explain people/books/events that we today don't know anything about. This makes it somewhat hard to read, as I am sure there are a lot of contextual jokes that even a footnote cannot explain. But this is a very unusual book. Certainly for its time, but also for today.But I am glad to be done.
    • 2/5
      Life is too short. Gave it a shot, but waaaaayyyyyy too many other books that I would prefer to spend my remaining years reading. I'm kinda weird. I like a plot and characters and shit. No sign of either in the early going of this one. Buh-bye.
    • 2/5
      (Original Review, 2002-06-20)Many very good books are not difficult to read--at least for the people who read them and have read them. But books can become difficult when difference of culture, or viewpoint, or language, or elapsed time intervene. Dickens is more difficult now than 150 years ago, and part of the reward of reading Dickens is the learning of how British society has changed. The difficulty of reading Virgil might include learning some Latin; the difficulty of reading Dante might involve at least a parallel text edition.The novel arguably presents a different formal challenge. Its name tells us it is new, and over the three centuries (or more, depending on what you think the first novel was) that it has been in existence. Novels have evolved formally. First person narratives, epistolary assemblages, impersonal authors then all the other novel forms of the novel that a literary historian might tell us about. A telling point about some of these historical accounts is that the writer often announces, in conclusion, that the novel is dead. Well, formalist literary historians can't be expected to write the next novel that defeats critical expectations, can they? That's the job of the novelist.There is a great deal of pleasure in reading a particular novelist one enjoys: that might either be in following a course of lifetime development, or in reading pretty much the same thing over and over again. Nothing wrong either way. But every time you pick up a book with expectations that it might be like the last book of that sort you read, and then you find it isn't, then there is a difficulty. Do you throw it away, or persevere?Obviously you don't want the same book again, but in many ways when you read a series of books by the same author you are getting pretty much the same book again. The difficult challenge comes when you step outside your own comfort zone. You might regret your waste of time and money more than once, but that will be balanced by your pleasure when you enjoy finding something new at least to you. If your bag is formal development of the novel, then discovering a writer who has moved the fictional goalposts a few meters will be even more rewarding.The biggest difficulty about reading is that there is far too much to read, and none of us have very much time, and we are most of us lazy creatures who resist change. If we want difficult books that are worth the time then there is plenty of advice: Dante for example. If we want to pick writers out of the current crop then we should be prepared to kiss plenty of frogs, and if we are really keen to learn another language or two.There are many ways for books to be good and some of those involve being 'difficult'. Ulysses or Tristram Shandy could not be the same if they were written in a more straightforward style. Their difficulty isn't some unfortunate characteristic offsetting their good points; it is intrinsic to their quality. The question you should be asking isn't 'If this book can be great and readable, why aren't all books as easy to read?'. Instead it should be 'are there difficult books that reward the effort?' As the answer is unequivocally yes, some books do need to be difficult.Good books "draw you in", and sometimes that drawing in is through complexity or through a breaking of expectations. Good books make you engage with them and with yourself. An encounter with a good book is similar to an encounter with another person: sometimes it just doesn't work, even though you want it to work. I never made it beyond chapter 2 of Tristram Shandy, despite many efforts ... but not because the book is difficult, but because the encounter just did not play out. Other complex books for me turned out to be true "page turners": Mann's Doctor Faustus and the Magic Mountain, all and any of Henry James, those many volumes of Proust. Few supposedly "readable" novels have the same effect on me, I guess because they do not make me experience a true encounter with something that matters. As to Lawrence Sterne, I had to make do with his "Sentimental Journey", I took it on my work commute for a while, one chapter a day on the train, I still remember those weeks. "Tristram Shandy" I will keep trying, but perhaps it is not meant to be.
    • 4/5
      This book was decidedly strange and extremely inventive. Some parts were very funny and/or subtly bawdy. There were endless digressions about noses, groin injuries and hobby horses (although they may not have really been digressions). It took hundreds of pages just to get through the date of Tristram's birth. I listened to the audiobook read by Anton Lesser and he was very entertaining. I also followed along in the ebook. I think this book needs to be seen since there are all sorts of structural and typographical eccentricities.
