Cock and Bull

I know you have all been wondering what on earth I've been doing with myself, reading-wise. It has been over a week since I posted about a book, and I had to be busy reading something right? Right indeed. What kept me so busy was the rambling comedic novel from the mid-1700s (originally published between 1759 and 1767 to be exact), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne.

This book was recently made into an intriguing looking movie by Michael Winterbottom (who did 24 Hour Party People, which I really liked). I am interested in seeing the movie (the title of which is really the big punchline of the book, but you have to get through all 500 pages to feel its full effect), but I really wanted to have read the book first. Particularly since this book is famous for people not really being able to finish it. Well, folks: I was up for that challenge.

This book is awesome. Awesome. Really funny. And so totally modern seeming. In it, our narrator, Shandy, tells the story of his life. He doesn't get around to being born until halfway through the book, however. And he tells it with so many digressions and procrastinations and asides that most of the time the reader isn't even sure what exactly is going on.

If you'd like to read the whole thing online, you certainly can. Or you can borrow the nicely covered 1964 Dell Paperback Edition pictured above after Josh is done with it. Or go get your own, cheapskate.

Now humor me while I quote an entire chapter (chapter 14, in fact) from the first book:

"UPON looking into my mother's
marriage settlement, in order to
satisfy myself and reader in a point ne-
cessary to be clear'd up, before we could
proceed any further in this history ; -- I
had the good fortune to pop upon the
very thing I wanted before I had read a
day and a half straightforwards, -- it
might have taken me up a month ; -- which
shews plainly, that when a man sits down
to write a history, -- tho' it be but the hi-
story of Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb,
he knows no more than his heels what
lets and confounded hinderances he is to
meet with in his way, -- or what a dance
he may be led, by one excursion or an-
other, before all is over. Could a histo-
riographer drive on his history, as a
muleteer drives on his mule, -- straight
forward ; ---- for instance, from Rome all
the way to Loretto, without ever once
turning his head aside either to the right
hand or to the left, -- he might venture
to foretell you to an hour when he should
get to his journey's end ; ---- but the
thing is, morally speaking, impossible :
For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he
will have fifty deviations from a straight
line to make with this or that party as he
goes along, which he can no ways avoid.
He will have views and prospects to
himself perpetually solliciting his eye,
which he can no more help standing still
to look at than he can fly ; he will more-
over have various
Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up :
Inscriptions to make out :
Stories to weave in :
Traditions to sift :
Personages to call upon :
Panygericks to paste up at this door :
Pasquinades at that : ---- All which
both the man and his mule are quite ex-
empt from. To sum up all ; there are
archives at every stage to be look'd in-
to, and rolls, records, documents, and
endless genealogies, which justice ever
and anon calls him back to stay the
reading of : ---- In short, there is no end
of it ; ---- for my own part, I declare I
have been at it these six weeks, making
all the speed I possibly could, -- and am
not yet born : -- I have just been able,
and that's all, to tell you when it happen'd,
but not how ; -- so that you see the thing
is yet far from being accomplished.

These unforeseen stoppages, which I
own I had no conception of when I first
set out ; -- but which, I am convinced
now, will rather increase than diminish as
I advance, -- have struck out a hint which
I am resolved to follow ; -- and that is, --
not to be in a hurry ; -- but to go on lei-
surely, writing and publishing two vo-
lumes of my life every year ; ---- which,
if I am suffered to go on quietly, and can
make a tolerable bargain with my book-
seller, I shall continue to do as long as I
live."

Now go read it!