Laurence Sterne and “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”

Author Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) was born on this day. For those tracking 18th century English (or Anglo-Irish) comic wits, this makes him a bit younger than Swift, slightly younger than Fielding and Dr. Johnson, a little older than Goldsmith and Smollett, and quite a bit older than Sheridan.

Last night at our Thanksgiving gathering, the conversation turned to “What books have you read more than once?” This was a little awkward for me, for though I am a compulsive reader, I don’t cast a wider net like most people, I try to restrict myself to the BEST books and revisit those ones multiple times, because I want to plumb their depths, know them intimately, and steal their secrets. So the truthful answer is “I’ve read hundreds of books more than once” which simply reveals me for the braggart that I am. There are certain of these books, however that I have returned to repeatedly because they are so challenging that I have never finished them. And by that I do not necessarily mean “too intellectually challenging”. I have read widely in philosophy, and that’s orders of magnitude more intellectually challenging than almost all fiction. I mean stylistically challenging, i.e., the author has purposely created something full of literary hurdles and speed bumps that derail the element that normally invests you in a story, which is the plot. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is like that. And so is Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (written in several volumes between 1759 and 1767).

Bust of Sterne by Joseph Nellokens, Metropolitan Museum

Like Rabelais, Swift, and Sheridan’s grandfather, Sterne was (originally) a clergyman, though he devoted himself full time to writing in his middle age. He aspired to be the English equivalent and successor of Rabelais. Like Gargantua and Pantagruel , Tristram Shandy is full of puns, graphic imagery and slapstick humor. (In the latter respect it also reflects the influence of Cervantes). The book’s central formal conceit is that the author never quite succeeds in telling his own story. In fact, Shandy isn’t even born until three sections into the book. It’s full of digressions and in-depth explorations of various points, and it gets so hung up on these that it becomes a commentary on the art of narrative storytelling itself. We recall that Sterne’s first writing came in the form of sermons and religious essays. Tristram Shandy draws from thinkers and writers as diverse asPope, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Montaigne, and 17th century English poets to explore metaphysical and empirical terrain, less through the picaresque “story” than through the comical manner in which it is told. Though there are some other characters besides the titular one, including both of his parents, and his Uncle Toby.

The book is also famous for its pioneering of the use of the term “hobby horse” as a metaphor for one’s obsessions. We are reminded that “Dada” actually means “hobby horse”. Sterne’s aesthetical experimentalism makes him a kind of precursor to modernists like James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon. Closer to his own day he was admired by the likes of Voltaire, Goethe, and Diderot. In 1789, American theatre manager William Dunlap premiered his play The Father, or American Shandyism at the John Street Theatre in New York. Obviously inspired by Sterne, it is remembered chiefly today as the second comedy ever produced in America.

In 2005 Michael Winterbottom pulled off a neat trick when he made a playful movie inspired by Tristram Shandy called Cock and Bull Story, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

Sterne’s second best known work is A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) a kind of literary rebuttal to Smollett’s decidedly negative Travels Through France and Italy. Sterne, a longtime TB sufferer, had gone there for his health. He died shortly after this book’s publication.