    • 5/5
      Published over 8 years 1759-67. Read in 8 years, the first 3 volumes several times! Much easier to finish after appreciating the Sentimental Journey. Now to re-read. The jokes - in the words, typography, presentation - are as awesome as they are unexpected. The Rob Brydon/Steve whatshisname film, A Tale of cock and bull, inspired the reading effort back in 2011.
    • 5/5
      I find it nearly impossible to review this, since it is one of my favorite novels of all time, makes me laugh even on a crowded Boston, MA bus and is apparently a classic that few people read (at least according to the essay in the back of my Signet Classics edition). Walter and Toby Shandy, Doctor Slop and Corporal Trim are as real to me as my bus companions -- more real, in fact, because at least the characters in Tristram Shandy have emotions.
    • 5/5
      This is the funniest and most bonkers book I've ever read. My flatmates thought there was something wrong with me because there'd be all this noise as I stumbled about laughing, followed by silence as I'd have to lay down and rest. You're either wise and in possession of a sense of humour or you're not: you'll either read it or you won't.One volume editions are basically omnibuses of a nine volume work. I split it up and read a volume as and when I fancied it. Worked for me and it aped the original way readers would have come across it. This is a long and intense book. It would be difficult to read it though without flagging. Sterne definitely flags over the writing of it. I understand he was terminally ill at the time. Also, by splitting it you see more clearly how Sterne's meta-position as author shifts as he becomes self-conscious under criticism.A quick word on editions. The 1997 Penguin Classics edition and it's reprints is basically a reprint of the Florida edition (the standard modern edition) but with slightly fewer notes. Very lightly modernised. I recommend it. Whatever edition you go for, make sure it doesn't modernise the punctuation. A lot of the punctuation marks are jokes. Also, try to get an edition with notes. A lot of the jokes are about penises but there's a lot of stuff about John Locke which is frankly over my head.
    • 5/5
      Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no further yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour there may be as many chapters as steps; - let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:Tristram Shandy is one of my father's favourite books and he passed this copy onto me about four years ago. Two days after I started it, I found out that a film (starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Gillian Anderson) has just been made of this notoriously unfilmable novel and has been getting rave reviews at film festivals. It's due out here in the New Year, so reading the book now was very good timing on my part.The shaggy dog story to end all shaggy dog stories. Supposedly the autobiography of Tristram Shandy, it is really a novel about how novel-writing and how a novel can't really hope to represent real life. Hardly a chapter goes by without yet another digression from the main story, as Tristram decides that we really need to know some other bit of background before he can continue with the action, and he only gets round to the author's preface towards the end of volume 3! It is a very funny book but quite heavy going, what with the 18th century language and the plethora of technical terms to do with siege-works causing continual flicking to the notes at the back of the book, so it has taken me getting on for four weeks to read.Favourite character: The wonderfully enthusiastic and sweet-natured Captain Shandy (Tristram's Uncle Toby).Most frustrating digression: Tristram's trip to France, which has nothing to do with the story and takes up the whole of Volume VII, just as he seems on the point of finally getting round to telling the story of Uncle Toby's relationship with widow Wadman. Best use of asterisks: The maid Susanna, who has forgotten to put a ******* *** under the five-year-old Tristram's bed, asking him to **** *** ** *** ******.
    • 5/5
      One of my all-time favourite novels! You would not believe it was written in the 18th century for all the literary experiments it contains (black pages, crazy lines to illustrate the plot development...). Some readers may be frustrated with the rambling narrative, but if it suits your sense of humour like it does mine, you will love it. Really, it's just stark raving mad! Suck it, Martin Amis! This classic kicks some postmodern ass...
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like it, because the persistent drollery kept seeming like it would develop into something really funny, and because the author seemed to be trying so hard, but this book really delivers little.
