Now guest blogging: Laurence Sterne

Why, I find this unfathomable.

"Tristram Shandy" also includes, even by 18th-century standards, a plenteous store of bedroom and bathroom jokes and a good deal of slapstick, not to mention sly little digs at everything from contemporary styles of sermonizing (Sterne was a clergyman) to Locke's theory of association. Many critics thought the book vulgar, and Samuel Johnson predicted that it was far too "odd" to catch on.

In the short term he couldn't have been more wrong. "Tristram Shandy" became a huge best seller on both sides of the Atlantic and was one of the favorite books, for example, of John Adams. But in the long run Johnson was right. Though "Tristram Shandy" still turns up occasionally on great-book lists, it has become a cult object, more talked about than read. The best way for an 18th-century novel to keep its currency, of course, is for it to be made into a movie - like "Tom Jones," "Joseph Andrews," "Moll Flanders" or even Samuel Richardson's suitcase-size "Clarissa." But until now, no sane filmmaker would touch "Tristram Shandy," on the sensible presumption that it was unfilmable.

"More talked about than read?" Oh well, looks the cult's been unmasked. But we'll have to see if the film really catches what is truly one of the funniest -- greatest -- books ever written in the English language.

“Trust me, Yorick. When to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ‘tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enew from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.”

– Vol. I



He was four years totally confined, – part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room; and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffered unspeakable miseries, – owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the os illium, – both of which bones were dismally crushed, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the parapet, – as by its size, – (though it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it done my Uncle Toby’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the projectile force of it, – which he would often tell him was a great happiness.

– Vol. I


… 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 Lock, – so are farting and hickupping, says I. But in answer to this, Didius, the great church lawyer, in his code de fartandi et illustrandi fallaciis [“concerning the deceptions of farting and explaining] doth maintain and make fully appear, that an illustration is no argument.

– Vol. III, “The Author’s Preface”


It is a singular blessing, that nature has formed the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed in old dogs, – ‘of not learning new tricks.’

– Vol. III



“Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.”

– Vol. IV, “Slawkengargius’s Tale”


… there is no prohibition in nature, though there is in the Levitical law – but that a man may beget a child upon his grandmother… But whoever thought, cried Kysarcius, of laying with his grandmother? – The young gentlemen, replied Yorick, whom Seldon speaks of – who not only thought of it, but justified his intention to his father by the argument drawn from the law of retaliation – ’You laid, Sir, with my mother,’ said the lad – ‘why may not I lay with yours?’…

– Vol. IV



Shall we for ever make new books, apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?

– Vol. V



“Quad id diligentius in liberis procreandis cavendum,” sayeth Cardan.
[“How much more careful we should be in begetting children.”]

– Vol. VI



– But this is nothing at all to the world: only ‘tis a cursed thing to be in debt; and there seems to be a fatality in the exchequers of some poor princes, particularly those of our house, which no Economy can bind down in irons: For my own part, I’m persuaded there is not any one prince, prelate, pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more desirous in his heart of keeping straight with the world than I am – or who takes more likely means for it… and for the six months I’m in the country, I’m upon so small a scale, that with all the good temper in the world, I outdo Russeau, a bar length – for I keep neither man or boy, or horse, or cow, or dog, or cat, or anything that can eat or drink, except a poor thin piece of a Vestal (to keep my fire in) and who has generally as bad an appetite as myself – but if you think this makes a philosopher of me – I would not, my good people! give a rush for your judgments.

– Vol. IX



We live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles – and so ‘tis no matter – else it seems strange, that Nature, Who makes everything so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless, for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart – or whatever other creature she models, be it but an ass’s foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.

– Vol. IX

I think he's the patron saint of blogging.