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Tristram Shandy
…and to think the French translation was hard enough when I was in high school… Now I read it when I’m tired and find it hilarious. Getting old much?
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Laurence Sterne, The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, The Penguin English Library
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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. A Review.
I do a lot of yakking on this blog, mainly about my own theories on comedy and stuff, but I’ve not posted anything for a while so I thought I’d break my silence and do a review. And for a change I’ll review a book.
I mentioned the book ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’ in a blog that wrote last month about the longevity of comedy.
Now looking back at it even that blog seems to have aged badly.
But anyway, the review; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was written back in 1759 but is probably better known to modern audiences as the source material of the Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon 2006 film ‘Cock and Bull story’.
I saw ‘Cock and Bull Story’ at the cinema when it came out and enjoyed it a lot. So much so that I went out and got a copy of book with the express intention of reading it straight away.
I didn’t.
I’m a busy man. Really busy, I mean, I don’t have a lot of free time. And all the free time I do have tend to fill with writing. I write so much that I have no time for reading. I don’t even read what I’m writing whilst writing it. Which might explain my grammar if nothing else.
I also do podcasts too. Most of my regular followers probably know that already. I made one recently, you can find links to it in my previous blogs if you’d like to find it.
Or I could just put a link to it here if you like?
No?
No, you’re right, I should talk about something other than that podcast for a change. But you know where to find if you want to hear it. I wont mention it again.
So yes, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It’s a very — Oh, I did read it by the way. I forgot to say that. I did read it. I didn’t just buy a copy after watching the movie and then never get round to it. It took me a few attempts but I did get through it. Unlike Ulysses. I am told Ulysses is brilliant. But I failed to see that in the first page. And I read that page three times. I had no idea what was what or who was who, but I forced my way through the first chapter of that book, idly saying the words aloud hoping they would form recognisable sentences in the air. They did not. A week later I brought the 1967 film on DVD. And the film was brilliant. I have no idea how it relates to the book though. I never finished it.
But yes, I read Tristram Shandy, finally, about a year after seeing the movie. I found it a difficult read, firstly because I am dyslexic. I am sure a lot of regular readers could probably guess I have dyslexia from my spelling. I try not to let it hold me back. It does make me blind to a lot of my own spelling errors. And I often suffer from missing word syndrome - that’s where my mind works faster than my typing fingers and I end missing important words.I don’t like using dyslexia as an excuse not to do something though. I had one very good teacher at School tell me that “Dyslexic people will often come to the same answer, they just figure things out differently, but that can make them more creative.”
I guess you sometimes you get a better view when you take the long rout.
Anyway, what was I saying? Erm…
Give me a moment let me skim back over what I’ve written… .
Ah yes, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
I will just say, in skimming back over what I’ve written, I have seen I have made a few typographical errors, but seeing I have mentioned dyslexia in this very post I am not going to go back and correct them. But please let it be known that I am not doing this to prove any “living with dyslexia” point - I am selfishly doing it to weed out the noncommittal and overtly casual readers - THERE IS NOTHING FOR THEM HERE.
I bet they didn’t even listen to my podcast.
Yes, I know I wasn’t going to mention it again, but that podcast has been up for almost a week and its got eighteen hits. Yeah, only eighteen. I know we haven’t made a podcast in almost a year, but we had more followers than that didn’t we? I remember one episode getting close to 500. Not very close to 500. But it was around the 500 mark. well it had two zeros in it. How close do you want it? It was about 500 I’m sure.
Sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought.
I haven’t eaten today.
Well, I did eat.
I just wish I hadn’t
Sorry, shall we start again?
Okay…
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. A Review…
Oh, it doesn’t meta.
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Black page from The life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
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Marbled page from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
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“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; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.”
— Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne -
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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Volume V, Chapter XLIII:
MY father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and finished the chapter.
The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont.—And these varied with tenses, present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb see,—or with these questions added to them;—Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be? And these again put negatively, Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not?—Or affirmatively,—It is; It was; It ought to be. Or chronologically,—Has it been always? Lately? How long ago?—Or hypothetically,—If it was? If it was not? What would follow?—If the French should beat the English? If the Sun go out of the Zodiac?
Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it.——Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:—No, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.——But thou couldst discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want, replied my father,—and the possibility of it is as follows.
A WHITE BEAR ! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?
Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)
If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then?
If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted?—described? Have I never dreamed of one?
Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?
—Is the white bear worth seeing?—
—Is there no sin in it?—
Is it better than a BLACK one?
Tristram Shandy does a lot of things, but one of those things is spinning out to the most distant conclusions the possible effects, anxieties, and contradictions that could emerge from complete faith in Enlightenment philosophy. Walter Shandy is obsessed with the prospect of filling his child’s brain-cabinet, which, according to Locke, is empty at birth (“how barren soever”). He is overwhelmed by the task before him, and takes great pains to plan and control every aspect of Tristram’s birth, education, and experience so as to fill that cabinet with all the things that could conjoin to make him the perfect man — scholarly, brave, virile, wise, and respected. Tormented by the possibility of misfortune and the vast and unreliable community of people surrounding his son, Walter finds his plans for Tristram are all miscarried or obsolete.
In the particular analogy I’m drawing here, Walter finds it necessary to equip his son with all the auxiliary verbs and teach him how to use them so that Tristram will have the facility of discoursing about things he knows nothing of, first-hand. He will be able to derive probing, even personal questions for topics completely foreign to him, leading beyond the merely speculative into the affective, relational, aesthetic, and moral possibilities of experience. The joke here is that even while Walter insists that it is impossible (or irresponsible) to imagine what one has not personally experienced, the questions he asks are themselves wild feats of imaginative inquiry.
What is a blog, other than one person, of limited experience, armed with speculative imagination?
”— On auxiliary verbs and [blogging]