    • 5/5
      This is an odd novel, with a substantial portion of the content being made up of eccentric digressions and anecdotes from the main characters. There are bits of a storyline, but they seem only secondary to the rest of the book. But, this does not make it a bad novel; it works as well as many novels which have a strong storyline, though this style might not agree with readers who require more momentum.The book is made distinctive by its unusual formatting tricks, which would seem modern in a contemporary book, and must have surprised the eighteenth century reader and contemporary of the author. Combined with the silly humour, this produces a type of entertainment which comes as much from wit as it does from momentary bafflement. Some parts of the book become serious, but these usually have the effect of building up towards some irreverent jest or situation.Sterne was also a scholar, as is apparent from the book, as well as an inventive author, and it seems unusual that he only wrote a small number of books.
    • 4/5
      I don't have time to finish this right now, but I aim to return to it one day. It's definitely entertaining, but lacking in forward motion. Seems like it would be a fun book to dip into regularly, without worrying about finishing, but grad school does not allow me that kind of leisurely reading at the moment. I'm about a third of the way through.
    • 1/5
      I couldn't finish this book, although I tried my hardest. I read about 30%, but it's just so meandering and aimless. I know that people enjoy the rambling narrative and find Tristram a comical narrator, but I just found it annoying and self-satisfied. And if I have to read the words "my uncle Toby" one more time I'm going to scream.
    • 5/5
      A brilliant book. Laurence Sterne has become my friend.
    • 4/5
      A funny, irreverent book, well deserved of praise.
    • 5/5
      I so admire this book! I guess I was not quite gasping when I finished this book, but I wish I could write like Sterne.
    • 3/5
      I wonder what Sterne would have thought of all the theorising about this book? The introduction to this volume claims that we should read 'Shandy' because it will help us avoid the 'rationalism' of 'totalitarianism' of the twentieth century; that we are too much like Mrs Wadman, who wants to know if Uncle Toby has a penis or not. We should leave the fortress unpenetrated, the mystery unrevealed, the riddle unsolved.
      Of course, this idiocy is exactly what Sterne was writing against- not against rationalism, but against superstition uninformed by history or heart; not against rationalism, but against stupidity. That many literary critics (especially the 'postmodern' ones) can't distinguish between the two says more about the way we talk about our world than about the world itself, which is plainly and continuously stupid, and not at all rational.
      Roy Porter says this book is 250 years ahead of its time, but the truth is, Barth and Leyner - and all the over specialists without spirit & sensualists without heart - are 250 years behind it. Sterne exhausted the form he created.

      That rant over, this is a really funny dick joke. Plenty of the references are stale (unless you're really into seventeenth and eighteenth century theories of medicine, warfare, etc etc...), but you'll get the point pretty quickly anyway. But whatever you do, read it without the introductory material- there's nothing worse than explaining a dick joke as if it were an earth-shatteringly huge political statement, and Sterne knew it.
    • 4/5
      Although this is a tremendous book -- and tremendously important -- I am embarrassed to report I was unable to get all the way through it. It requires a quiet and consistent attention I currently lack.... I will try again later. I think it is brilliant, witty, inventive beyond description, and I can clearly see in it the roots of current contemporaries such as Vonnegut or even Pynchon.
    • 4/5
      Though it was sometimes infuriating, it was highly amusing in small doses. I am disappointed that it ended.
    • 5/5
      One of the three or four greatest English novels, by a master of digression and interruption and conversational conflict...oh, and of tone of voice. Sterne creates the major characters of Uncle Toby, Tristram's father Walter, his mother, and adds Toby's servant Trim, as well as Doctor Slop, and the parson, Yorick. Since Sterne was, like most of the English Poets Laureate of his time, also a parson, Yorick becomes a commentary. The pulse of the novel is Sterne's declaration that the more he writes, the further behind he gets, so that, in fact, Tristram gets born in Volume III. In the meanwhile, there is a standing joke about the window sash and castration, there are comparisons between seige warfare and obstetrics: in fact, there are so many unusual comparisons Tristram Shandy competes with "metaphysical poems" in unlikely analogies. Sterne's only follower may be James Joyce, who can also be funny, though possibly not as funny as Lawrence Sterne. Wonder what it was like to have Rev Sterne as your minister? What a hoot.
