Man's best friend outside of a dog, 5: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne

Somehow, I managed to re-read TS for our book club here at UIUC, and then ended up too busy to go to the book club meeting. Why did I read it the first time, you ask? Well, it's the second important novel ever written in English (after Clarissa), and the second great postmodern novel, after Don Quixote. For my original take on TS, you can take a peek at my old book review page. For those unfamiliar with the book, the title may be dignified, but the novel is anything but. it's a long series of tangents on philosophy, political and religious jokes, amusing anecdotes, further digressions, and just about anything other than either the life or the opinions of its narrator. For the first four books, we are treated to the story of his conception (it doesn't go well) and birth (even more poorly). Eventually, we get to his accidental circumcision as a youth while pissing out a window, a book devoted to insulting France, and the almost but not-quite romance between his uncle and a local widow...but this is beside the point. Tristram Shandy is not centered around its plot, but around its fun with language and storytelling. Sterne is a constant practical joker (much like Cervantes), with a true talent for blue humor, rather impressive for an 18th century clergyman.

In many ways, the novel shows off just how much society has changed with time, especially with regard to moral values. Needless to say, people today are vastly more prudish than they were back then. Yes, I said more prudish now, not the reverse. There is nothing more amusing than the editor of this edition stumbling in his attempts to explain some of Sterne's bawdier references, even though Sterne himself was never so shy (to be fair, Sterne himself edits out the really dirty parts, but in such a way that there is no mystery whatsoever as to what he is implying). I have a real beef with the editing team, it should be said. The endnotes fail to translate any number of the parts written in foreign languages, fail to explain some crucial allusions unfamiliar to a modern reader, constantly refer to works that no one outside a graduate English program could be expected to track down, and have a bizarre obsession with TS's citations in the OED. The introduction is a horrid piece of 50's literary criticism, of virtually no interest to anyone but a diehard Shandean, which in no way even attempts to explain how the novel has remained influential to this day.

Quoth wikipedia:

Today, the novel is commonly seen as a forerunner of later stream of consciousness, self-reflexive and postmodern writing. However, current critical opinion is divided on this question. There is a significant body of critical opinion that argues that Tristram Shandy is better understood as an example of an obsolescent literary tradition of "Learned Wit", partly following the contribution of D.W. Jefferson.

I believe our editor was from the latter school, which is deeply, deeply misguided at best. I would have to argue that when a book clearly influences any number of modernist and post-modern writers (Joyce and Rushdie are mentioned by wikipedia), many of whom seem to have taken notes on the style of writing via digression, it needs to be classified as such even if there is a gap in the historical chain between then and now. Needless to say, no book so influential today can be properly considered only in terms of an obsolescent tradition. If anything, I think it shows off more just how misguided critics of PM fiction tended to be, given that virtually every aspect of popular culture is moving steadily in the direction of self-reflexivity (remember, on the first day we founded this blog, Time Magazine named us people of the year!).

Anyway, back to my main point. It is almost shocking to see just how modern the sensibilities of the 18th century were, at least with regard to the vastly more buttoned-up taste of the 19th. We often forget, in these days or rapidly lapsing Victorianism, that it wasn't always like this. Maybe 19th century Brits had some serious sexual hangups that required about 150 years and the introduction of pay cable and the internet in order to break down, but the 18th sure seem free of these problems. In the end, we can deny human nature for decades, but in the end people are much more the products of our animal ancestors (Sterne would likely say "animal spirits") than your average Conservative would care to admit. The second novel ever written in the English language begins at the moment of its narrator's conception, and I mean the exact moment, and ends with a celebration of its own place as a Cock and Bull story, where I would note that the allusion there means exactly the same thing now as it did them. Speaking of the closing line, it was used as the title of Michael Winterbottom's rather shockingly good movie version of the novel, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a free mental cheat sheet in place before they read the book.