On Reading

Reading Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. I had studied this 18^th century novel during graduate studies and seem to recall having written a paper discussing the influence of Hamlet in the novel. I had a colleague at the time who, too, had a familiarity with Tristram and we enjoyed sharing our common interest. I do not know what has led me to pick up this book again because it is a difficult read: 18^th century grammatical structures and vocabulary the obvious obstacles to clarity. More interesting, however, is the narrative style. I intend not to construct another paper for another graduate English class, but I would like to entertain some points of interest to me. The first item to be considered is Sterne’s invention of the reader: the narrator—Tristram Shandy himself—speaks directly to the reader who is sometimes a woman and sometimes a man. This type of address might be a convention of 18^th century literature, but Sterne at least one motive for this direct address is that Tristram informs his reader how to read the book! He addresses a reader’s concerns and questions, and advises the reader what he and she might expect from the narrative (such as it is) and offers motives for his direct address. For example, Tristram writes, “In the beginning of the last chapter,” Tristram writes, “I inform’d you exactly when I was born;--but I did not inform you, how. No; that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;--besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once.—You must have a little patience . . . As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us in in fault, will terminate in friendship.” This invitation (and caution) not only creates the reader but also directs him or her how the book is written and therefore how it must be read. Tristram also chastises the reader for not paying sufficient attention to the narrative. “How could you, Madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter?” he censures. The reader’s inattentiveness Tristram accuses, is a result of the habit of reading for plot and not for meaning. . I wish the male-reader has not pass’d by many a one [intellectual and moral point], as quaint and curious this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. I wish it [his caution]may have its effects;--and that all good people, both male and female, from her example, may be taught to think as well as read.” If reading does not lead to thinking, then the reading is inadequate! It is not a long step to Thoreau’s dictum that a good book requires one to stand on her tiptoes to read it!
    I have considered for a time that opening a new book is an act of estrangement and that the reticence to read we often find in children and adults might be due to a discomfort with entering a strange world and meeting new people. The reader enters a world that might be somewhat familiar but ought not to be wholly so, and the characters are, indeed, strangers to her. We enter with caution and sometimes even suspicion. Beginning a new book feels somewhat like jumping into the cold waters of a lake: shocking the system. Sometimes setting out in a new book is like entering a darkened forest; and sometimes it is like joining a party already in full session in an unknown strange house with nothing but strangers in attendance. “Who are these people? Where am I? Who invited me, after all? What am I doing here?” Often the incipient reader will turn and flee.

     Sterne appears to have prepared for this possibility at least by offering the reader entrance into the book. In the very first chapter Sterne places the reader into the book and even allows him or her to ask directly of the narrator, “Pray, what was your father saying?” which really asked when your father spoke what did he mean? The novel Tristram Shandy will be at the least a conversation between narrator and reader, and the reader is early cautioned not to remain blithely passive. Throughout the narrative Tristram tells us how the book is written and therefore, how the book must be read. For example, chastising his female reader for inattention, Tristram cautions, “’Tis to rebuke a vicious taste which has which has crept into thousands besides herself,--of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventure, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them.” Of course, what he advocates is that one read not merely for plot but for meaning. Meaning derives from reflection. And to prevent a linearity that would obviate thought, Tristram keeps interrupting the narrative with digressions. “Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;--they are the life, the soul of reading;--take them out of this book for instance,--you might as well take the book along with them.” What this means is that the steady (and anticipated) movement of plot suffers continual interruption and the reader must attend carefully to her or his reading because the reader can’t expect to know exactly what is to come next. Of his method Tristram says, says, “I set no small store  . . . that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, that if I thought you was able to form the last judgment or probably conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,--I would tear it out of my book.” What Tristram argues is that the digressions are absolutely necessary because no occurrence can be understood outside of the context in which the event occurs, and the digressions often offer that context.

     Reading Tristram Shandy is not about plot at all—though the book begins on the subject of Tristram’s birth, with all of the digressions it takes almost 80 pages until he is actually born! Without digressions, Tristram says, there is no book: “they are the life, the soul of reading.” I think one delight in reading Sterne’s novel is following the digressive narrative that finally includes all of life that could not ever be contained by a steady, rational progress of plot!