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From Library Journal
Rowson, an illustrator whose version of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland met with critical praise, turns his considerable skills to Laurence Sterne's 18th-century classic. This appears a sure bet: a new reading of a well-known book. Yet, the novel doesn't make the transition into the graphic format smoothly. Rowson's admiration for Tristram Shandy hinders this graphic version, causing him to rely on the text rather than the illustrations to pace the story. Moreover, this book becomes not only another version of Tristram Shandy but a commentary on reading it as several celebrities wend their way through the plot, which includes a hypothetical game of strip poker between Sterne, Swift, and Rabelais and the filming of the novel by movie producer Oliver Stone. Too complex for those unfamiliar with the original, this is nonetheless recommended for libraries with large graphic novel and literature collections.?Stephen Weiner, Maynard P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Rowson's graphic novel of Laurence Sterne's famous ``cock and bull'' story (often called the first modern novel) will disappoint readers looking for a ``Classic Comics'' crib version. Which is, of course, the very strength of this wickedly inventive re-creation of Sterne's notoriously self-reflexive book. Employing a visual style that blends Hogarth with Gilbert Shelton (of Furry Freak Bros. fame), Rowson himself shows up on the page for some meta-level commentary of his own, and reimagines scenes from Sterne in the styles of Drer, Beardsley, Grosz, and George Harriman, not to mention one from Oliver Stone's movie version. Rowson also rewrites key passages in the manner of Martin Amis, Raymond Chandler, and Garc¡a M rquez (among others). Tackling such an inherently unadaptable novel, Rowson nevertheless selects many of the most memorable sections for extended visualizations: Tristram's birth and naming, Uncle Toby's famous wound and hobbyhorse, and the history of family noses. All provide occasion for Sterne's bawdy, which Rowson makes somewhat more explicit. As critical commentary and scholarly play, this rude and splendid comic book will delight true Shandeans. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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First Sentence
I Wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me;1 had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;-that not only the production of a rational Being was concern'd in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature2 of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;-and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours3 and dispositions which were then uppermost:- Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,-I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I Wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me;1 had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;-that not only the production of a rational Being was concern'd in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature2 of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;-and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours3 and dispositions which were then uppermost:- Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,-I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. Read the first page
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pre-modern postmodern!,
By E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Paperback)
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel. "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book). But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions. Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure. And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked. At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story. And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.") Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unusual . . .,
By
This review is from: Tristram Shandy (Audio CD)
This novel has the length of a Victorian work but both its vocabulary and subject matter are not at all puritan. Themes discussed include for instance intra-uterine baptism and accidental circumcision!The running joke is that the reporter constantly digresses from his digressions and seems incapable of ever getting to his point. In this pseudo-autobiographical work, the narrator's birth finally happens only a good fourth into the book! Presumably, the intent is to be comical but the result is rather silly and even tedious to a modern reader. Published in nine volumes in the 1760's, the novel definitely appears unstructured. It ends without any true conclusion and one feels that many more volumes could have been written and published. Anyhow, there is no plot as such and, despite the title, little is actually learned about Tristram Shandy and his life. The main characters are really his father, a superficial man with very set preconceived notions on a whole series of subjects, and his rather pathetic and anti-social uncle, marked by his war injury _ in the groin! The author succeeds in being very original in a variety of ways: by very frequently addressing the reader, by limiting some chapters to a single sentence and even including blank ones, by making very long quotations in French and Latin or long pointless lists such as the number of streets in each of the various Paris neighbourhoods, etc. Overall, this book can only be recommended to those interested in the history of the British novel with a marked curiosity for atypical 18th century works.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stream-of-opinions,
By E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Penguin Classics Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Gentleman (Paperback)
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers like Calvino, Joyce and Danielewski did. The result is "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman," a gloriously rambling, richly entertaining sort-of-novel. "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." So begins Tristram, who starts his life story with his "begetting," and attempts to tell the story of his birth and life, as well as the descriptions of relatives -- his lovable uncle Toby, his eccentric dad, his patient mother (who's in labor for most of the book). But as he tries to tell us about his life, Tristram keeps getting sidetracked by all the stories that surround him -- his uncle's romance with the Widow Wadman and the war in which he received a nasty wound in a sensitive spot, the French, the doctor who delivered him, letters in multiple languages, the parson, the personal history of the midwife, and what curses are appropriate for what occasions. Most novels are pretty straightforward -- they have a beginning, a middle and an end. But "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" totally ignores that, by having a beginning that lasts for the whole book, dozens of "middles," and no real end (it just stops at a suitable spot). All of this is without a real structure. And he took this postmodern, break-all-the-rules mentality all the way, by including odd little illustrations -- when speaking of the death of Parson Yorick, Sterne includes a black page. Random empty pages. Asterisks instead of important paragraphs. And a bunch of squiggly lines to demonstrate precisely how the narratives in previous chapters looked. At first glance, Sterne's writing style was pretty typical of his period -- detailed, somewhat formal in tone, and very talky. It takes a little while for Tristram to start dipping out of of his narrative -- at one point, he starts interrupting himself in midsentence. By the middle of the book, he's completely lost control of his own story. And he twisted it around with lots of bawdy humor (such as poor Uncle Toby's groin injury, which causes quite a few problems), and the continuous comic stumbles of all the characters. On the subject of his own name, Tristram describes his dad's reaction: "Melancholy dissyllable of sound! which to his ears was unison to Nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.") Life is too rich to be encapsulated in a single story -- that's the problem with "Tristram Shandy," whose story is a classic comic delight of premodernist-postmodern skill.
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