The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne

 I can honestly say, English graduate that I am, that I’ve never read a novel quite like this before. I’m familiar with the broad course of English literature but I must confess that there is something of a gap in my knowledge from roughly the plays of the Restoration up to Jane Austen. I have, in short, much neglected the eighteenth century novel.

I do not suppose for a moment that this magnificently bonkers text is in any way typical of its century. Yet the wonder is that such delightful weirdness should be possible at all. A mere half century later, the novel as an art form would be hedged about with all sorts of conventions in terms of plot, narrative, character, the whole lot. Yet here we have neither a beginning, middle, nor an end. We have a self-confessed unreliable narrator who cheerfully fails to deliver on what is promised by the title. We have no plot, no real structure, and characters who in their complexity defy description, much as real people do.

The whole thing is extremely silly, and full of the sort of metatextual fun- although we should not be anachronistic and call it postmodernism- that would be verboten a few decades hence.

Today, the novel is fun, certainly, but also dense with allusions and so not an easy read despite how enjoyable it is. But this is a pleasant and exhilarating taste of a century much earthier and less po-faced than the one which followed it. I enjoyed reading this immensely.