Read this if you…
- want to spend insane amounts of time trying to understand what the hell is going on
- want to read a book that like academics overhype just because its so experimental
- like a book that barely goes anywhere, because writer keeps getting distracted as a bit
- want a book that's primarily funny, but so hard to understand why its funny without taking a lot of time
Skip this if you…
- want a plot that stays focused
- don't care about being "in" with the academics
- don't want to have to look up summaries of every chapter online - it's unreal confusing
Why It Matters
Sterne wrote a novel that breaks every rule of novel-writing, the digressions, the blank pages, the squiggly lines, a plot that never really gets going, and he did it 200 years before postmodernism had a name. It proved a novel could be about the act of storytelling itself, and writers from Diderot to Joyce to Pynchon took the lesson. It is the most modern book of the 18th century.
The 
Take
I get what he’s doing and it’s a pioneering work and has some real moments of brilliance and wit… but ultimately it’s just WAY too difficult a read and the extra work to understand doesn’t end up being that gratifying. It’s ultimately an important work to me, but not one of the highest quality.
Where to go next
- Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman built on it. - *Tristram Shandy*'s digressive, bawdy, encyclopedic riot is pure Rabelais — Sterne called him his favorite author and meant it as a pedigree - Sterne even wrote a "Rabelaisian Fragment" as a dry run before this book; the comic DNA carried straight over - Walter Shandy's warning not to "look into Rabelais" is Sterne pointing at the very well he drank from — read *Gargantua and Pantagruel* and you'll know exactly what kind of madness he inherited
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman built on it. - The "Cervantick" humor Sterne advertised is Cervantes' — read *Don Quixote* and you'll catch the in-jokes, the Rosinante and Knight-of-the-Woeful-Countenance references scattered through *Tristram Shandy* - Uncle Toby is Sterne's Quixote: the same lovable monomania, the same hobby-horse logic - Tristram's habit of talking back to his own book begins in *Don Quixote* Part 2, where Cervantes first taught a novel to know it was a novel
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman built on it. - *Tristram Shandy* sits squarely in the satiric line of Swift, alongside Rabelais and Cervantes — *Gulliver's Travels* had made learned-wit comedy the English standard - Read Swift first for the satirical tradition Sterne inherited, then watch him push it to the edge of the form
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman shaped it. - Tolstoy named Sterne among the writers who most strongly impressed him early on, and translated *A Sentimental Journey* as a young man - Sterne's narrator who can't stop interrupting himself — looping back, philosophizing, refusing to just tell the story — is the seed of the great digressive engine in *War and Peace* - The shape goes forward: those author-intruding swerves become Tolstoy's long excursions on history and free will
Depicted in Art
The Widow Wadman leans in close, asking Uncle Toby to look for a mote in her eye; Toby, oblivious to her flirtation, peers earnestly at her face.
Charles Robert Leslie, 1830
Widow Wadman sits in Toby's sentry-box, her hand to her eye; Toby stands close, leaning in to look, his crutch and cocked hat beside him.
William Powell Frith, 1865
In the Shandy parlour, Corporal Trim reads the sermon on conscience aloud while Dr Slop dozes; Walter Shandy and Uncle Toby smoke and listen.
William Hogarth, 1760
Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, in Toby's bowling-green fortifications, examine the pair of old jack-boots Trim has sawn down for use as mock mortars.
George Cruikshank, 1832
Walter Shandy rushes downstairs half-dressed, his nightcap askew, arriving too late to stop the curate from naming his newborn son Tristram.
William Hogarth, 1761
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
2003
Melvyn New is the Sterne scholar of record, and his Penguin introduction on the blank page, the marbled page, and the digression engine treats Tristram as the postmodern novel it is, two centuries early.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”