Classics and the Western Canon discussion

We finally get to Toby's amores with the widow Wadman. Toby reveals to the Widow the exact location where he was wounded, in Namur.

What do we finally learn in this volume? Is Toby fully functioning despite his wound? Is there a difference between what Bridget and Mrs. Wadman think they know and reality?

In lieu of the usual chapter summary I will say this.

Having been though so much, I am a little sad there are only 9 volumes instead of 40. Volume IX was published in January 1767. Our discussion of TS will end one day shy of the 252nd. anniversary of Sterne's* death on March 18th of 1768.

I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more——every thing presses on——whilst thou art twisting that lock,——see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.4—— ——Heaven have mercy upon us both!

Immediately after this TS declares

Now, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation——I would not give a groat.

Why do you think he says that?

*Edited to correct a pronoun issue.

Alas, the charm of this meandering and self-indulgent book entirely escapes me. I feel swindled--it has no coherent plot, and it's not even about its title character.

Roger wrote: "Alas, the charm of this meandering and self-indulgent book entirely escapes me."

Unfortunately I agree. I was very excited about finally reading this--it had been on my TBR for longer than just about any other book--and I was disappointed. I did finish a few weeks ago--I thought maybe the pace was keeping me from investing fully in the book, but it didn't seem to make much difference. I was simply glad to be done with it.

There are other meandering books like this that I've lost patience with--Ulysses comes to mind first off. It could be a matter of wrong book wrong time. It's also possible that a re-read of either of these two books (should I live so long) might reveal the charm I was expecting the first time around. I may have had to experience the pain of exposure before I could ever realize the pleasure of the journey.

It’s funny because I had the opposite reaction.

When I first read it years ago in grad school, I didn’t like it at all. I just couldn’t figure out what Sterne was doing or why TS was required reading. I’m sure my dislike was exacerbated by the fear that he would show up on an exam. (Fortunately, he didn’t.)

Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it this time around. Yes, there is no plot. Yes, there are digressions within digressions that go on ad infinitum. But I liked his voice and enjoyed the meanderings of his mind. I thought parts of it were hilarious. Parts of it were boring. Would I consider reading it again? Probably, but not any time soon.

A final word before we all head further back in time to welcome Prometheus in our midst. A huge thank you to David for doing such a wonderful job in moderating this challenging work. It couldn’t have been easy. I think the extra research he did and the links to various aspects of the novel contributed immensely to my appreciation of the work.

So, hats off to David! And thanks to all who contributed to the discussion.

I’m still reading and sorry to be approaching the end. I was baffled, amused, bemused, and sometimes confused, but I enjoyed the author’s playfulness and satire. And more thanks to David for guiding the discussion and enhancing the experience with links, videos, jokes, and other resources! They really added to the experience of meeting Mr Tristram Shandy, his family and numerous opinions.

Tamara wrote: "It’s funny because I had the opposite reaction.

When I first read it years ago in grad school, I didn’t like it at all. I just couldn’t figure out what Sterne was doing or why TS was required read..."

Your experience is why I wonder if a re-read sometime in the future would be beneficial for me. It's almost as if the first time through is needed just for me to clear out all my expectations and the second time I could approach with a clearer view.

And yes...thanks to David for doing a great job

As if there is not already enough to like Uncle Toby's character for:

b>Ch. 6 - an interesting note on the poor negro girl:

On 21 July 1766, a former slave, Ignatius Sancho, wrote to Sterne in praise of his writings and in particular a passage in sermon 10 lamenting slavery. Sancho asks him to ‘give half an hours attention to slavery’ in his next work. Sterne immediately responded that the letter had arrived just as he was writing ‘a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl’, and that he would try to ‘weave’ it into the work he was writing. We may have here part or all of that ‘tender tale’.

It is touching how Toby notes she had suffered persecution and had learned mercy by the example of her shooing flies away, just as he does, instead of killing them. Do you think Uncle Toby experience allows him to recognize the situation or is he just guessing or extrapolating it from the circumstances?

Ch. 8 - Trim tells and obscure joke here:

All womankind, continued Trim, (commenting upon his story) from the highest to the lowest, an’ please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.

and the joke:

All womankind … mark: Somewhere behind Trim’s humour lurks a couplet recorded by John Ray, A Collection of English Proverbs (1678):

‘He that woes a maid must fain, lie and flatter:
But he that woes a widow, must down with his breeches and at her.’