    • 4/5
      This novel cannot be described with just a few words. Probably one cannot describe the story at all. Tristram Shandy - or, more accurately, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - is an attempt by said Tristram to lay down the story of his life. As the story is interrupted by countless digressions which are themselves again interrupted by digressions the 'author' comes around to relating his birth only on page 195. Actually, not much is revealed of the life of Tristram Shandy. But you get his opinions on the importance of noses, of a name, and of hobby-horses. What is more, we get to know his uncle Toby quite well throughout the story."If I should seem now and then to trifle upon the road, - or should sometimes put on a fool's cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along, - don't fly off, - but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears on my outside; - and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short, do anything, - only keep your temper." (p. 8)I think the quotation above describes the reading experience best: You laugh with Tristram, you laugh at him, you despair at points, you wish for something else and then again you're sucked back into the book. Reading Tristram Shandy is anything but your usual reading. Although this is not a five star book for me, I can surely see how people would rate it with five stars easily. But on the whole, it was not completely convincing and at times it was even a struggle. I can only recommend to give it a try, though, and advise you to "keep your temper". 3.5 stars.
    • 3/5
      "Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! Read...for without much reading, by which, your reverence knows, I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the meaning of my next marbled page (motly emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one." (III.35)

      There's the most-quoted bit from Tristram Shandy, which is full of references to obscure works, works made up, works misquoted, and works wholly plagiarized.

      Well, okay, Shandy is an experiment. Titularly the story of its narrator, it turns out to be something entirely different: a story about his uncle, his father, the passage of time, the difficulty of telling a story...noses...it's anything other than Tristram Shandy's story. It's been described as a perfect capture of the way the mind works: twisting back on itself, skipping, tangentializing. And yeah, that's how my mind works, too, and as far as that documentation goes, it's bravura. But isn't the point of writing a novel to concentrate your mind, to focus all those disparate thoughts into a coherent whole? If I wrote down my mind right now, I would tell you about this book, Eric B & Rakim on my CD player, my dog snoring, my wife asleep, my left calf aching slightly, the wine in my mouth, I suspect this review doesn't make much sense, and not in an awesome post-modern way, my fingers are a little cold, I'm still puzzling about a dream I had last night in which I told my wife that while she was gone on a business trip I'd shovel out the eight inches of sand I'd covered the floor of our library with, which she's been surprisingly obliging about but I was starting to get the impression that enough is enough...

      That's not a very good narrative, and even the most forgiving of Tristram Shandy's critics have admitted that it's not a page-turner. The word is self-indulgent.

      Shandy belongs to the Quixotic tradition - not as in the word, but as in the talking about the Cervantick [sic] influence - and I love that genre. It's writing about writing, and I was hoping to love this book, and I was excited about lots of parts of Shandy. For example: the page following the quote that opens this review is marbled; it was different, then, in every edition of this book as it was originally published. That's weird, and not lamely weird. There's also a part where Sterne threatens to describe the widow Wadman and then just leaves the next page blank, so you can draw her yourself, "as like your mistress as you like - as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you." (VI.38)

      And he leaves IV.24 out because, he says, he realized after writing it that it was so good it would throw the balance of the rest of the book off; it would make everything else seem worse by comparison. Again, that's a funny joke. But I found myself a little disappointed by IV.25, because unlike 24, it existed. And when one finds oneself wishing that all of the chapters of a book had been excluded, one has to admit that one may not be enjoying reading it.

      Tristram Shandy is a clever book. It might even be a worthwhile book, if you're really interested in books. But it's a bitch to read.
    • 5/5
      "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; - 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." Laurence SterneIndisputably the most fun one can have alone with a book. An absolute favorite.
    • 4/5
      I do remember this extremely silly book. It was amusing.
