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Title: Tristram Shandy: An Authoritative Text, the Author on the Novel, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition) by Laurence Sterne, Howard Anderson ISBN: 0-393-95034-4 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1980 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.60 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Funny and profound
Comment: This is one of my favorites. It's not a book to rush through so that you can check it off on your lifetime reading plan. It's a profoundly human and wonderfully funny tale that needs to be savored. It was originally published in nine small volumes over a period of six years or so and no one at that time thought they had to sit down and read all nine volumes at once. This is a book you need to spend time with, pick up when it suits you or when you need to be refreshed and let one of the great writers in the language chat you up for awhile about the lovable Shandy family. Ignore the nonsense on the back of the Penguin edition about it being a novel about novel writing. This is a book about life. Two of its characters, Walter and Toby Shandy, rank with the best of Shakespeare, Fielding and Dickens. There are some truly great belly laughs, some really thoughtful philosophy and even a tear or two. Sterne's hobby horse theory is an extremely acute behavioral insight. If you give it a chance, you'll end up being very grateful to Laurence Sterne for adding such a beautiful piece to the literature of English speaking people.
Rating: 5
Summary: A serious masterpiece
Comment: Tristram Shandy is all too often dismissed as rambling or merely eccentric--and many of the reviews posted here thus far prove no exception. First, let me address some common objections to the novel. Q: It's not about anything. A: That's because it's about everything. Perhaps above all it is a novel about pain--where language fails. Q: It's too long and erratic. A: Be patient. The prose takes some getting used to, but past the first 50 pages or so the reading experience can become incredibly addictive, offering many immediate pleasures. The narrator's digressions are of the essence; he is grappling honestly with problems of narration and temporality. Q: It's incomprehensible without historical background. A: Actually, what amazed me about the book was how timeless its interests and insights are. It's entirely possible to read through without any footnotes and still get everything out of it Sterne had intended to put in.
That being said, I'd also like to note for the record that this book is not simply some forerunner to "postmodernism." Yes--it's clearly the ideal 18th-century example for talking about hypertext, reflexivity, bricolage, metonymic slippage, etc., but to take the text as a merely textual experiment is certainly not the most interesting way to read it. Sterne is not reveling in play so much as he deeply understands the deeply human in the comic. I sincerely encourage everyone to try this novel. It's really one of the most original and poignant fictions I have ever read--right up there with Shakespeare, George Eliot, Joyce, Beckett, and Nabokov.
Rating: 5
Summary: An 18th century modern novel
Comment: This work is OLD but reads like the most innovative avant-garde novel of today. The book is about Tristram Shandy and his birth, his uncle and his war wound and his father with his love of names and noses. Seriously! This is the original story-with-no-story and the beauty of the book is in the way that it's written. In reality, Sterne talks about anything and everything. He makes digressions lasting 20 odd pages, rambles to the reader, apologises for rambling, then discusses how he plans to get the story finally under way.
The book is out of order chronologically. One of the funniest things about the book is that it's meant to be an autobiography of the fictional Tristram. Half the book is spent telling the story of the day of his birth. Then, the author moves to another scene, mainly revolving around Tristram's uncle Toby and the novel finishes several years before Tristram's birth.
Sterne's writing is chaotic resembling a stream of consciousness. Sentences run onto the other, there's heaps of dashes and asterisks being used for various purposes. Sterne adds scribbles to signify the mood of the character. When one character dies, to symbolise his end, Sterne has a black page to describe it. When introducing a beautiful female character, Sterne says he can't be bothered describing her so he leaves a blank page for the reader to draw his/her own rendition.
The book - though technically not a satire - in the process of going nowhere and saying nothing makes fun of many religious, political and societal topics. Sterne was a minister but from the book it can be gleaned that he was a particularly irreverent one.
The work is divided into 9 books, published serially. This is a work where you can just pick up a chapter and read it. Some are several pages. Others are two lines. It takes a while to get used to Sterne's writing "style" so read slowly. This goes for the whole novel as there's so much hidden underneath the surface.
This edition is great in having footnotes on the same page and reviews of Tristram as well as critical essays and Sterne's own letters about the work - many of which are very good.
Tristram is funny, ridiculous, clever and very very eccentric. An absolute MUST!
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Title: Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry Fielding, John Bender, Simon Stern ISBN: 0192834975 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (Oxford Worlds Classics) by Samuel Richardson, Thomas Keymer, Alice Wakely ISBN: 0192829602 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Gulliver's Travels (Signet Classics (Paperback)) by Jonathan Swift ISBN: 0451527321 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: Joseph Andrews and Shamela (Penguin Classics) by Henry Fielding, Judith Hawley ISBN: 0140433864 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Ulysses (Vintage International) by James Joyce ISBN: 0679722769 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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