Were we really going to let this one go by without mention?

Chapter 12:

Nature, who makes every thing so well to answer its destination. . .and yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man.

I still have some pressing questions.
1. What came of the romance between the Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby, and will Toby find a new hobby horse?
2. Who is “dear, dear Jenny”?
3. Yorick … do we know him well?
4. What ever happened to Walter’s bull?

Here are my takeaways. Sterne was a creative genius unafraid of breaking the mold — all the molds actually. TS didn’t measure up to Sterne’s idols, Cervantes and Rabelais, though not for lack of trying. I’m sure I missed much of the humor that was topical and/or esoteric. As for the digressions, once I adjusted to the randomness, I got it. I can relate to the theme that life is lived by chance and accident — the best laid plans, etc. . Thanks to TS, I think I figured out what my hobby horse is. This was a challenging read, and I’m grateful to David and others who offered background information and insights that made the read more meaningful. I would not read it again, and if I do recommend TS to others, it will be with a number of caveats. I love Uncle Toby.

Sterne’s biographer quotes him as saying, “I wrote not [to] be fed, but to be famous.” https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...

Mission accomplished.

David wrote: "Our discussion of TS will end one day shy of the 252nd. anniversary of his death on March 18th of 1768...."

From beginning to end, our author forces us to be aware of the antecedents of pronouns.

As I have said before, some of Tristram's comments about all the decisions he had to make as writer in translating his story out of the three dimensional world into the linearity of words have been particularly fascinating aspects of the novel to me. I had known the book as a forerunner of modern conceits, such as stream of consciousness, as well as of tricks like the marbleized page or blank chapters or opaque spaces. But I didn't know how much it could teach about keeping story lines as well as time lines straight (despite the digressions), how to integrate obscure material into larger frameworks, how to mix wit with rational reasoning, even how to challenge intellectual giants like Locke with sentiment and "hobby horses" (game playing) ...

And in terms of the elusive pronoun "his" here, we are periodically reminded, while we may argue TS to be the alter ego of his author/creator, TS, not Sterne, is the narrator of our text. Creator/creation .... junction/disjunction. And so it is Laurence Sterne's life we note and remember on March 17; dear Tristram remains very much alive, despite the infamous forecast of Dr. Johnson.

Gary wrote: "I still have some pressing questions.
2. Who is “dear, dear Jenny”?

A note on Jenny from my edition:

dear Jenny: Cash, EMY*, 292, points out that the identification of Jenny with Catherine Fourmantel, the professional singer with whom Sterne was having a liaison during the autumn and winter of 1759– 60, and who carried the York edition of Volumes I and II of TS to David Garrick in London, is unlikely to have been the mistress Sterne writes about in the spring of 1759, unless she was in York for the 1758–9 season as well – for which only supposition exists. More likely, he argues, Jenny is ‘not Catherine … but a vague general figure of the confidante and mistress’. Yorick’s statement in ASJ** perhaps best solves the problem: ‘[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another …’

*Cash, EMY Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years (Methuen, 1975).

**ASJ [Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick, ed. Gardner D. Stout, Jr. (University of California Press, 1967).

Tamara wrote: "It’s funny because I had the opposite reaction.

When I first read it years ago in grad school, I didn’t like it at all. I just couldn’t figure out what Sterne was doing or why TS was required read..."

I didn't read Sterne in grad school, but I know those many years ago, I would have likely been one of those likely to have scorned it -- even as as I verged upon several times in this read -- and probably do at one point or another to almost any text upon which I rest my eyes today.

But beg me forbearance for this long excerpt from Christopher Morley's introduction to my Heritage Press Edition, not the Oxford edition paperback from which I ultimately read most of the time (HPE, too large, heavy, bulky):

"...But how about the distaff? Do women read Tristram? I doubt it. I wish some intrepid scholiast would compile me a list of the great works of the world which are, by the peculiar astringence of their humor, less likely to appeal to ladies. That is a roundabout way of saying, more bluntly, the books Women Don't Care For. The only purpose of so silly a list would be to set them on to reading them.

"As to the much palavered theme of Sterne's lewdness, let's at least be frank. You will find none of his lubricities, no not one, which most of us have not grinned at (however ruefully or secretly) in our own thought. He plunged home to perennial springs of shameful human glee. Condemn him, we condemn ouselves. It's a pity, we have already admitted, that there's too much snigger in his woodpile. He goes far beyond good taste. But laughter often does. It is godlike, knowing not good or evil."