    • 2/5
      Why is this book a classic? How is it that people have been reading this collection of words for 250 years? I read something a few years ago which put Tristam Shandy on my to-read list, but by the time I got started on it I'd forgotten exactly what had triggered my interest. I plowed through. The book has no plot, but continually hints that there might be a plot coming, if only you'll hold out a little while longer. It's just a series of anecdotes and digressions, and while it has some entertaining moments, on the whole it is one of the more mind-numbingly boring books I've ever read. But it's a classic, and I feel virtuous for having finished it. Now I'm off to read some 21st century pulp to clear my palate.
    • 4/5
      I've wrestled with what to write about Tristram Shandy since I finished it. It isn't a book you can sum up very well, and the most entertaining bits of it are best found on your own, I think.So I'll just say this: it's not as hard to read as you might think. The language takes some getting used to, and I read it at a pace of 20-30 pages a day. But you do acclimate to it and get into a rhythm. And yes, it's full of digressions and stories within stories and soliloquies about battles and fortifications, but it's also full of moments that make you go "wait, what did he just say?!" and make you re-evaluate what you thought you knew about propriety in the 18th century.Recommended for: anyone who's up for a bit of a challenge, people who are okay with the absurd.Quote: "But my father's mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the investigation; running, like the hypercritic's, altogether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door, -- measuring their distance, and keeping his mind so intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of nothing else, -- commonplace infirmity of the greatest mathematicians! working with might and main at the demonstration and so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have none left in them to draw the corollary, to do good with."
    • 5/5
      It took me almost a year longer than I originally planned, but I've finished The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne. I loved it. I've seldom had so much fun with classic literature. And I'm pleased to say that Mr. Sterne saved his best for last. The final two books, probably the most popular sections in the novel, concern Uncle Toby's romance with the Widow Wadman who lives as tenant-for-life nextdoor to the Shandy estate. Mrs. Wadman has spent the length of the novel watching the growth of Toby's large scale model of the Battle of Namur where he recieved his groin wound. Over time, she has become attracted to Toby, both the the man and to the estate he shares with his brother. Tristram, our narrator, speculates that she may still want children as she is still young; the reader soon understands that whether she wants children or not, she clearly wants both romance and sex.One day she overhears Toby and his man-servant Trim discussing which is more painful, a knee injury or a groin injury. Afterwards, she is understandly interested in the extent of Uncle Toby's wound. She meets with him in the scenes that follow and finds Tody is happy to discuss his wound and more than willing so show her exactly where he was wounded. He takes her to the large scale model of the Battle of Namur, breaks out his measuring equiptment and pinpoints the exact location where he was standing when the bullet struck his groin. Widow Wadman is understandably frustrated. The end of the novel threw me for something of a loop. Sir Tristram is exponding on a grand point of philosophy to his brother Toby, Yorick and Dr. Slop, as is his wont, when Obediah comes rushing in to complain about Sir Tristram's bull. Sir Tristram's old bull was supposed to sire a calf for Obediah's cow, but the time has come and the cow has not calved, so suspicion has fallen on the bull. It can't be the bull's fault, swears Sir Tristram, becuase he goes about his business with grave expression thereby proving his capability. It's must be the bull's fault, says Dr. Slop for the cow was hairy at the time and therefore in heat. What's this story all about, asks Mrs. Shandy. "A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick--And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard."I had to look it up. A cock and bull story is a wildly fanciful tale that strays from subject to subject. The phrase may have come from Stony Stratford, England where there used to be two rival inns, The Cock and The Bull. At each inn, people would gather and tell boastful tales that often made fun of those who frequented the rival inn. That in the novel's final line Mr. Sterne dismisses the entire preceeding 526 pages as so much nonsense seems fitting to me. That he does so in a way that references breeding, Toby's war wound, and all that stuff about the importance of big noses from earlier in the book is just a little bit brilliant. A book like Tristram Shandy can't really have a proper ending; it simply has to stop. As it is, it's a very good stop.
    • 5/5
      Digressive, dear sir? Yes! Bizarre, madam? -- Why, yes.... Bawdy? Well - Just read this passage quickly, madam, once through, without thinking --- and...Is it: Better in the first half? Sure. Sentimental? Certainly.A witty, whimsical, comic gem? - Absolutely!!!