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Title: Laurence Sterne: A Life by Ian Campbell Ross ISBN: 0-19-212235-5 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: An Odd Author and His Spectacularly Odd and Funny Book
Comment: _Laurence Sterne: A Life_ (Oxford University Press), by Ian Campbell Ross, is a dandy new biography which I will tell you about. But the only real reason to be reading about Sterne is to increase appreciation of his wonderful book, _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, which has been making people laugh for almost two and a half centuries. So let me make the recommendation first of that book to you, if you have never read it. Go read it, and when you finish, I'll be right here.
There! What did I tell you? Intelligent, chaotic, witty amusement, with some bawdiness thrown in. I don't need to tell you of the thousand odd attractions of the book. It is one of the most fun of the classics. Now to the fine book at hand. Sterne was, Ross shows, just as peculiar as his book, and had as chaotic a life. Sterne lived only eight years after bursting onto the scene with _Tristram Shandy_, and to Ross's credit, he has made Sterne's pre-Shandy years interesting. Sterne had led a modest, impecunious life of a vicar in Yorkshire. He did a bit of political writing, but nothing that would have prepared anyone for his comic masterpiece. He had an unhappy marriage, and a remarkable interest in adultery.
Then in 1759, the first two of the nine volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ were published, and caused a sensation. The reviews were very good, and if readers were puzzled by the extraordinary digressions and puzzles in the book, they laughed at them, and they bought them up. Then Sterne appeared in London, and was delighted to wear his black ministerial garments everywhere. This brought his book notoriety as well as fame; reviewers changed tone from praising the book's hilarity to criticizing the vicar for writing "downright gross and obscene expressions." Sterne became a hot ticket at dinners and salons. The zany mixture of adventures and accidents, farcical and sad, reflected the life of the author.
This was an odd man, to be sure, who produced an odd book. Ross's elegant and thorough biography brings Sterne to life for our age. The gregarious James Boswell wrote that Sterne was "the best companion I ever knew," and those who find him to be a good companion in the form of his famous book will find him an even better one after reading this illuminating biography.
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Title: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick: With the Journal to Eliza and a Political Romance (Oxford World's Classics) by Laurence Sterne, Ian Jack ISBN: 019283522X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne ISBN: 0679405607 Publisher: Everymans Library Pub. Date: 15 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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