We walk into a time of transition in which our wit, our concerns for pleasure, even life itself, appear will be tested. Somehow, I perceive that it will be the satire, the wit, the zest, the ridiculous kindnesses, as well as the stern disciplines of generations of rationality that will help carry us through this period. Tristram, somewhat like Hamlet's poor Yorick, helps me understand and perhaps prevail.

I tried to reread this thing immediately. As it was in the first read, it was just too much. For all of David's generous care of us and the many good resources to which I had access and the insights of each of you, I have finally decided I must let this one lie fallow before returning to it. But even with that futile effort, I found myself respecting in new ways what Sterne had created, not unlike the experience many of us find in the reread of Homer or any other of the "greats" -- what to notice that had been overlooked, what could be skimmed this time, the "oh, yes".

Lily wrote: ""...But how about the distaff? Do women read Tristram? I doubt it. I wish some intrepid scholiast would compile me a list of the great works of the world which are, by the peculiar astringence of their humor, less likely to appeal to ladies..."

I have no idea what he's getting at here, Lily, or why you chose to quote it.

What does one's gender have to do with an appreciation or lack of appreciation for TS? And what is he suggesting about great works of literature? Is it that they're less likely to appeal to the "ladies" because of their type of humor?

This sounds mighty sexist to me. But maybe I misunderstood the comment?

David wrote: "Gary wrote: "I still have some pressing questions.
2. Who is “dear, dear Jenny”? ..."

I leave it to David to provide us the scholars' views on Jenny, but Gary's question reminds me that the story includes at least four romances, platonic or otherwise: Tristram and Jenny, Walter and Mrs. Shandy (her given name?), Trim and Bridget, as well as Uncle Toby and Mrs. Wadman. When I started re-reading, I felt how much Widow Wadman was present long before I had been expecting her major role as a character.

For fun: "Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen: the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return."

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (p. 397). Kindle Edition.

For some reason, the image of the rubies (about Jenny's neck) caught my attention.

Tamara wrote: "What does one's gender have to do with an appreciation or lack of appreciation for TS? And what is he suggesting about great works of literature? Is it that they're less likely to appeal to the "ladies" because of their type of humor?"

Great questions. I was about to go all Walter on this, including a two volume lamentation with maps and diagrams included on a third volume comparing and wondering why the current zeitgeist seems to hold as a law of nature that most men appear to appreciate the Three Stooges, while most women seem to hate them. However I decided to let this article address the questions at hand suggesting TS is a misinterpreted feminist novel ahead of its time. It summarized some of my impressions, i.e., the joke is on the men, and extortionate nature of inappropriate gravitas. It does not mention the Three Stooges at all.

Literature’s Greatest Mansplainer: The women in Tristram Shandy barely get a word in edgewise. It’s still a great feminist novel.
https://slate.com/culture/2016/02/tri...

A delightful article, David! Thank you so much for sharing it. I love what she says about Mrs. Shandy. And it's interesting that we picked up on Mrs. Shandy's character and strengths during our discussions. I think I like her almost as much as I like Uncle Toby.

Tamara wrote: "A delightful article, David! Thank you so much for sharing it. I love what she says about Mrs. Shandy. And it's interesting that we picked up on Mrs. Shandy's character and strengths during our dis..."

Yes, I dare say we did not miss too much. We did pick up on Elizabeth's indifference born of practicality, i.e., Whatever. As long as things get done, as well as her actual stated opinion in Vol. 9. I also recall Cphe commenting on Toby's model fortifications with, a boy and his toy soldiers..

Tamara wrote: "This sounds mighty sexist to me. But maybe I misunderstood the comment? ..."

Just saw your comments now, Tamara. And haven't checked out the Slate article that David brings forward, which probably responds.

But, yes, yes, yes. Morley's comments can be considered sexist. Still, I will acknowledge my own changes in what I consider acceptable public behavior/reactions for a woman over the past fifty years of my life, even as I say "bravo" to many of those changes.

"...or why you chose to quote it. " As I said at the beginning of my comment: "I didn't read Sterne in grad school, but I know those many years ago, I would have likely been one of those likely to have scorned it -- " I would probably have considered any number of the passages uncouth, vulgar humor ... But today I know Morley got it right in the comments he goes on to make. (included in quotation @15)

"And what is he suggesting about great works of literature? Is it that they're less likely to appeal to the 'ladies' because of their type of humor?" I have no sense that Morley is implying anything in general about great works of literature. I hear him addressing specifically Tristram Shandy.

