Maybe nine years ago when I saw Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story I briefly considered reading Tristram Shandy but when I heard it was nine volumes I decided to pass on it. Now that it is on this list I didn't really have much choice and had to eventually get to it. Luckily each of the volumes are quite short. I have to say I greatly admired the structure and tone of the book. The book is quite funny and is all over the place. The narrator is attempting to write his life story but keeps getting side tracked and almost never makes any progress. In the end we hardly know anything at all about his life. In fact he doesn't get around to his birth until about a third of the way through the book. Most of the last third of the book is spent trying to tell a story about his uncle's past that keeps getting sidetracked by digressions. The narrator is pretty informal and is always talking directly to the reader and telling us of his plans on what he plans to write about next (if he gets to it). The only drawback to the book really (and I can't really fault the book itself for it) is that it was very topical to the time period it was written (the 1760's) and a lot of the information just sails way over my head. Still I'll give it an A. (Also it mentions Don Quixote.)
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Book # 58 - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Maybe nine years ago when I saw Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story I briefly considered reading Tristram Shandy but when I heard it was nine volumes I decided to pass on it. Now that it is on this list I didn't really have much choice and had to eventually get to it. Luckily each of the volumes are quite short. I have to say I greatly admired the structure and tone of the book. The book is quite funny and is all over the place. The narrator is attempting to write his life story but keeps getting side tracked and almost never makes any progress. In the end we hardly know anything at all about his life. In fact he doesn't get around to his birth until about a third of the way through the book. Most of the last third of the book is spent trying to tell a story about his uncle's past that keeps getting sidetracked by digressions. The narrator is pretty informal and is always talking directly to the reader and telling us of his plans on what he plans to write about next (if he gets to it). The only drawback to the book really (and I can't really fault the book itself for it) is that it was very topical to the time period it was written (the 1760's) and a lot of the information just sails way over my head. Still I'll give it an A. (Also it mentions Don Quixote.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment