| | Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman |  | Author: Laurence Sterne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Category: Book
Buy Used: £50.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 640
ISBN: 0198185243
EAN: 9780198185246
ASIN: 0198185243
Publication Date: March 1983
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Publisher: Clarendon Press, OxfordDate of Publication: 1983Binding: HardcoverCondition: Hardback with dustjacket. DJ is faded to spine with two small holes also to spine. Internally clean. Very good - / very good condition.
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| • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Penguin Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) | | • | Audio Cassette - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Penguin Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (World's Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Oxford World's Classics) | | • | Hardcover - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (New Casebooks Series) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: An Authoritative Text, the Author on the Novel, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Riverside editions) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Signet Classical Books) | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman | | • | Paperback - Sterne Laurence : Tristram Shandy (Sc) (Signet Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman Pbs.) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Everyman Paperback) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Notes on Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (Cliffs Notes) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy (Wordsworth Classics) (Wordsworth Classics) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy (Everyman's Library classics) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy | | • | Unknown Binding - Tristam Shandy. | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy: 16 (Letras Universales / Universal Writings) | | • | Audio CD - Tristram Shandy (Classic fiction) | | • | Audio CD - Tristram Shandy | | • | Audio Cassette - Tristram Shandy (Classic fiction) | | • | Paperback - Tristam Shandy | | • | Unknown Binding - Tristram Shandy | | • | Unknown Binding - Tristram Shandy (Armed Services edition) | | • | Hardcover - Tristram Shandy, (The Modern library of the world's best books) | | • | Paperback - Tristram Shandy: Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (English Library) |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 A genuinely hilarious and rewarding read November 4, 2008
At a cursory glance, Sterne's book appears to be a novel in the traditional sense; an in-depth character study of a central protagonist. A closer look reveals the title to be the first of many traps laid to ambush the unwary reader; this exuberant comedy is a far-cry from the orderly prescriptive narratives of contemporary novels. An eccentric oddity and a masterful challenge to the expectations of its readers, Tristram Shandy is a shrewd exposition of the limitations of the novel, a form still very much in its infancy in Sterne's lifetime. Misleadingly entitled Life and Opinions, the story scarcely progresses beyond the superbly hectic first day of Tristram's life. Instead we are presented with a multiplication of beginnings until the entire book appears to be nothing more than an introductory prologue to an unattainable and continuously deferred book called Life and Opinions. The reader happily renounces himself to Sterne's method of riddle and bafflement as he navigates this cock and bull story where bawdy anecdotes are told out of order, memories are cut-off and fragmentary, and the suggestion of a single word causes page after page of absurd digression. Experience of the perceptible world resists being written and the profusion of typographical blanks, expletives, chaotic stage-business, and innuendo continually hint at what is not being said. However Sterne's gallery of eccentrics is made real through the charming characterisations of Uncle Toby, Dr Slop, and the Widow Wadman. An incredible book with an un-credible tale at its centre, Tristram Shandy is the best example in the canon of textual trickery and self-consciousness before the form's more lasting re-emergence in the 20th century. Innovative and amazingly modern in outlook, Sterne's masterpiece will be enjoyed by any reader who dares to delve into this riotous and entertaining tale.
 The book's great, this edition isn't! May 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Giving Tristram Shandy a 1-star review makes me shudder, but I feel it's imperative that everyone knows this edition comes without -any- notes. If you're widely read and know a bit about the period this might not be a huge problem, but even then you're probably going to miss a lot with Sterne, who is a very allusive writer. I recommend getting another edition, most will come with notes.
A wandering rambling classic April 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was published in the mid eighteenth century but shows so much warm insight into humanity and the oddness of people's eccentricities that it is practically timeless. It celebrates and adores its characters with a gentle, loving wicked humour and observation and a glorious playful and rich (and florid) language which is modern enough to read without too much adjustment - there are no low moments or sad parts even though it covers many events which could have been seen as traumatic. It is bawdy without being crude or explicit. It is funny enough to keep you smiling throughout. It needs to be read again and again to get the most out of every word - especially because it rambles, chops and changes its narrative in a manner which the author admits is both appalling (and a deliberate play on the florid and rambling novels of the time) and which he comments on and talks to you about as he loses his way and finds it again. If I was only ever allowed one book to read for the rest of my life it would be this one - don't miss it! The Penguin Classic Audiobook read by Steven Pacey is a superb version of what must be in the top ten of books you'd never want to read out aloud - it makes the story jump out of the page and make sense.
One of the greatest of comic novels March 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dr Johnson famously said of this book, "Nothing odd will do long - Tristram Shandy did not last." Well, even the good doctor could err. The book has lasted, to the delight of generations of readers.
A postmodern tale April 3, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.
Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel.
"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." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book).
But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions.
Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure.
And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked.
At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story.
And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.")
Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
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