Althouse: "... I was teaching 'Tristram Shandy' that semester so I ordered the audiobook and then, by mistake, I listened to the whole thing on shuffle play. Without realizing it."

August 27, 2020

"... I was teaching 'Tristram Shandy' that semester so I ordered the audiobook and then, by mistake, I listened to the whole thing on shuffle play. Without realizing it."

"Only later did I come to understand this is what Sterne wanted! In 1767!"

Said Jill Lepore, quoted in "The Best Book Jill Lepore Ever Got as a Present Is One She Hates" (NYT). The headline refers to a copy of "Little Women," a gift from her mother — "It drove me crazy, the daffiness of the 19th-century girl."

I confess I've never read "Tristram Shandy," but I know it's structurally weird. Wikipedia says the author's "narrative structure digresses through many jumbled and fragmentary events into a non-traditional, dual overlapping plot." It really is very funny that the professor who was teaching the book listened to it on shuffle — that is, with the chapters in random order.

28 comments:

robother said...: Spoiler alert: Tristam Shandy survives his birth!; 8/27/20, 1:31 PM
Kai Akker said...: Ha ha ha! I have no idea what the Tristram Shandy sequence should have been, random order worked for me!

Bob boo boo! Stupid 19th century girls, I have no idea why anyone likes anything about them.

You should be fascinated by my opinions. They are highly learned and reflect my deep reflections.; 8/27/20, 1:33 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I have read "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy", and if I heard it on shuffleplay, I am sure I wouldn't notice the difference immediately. This isn't the only work I have read for which this might be true.; 8/27/20, 1:35 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: I tried to read Tristram Shandy. I read about 20 pages and saw that I had many more pages to read to finish the book. I gave up.; 8/27/20, 1:36 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I read "Little Women" as teenager. I didn't like it very much at the time, but I got through it without much problem. I have better appreciation for it now.; 8/27/20, 1:36 PM
Scott said...: I remember Tristram Shandy from college. I remember that it was funny for a book that old.

One weird feature is a page that is entirely black. I wonder how the Audible audio book version handles that?; 8/27/20, 1:37 PM
James Pawlak said...: I like the convoluted curse in that work!!!; 8/27/20, 1:59 PM
Yancey Ward said...: NBA Players Have Agreed to Resume Playoffs

😂

They agreed to return because they realized pretty much no one gave a flying fuck whether or not they played ever again, or, like myself, were hoping that the NBA, MLB, and the NFL would all boycott the games.

Lebron- please, please, please boycott the playoffs!; 8/27/20, 2:00 PM
rhhardin said...: Wayne Booth has a chapter parodying literature PhDs seeing their thesis topic everywhere, taking an expert on Tristram Shandy writing as essay on the influence of 18th century comic fiction on Thomas Mann. A chapter in, I think, Don't Try to Reason with Me.; 8/27/20, 2:01 PM
buwaya said...: Huh. I liked "Little Women".
My mother also had that book.
I read it when I was not much older than Lepore.
And I did read the whole thing.

And it did not, and does not, read weirdly at all.
Because girls are of course weird in any time and place.

Sterne is fun, and he was having fun writing "Tristam Shandy".
Way too much overthinking this stuff.; 8/27/20, 2:06 PM
mockturtle said...: Tristam Shandy is hilarious in parts as well as endearing [Who could forget dear Uncle Toby and his military obsessions?] but there are dull parts as well, notably his trip to France, etc. Worth the read just for the taste of truly excellent writing.; 8/27/20, 2:30 PM
tcrosse said...: That's a cock and bull story.; 8/27/20, 2:30 PM
gspencer said...: "listened to it on shuffle — that is, with the chapters in random order"

"Random order" seems self-contradictory.; 8/27/20, 2:33 PM
MadisonMan said...: I like Dorothy Sayers' comments on Tristram Shandy in her book Have his Carcasse; 8/27/20, 2:34 PM
johns said...: Kind of like listening to Joe Biden; 8/27/20, 2:44 PM
rcocean said...: Jill Lepore is a shit historian and brain dead leftist. As for "Tristram Shandy" I tried several times to read and found it so dull i could never get to the end. Supposedly, its one of those books you can dip in and out of, which is another way of saying it has no real story or plot. that Lepore would teach him is no surprise to me. BTW here's a typical quote from T.S.:

It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,—be no less read than the Pilgrim’s Progress itself—and in the end, prove the very thing which Montaigne dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—I find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo.; 8/27/20, 2:50 PM
rcocean said...: It reminds me of Joyce's Ulysses which is also meant to be "dipped in and out of" except Joyce was a better writer and less long-winded.; 8/27/20, 2:52 PM
Yancey Ward said...: johns at 2:44 wins the internet for the day.

This true for Trump, too, though.; 8/27/20, 2:58 PM
Wince said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/27/20, 3:15 PM
Wince said...: May I have your attention, please?
May I have your attention, please?

Will the real Tristram Shandy please stand-up, please stand-up?

I repeat, will the real Tristam Shandy please stand up?
We're gonna have a problem here; 8/27/20, 3:16 PM
Leora said...: I lost faith in documentaries when I was watching Ken Burns' on Thomas Jefferson. They were talking about Thomas reading Tristam Shandy during her long final illness and seemed to have no idea that it's a very funny book, the equivalent of reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy during your chemotherapy. I figured if they didn't know that, they didn't know anything about the 18th century.; 8/27/20, 3:59 PM
Hannio said...: So this is weird. Before yesterday I had never heard of Tristram Shandy. Then last night I was watching a movie where a character asked his daughter to pull Tristram Shandy down off the bookshelf for him. And now this.; 8/27/20, 4:44 PM
WhoKnew said...: I bought a set of the Harvard Great Books for $5 because I wanted to read "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Tristram Shandy was included and at random I choose to read that as well. It's hilarious and hallucinatory. It may have replaced Moby Dick as my favorite book (I'll have to read it a few more times to be sure). Thank God I never had to read either Sterne or Melville for a literature class; I'm sure that would have ruined them for me. Reading "Great Expectations" in high school has made it impossible for me to read Dickens.; 8/27/20, 5:43 PM
mikee said...: I watched the movie "Fifth Element" in 10 minute snatches over three months, in my hotel room during breaks for out-of-town company training classes. I saw it out of order, with some scenes seen four or five times and others only once. It was spectacular trying to figure out what was going on. I didn't see it from beginning to end until months later, and wow, did my perspective change.

Tristram Shandy is wonderful, but A Sentimental Journey still owns my heart.; 8/27/20, 5:53 PM
DavidD said...: As a young adult I read Catch-22 several times, once in actual chronological order rather than in sequential order.

Many years later, I picked it back up and read it straight through; afterwards, I had no idea why I’d had trouble before with the timeline jumps.; 8/27/20, 6:46 PM
Narr said...: Nobody ever told me Shandy was funny. Might have to take a look.

I couldn't be PAID to read Little Women (or watch any of the adaptations).

Narr
I mean, yuck; 8/27/20, 8:15 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: That's very funny.; 8/27/20, 8:45 PM
Wilbur said...: The only Tristam I ever cared about was Tristam Speaker.

Kids aren't named Tristam anymore, ar ethey?; 8/28/20, 3:25 AM