The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759
Sterne deconstructed the novel before the novel even existed as a stable form, in 1759. The narrator cannot tell his story in order. The digressions are the point. Blank pages, black pages, marbled pages serve as metafictional provocations. Borges, Calvino, David Foster Wallace: every postmodern novelist descends from Sterne.
The case against
One joke, expertly told: the story can't get started, and Sterne keeps it running for nine volumes. Tristram isn't born until volume three, the bawdy puns need eighteenth-century footnotes, and whole chapters of Lockean in-joke land only if you've read Locke. Most readers admire fifty pages, quote the black page, and quietly shelve the rest.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
