It's not even especially long and in the three years since I started it I put it down to read much longer works many times. I read The Faerie Queene again, Paradise Lost twice, three Horatio Hornblower novels, two Robert Louis Stevenson novels, Moby Dick again, various Lovecraft and MR James stories, Interview with the Vampire, and I don't even remember what. 18th century English novels are known for their ridiculously excessive verbosity but I managed Swift, Smollett, Fielding, DaFoe, and even Richardson without too much trouble. But God. The jokes. Tristram Shandy does not let up with the goddamn jokes.
The novel is deliberately anti-narrative. The author, Tristram himself, proposes to write his autobiography but is continually prevented by his own lengthy digressions. Author Laurence Sterne sought continually to undermine any sense of awe or any impression of one person or situation deserving more attention than another. I think this is perhaps why Karl Marx was such a fan of the book. But it mostly made me think what valuable a thing stories are in giving us narrative respite from the impossible complexity of real life.
Tristram begins with the intention of describing his birth but he cannot justify focusing on it without thoroughly describing his father and Uncle Toby and the conversation they had that night. If the novel truly has a main character, it's Uncle Toby, whose genitals are continually hinted at as having been terribly wounded in battle. Of course, when Tristram sets out directly to discuss his uncle, he's immediately sidetracked by describing his own journeys through France. He even illustrates his tendency:
I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. Now,
These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes——In the fifth volume I have been very good,——the precise line I have described in it being this:
By which it appears, that except at the curve, marked A. where I took a trip to Navarre,—and the indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with the Lady Baussiere and her page,—I have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till John de la Casse’s devils led me the round you see marked D.—for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,—or with my own transgressions at the letters A B D—they vanish into nothing.
As I said, the jokes are non-stop. Some of them are funny, but most of them left me feeling exhausted quickly. The double entendre is constant. See this portion of a story told by a character called Trim:
As Tom perceived, an’ please your honour, that he gained ground, and that all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he went on to help her a little in making them.——First, by taking hold of the ring of the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her hand——then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding them in his hand, whilst she took them out one by one——then, by putting them across her mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted them——and so on from little to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself, whilst she held the snout.——
——Now a widow, an’ please your honour, always chuses a second husband as unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half settled in her mind before Tom mentioned it.
She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a sausage:——Tom instantly laid hold of another——
But seeing Tom’s had more gristle in it——
She signed the capitulation——and Tom sealed it; and there was an end of the matter.
Maybe I'd have enjoyed the book more as it was originally published, in short volumes. In any case, I'm glad I can finally move on.
Twitter Sonnet #1668
For half a minute games can play themselves.
In trouble's eyes, the ship's a bottle first.
With crowded thoughts we filled organic shelves.
Another crash occurs to prompt a thirst.
Absorbent table cloths could answer stains.
Resourceful spoons could serve a crimson punch.
Resentful ladles shake with metal pains.
Revolving legs convene to carry lunch.
Bananas range about the seventh yard.
Resulting heavy pictures build a thirst.
Concise as armies steal a science card.
Replies reveal a single talking burst.
With final pastes imposing pages sleep.
Ingenious jokes compel the board to keep.
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