I just went back and checked on when Morley made these comments. The Heritage Press edition in which they were included was printed in 1963. I don't know, but I rather suspect an introduction written today would have a different slant.

Somehow this discussion reminds me of the ones I discovered among the critical reviews of TS, i.e., how much the criticism of this book has varied through the years, as the cultural attitudes predominating in public expression have changed. That is probably an ultimate tribute that Sterne would appreciate on the 252nd anniversary of his birth.

Now I shall go read the Slate article!

Tamara wrote: "A delightful article, David! ..."

Yes, delightful! Thanks for finding it and bringing it to our attention!

Perhaps because of my bit of obsession with the writing/narration aspects of TS, I particularly noted this passage:

"But all the same, if you want to get a rough sense of what Sterne himself felt, it’s best to look not to the statements of Tristram himself—and certainly not to Walter—but to the character of Yorick, the jesting parson, whose life story and temperament most closely parallel his author’s. Yorick, we are told, 'had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity'—that is, to seriousness, of the kind that Yorick and Sterne believe often disguised stupidity and even deceit."

Lily wrote: "Perhaps because of my bit of obsession with the writing/narration aspects of TS, I particularly noted this passage:..."

I still think the quote I posted in message 9 says something too.

David wrote: "Tamara wrote: "What does one's gender have to do with an appreciation or lack of appreciation for TS? And what is he suggesting about great works of literature? Is it that they're less likely to ap..."

I agree with Tamara and Lily, this article is delightful and gives Elizabeth Shandy her due. Ms Shandy’s character gives us a peek at a woman living in a patriarchal society with limited rights (and probably limited education) and holding her own on the issues that matter most to her.

Interesting bit of synchronicity--another Shandy reference in Balzac's La Comédie Humaine:

A description of a married woman: "She remained so habitually silent that one would have taken her for a new Madame Shandy; yet a word, a look or a single gesture announced that her sentiments still had the vigor and freshness of youth."

I take this to mean Balzac also picked up on the role Ms. Shandy played in the novel.

Bryan "I take this to mean Balzac also picked up on the role Ms. Shandy played in the novel. ."

So much for thoughts of men being the only strong silent types

Without saying a thing Elizabeth puts Walter in his place:

My mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted under his right, in such wise, that the inside of her hand rested upon the back of his—she raised her fingers, and let them fall—it could scarce be call’d a tap; or if it was a tap——’twould have puzzled a casuist to say, whether ’twas a tap of remonstrance, or a tap of confession: my father, who was all sensibilities from head to foot, class’d it right—Conscience redoubled her blow—he turn’d his face suddenly the other way, and my mother supposing his body was about to turn with it in order to move homewards, by a cross movement of her right leg, keeping her left as its centre, brought herself so far in front, that as he turned his head, he met her eye———Confusion again! he saw a thousand reasons to wipe out the reproach, and as many to reproach himself——a thin, blue, chill, pellucid chrystal with all its humours so at rest, the least mote or speck of desire might have been seen at the bottom of it, had it existed——it did not——

David wrote: "...a thin, blue, chill, pellucid chrystal with all its humours so at rest, the least mote or speck of desire might have been seen at the bottom of it, had it existed——it did not——..."

This passage sadly reminds me too much of Sterne's relationship with his wife, who, according to the few anecdotes I've read, was basically estranged.

Yet, I found a melancholy wistfulness towards cross gender relationships appearing throughout my learning about Sterne and this novel, whether in "Jenny," or Sterne's apparent caring for his daughter despite his difficult marriage, or Toby and Mrs. W, or Trim and his trysts, or even Tristram's sightseeing and liaison when fleeing from death.

Last night I've finally caught up with the schedule. A few weeks I was so behind that there was no sense in contributing to the discussion, but it was a pure delight to read this book in such company. Both were wonderful. I am very thankful to David, for steering us through this meandering masterpiece and sharing most useful information, and to everyone, for insights, links, and piece of knowledge - this has made my journey with TS one of the most amazing experience from a book.

I am not sure that I am to re-read the book right now, but I wonder what reading it with all this experience and information would be like.