Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Introduction

Tristram Shandy attempts to narrate his own life, starting from the moment of his conception. By page 200, he still hasn't been born—the narrator keeps digressing into stories about his uncle Toby, his father Walter, and the midwife who delivered him. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) is the most playful novel in the English language: it features a black page when a character dies, a marbled page, diagrams of narrative structure, and sentences that wander for paragraphs before completing.

The Art of Digression

Sterne understood something that would take literary theory two centuries to articulate: that narrative is not linear, that digression is the real story, and that the most interesting thing about any tale is the way it is told. The novel's motto could be Tristram's own admission: "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading."

Key Takeaways

• Digression is the real story
• Postmodernism began in 1759
• Form is content