The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

by Laurence Sterne

… of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Good Lord: that is EXACTLY what I do.

aposiopesis

An excellent term and technique, Babylonius.

[w]riting, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation: As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;—so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.

Yes, a thousand times, yes!

Tristram is an English Scheherazade who knows that when the story ends death will follow.

This is why I decided not to write up my journals. I love life too much and the inevitable end makes me sad.

(“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the soul of reading”),

Footnotes are little nuggets of gold.

The Dedication of Tristram Shandy to Pitt accounts for the book as part of “a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, – but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.”

Not a bad strategy. It was the strategy of Democritus.

vaticination

Love that word. Must use it in Miniver.

My way is ever to point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the events I tell;—not with a pedantic Fescue,8—or in the decisive Manner of Tacitus,9 who outwits himself and his reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the inquisitive;–to them I write,——and by them I shall be read,——if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold out so long, to the very end of the world.

By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the soul of reading;—take them out of this book for instance,–you might as well take the book along with them;

from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

Life itself is a kind of wondrous digression, or divertissment.

I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I set off thus.

I need to use this as an epigraph somewhere.

There are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;—but this often gives a very incorrect out-line,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions13 too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure out of them both.

The simple stool is land of mystery.

stop!—go not one foot further into this thorny and bewilder’d track,—intricate are the steps! intricate are the mases10 of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom, KNOWLEDGE, will bring upon thee.

Sound advice.

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation:1 As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;—so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.

If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;—and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,—then certes the soul does not inhabit there. Q. E. D.14

True.

Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left,”——have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.—But need I tell you, Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape;——and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is—great—little—good—bad——indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.

True. Very true.

befetish’d with the bobs and trinkets of criticism;

I love that: befetish'd.

their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.

Sounds like literary critics now.

Grant me patience, just heaven!——Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world,——though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst,—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

I second that emotion.

I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands,6——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.

Me too, dear, in an heartbeat.

—But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about.—— No more than my horse, replied my uncle Toby.

He sounds like me.

fuliginous

Excellent sooty word.

wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east is from west.—So, says Locke,3—so are farting and hickuping, say I.

I never said it before, but I will say it as often as I can from now on.

Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it—a pretty story! is a man to follow rules—or rules to follow him?

Good question. For my own part, rules should follow us in orderly fascination, like so many brass ducklings

in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

I humm’d—and a tolerable tune I thought it was; and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly—it carried my soul up with it into the other world;

This is how a lot of my poems begin.

jactitation5

I need to use this word in SOMETHING.

True Shandeism,5 think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro’ its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and chearfully round.

Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be shewing the relicks of learning, as monks do the relicks of their saints—without working one—one single miracle with them?

Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,—and has wit in it,3 and instruction too,—if we can but find it out.

Literature, for me anyway, is the search.

Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number of Jack Asses?

No. But then Nature--even human nature--is full of surprises.

But this is neither here nor there—why do I mention it?——Ask my pen,—it governs me,—I govern not it.

—And who are you? said he.——Don’t puzzle me; said I.

I need to use this as an epigraph. Miniver maybe?

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most religious——for I begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the second.1

For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as I live.

I do not know what envy is: for never do I hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of good writing, but I instantly make it public; willing that all mankind should write as well as myself. ——Which they certainly will, when they think as little.

Me, too.