Ogier Badi itibaren Ortuella, Bizkaia, Spain

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05/01/2024

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2019-02-25 22:40

Revolver (Tabanca) TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

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Dedication This was a re-read of a novel that I first read when I was about 14 and that has stayed fresh in my mind ever since. It was recommended to me by my cricket coach and favourite teacher, John Carr, who taught me English for five years and cemented my passion for Literature in the early 70’s. His Master’s Thesis was on Evelyn Waugh’s "Sword of Honour” Trilogy (which I’ve also read and plan to re-read). I was amused to learn from Steven Moore that one John Carr rushed out a fake version of volume 3 of "Tristram Shandy” four months before Laurence Sterne had published his own version. Long live homage and fan fiction! This review is dedicated to both John Carr’s, one a teacher and the other a shit stirrer! "Let Me Go On, and Tell My Story My Own Way” The version of the novel that I read was 528 pages long. Don’t be afraid of the perceived length. The chapters are short and easy to read, plus it’s a lot of fun, once you get into the rhythm of the writing. Like a slippery slide, the hardest part is getting on; the rest is all downhill. If you read anything about "Tristram Shandy”, you’ll discover it is full of digressions. This is only partly true. The assessment assumes that there is a path from which the author departs. It’s probably more accurate to say that he never embarks on a set path in the first place. If a line can be said to be the shortest distance between two points, Sterne never really sets out to get from A to B, or to do it efficiently or quickly. He simply sits down to tell his story his way, as if we readers were sitting across from him at a pub or smoking our pipes in front of a fireplace. He’s in no hurry, but equally importantly neither are we. He simply asks that we let him get on and tell his story his own way. Left to his own devices, he is individualistic and unconventional, and so is his novel. In Which the Author Turns a Story Into a Plot Steven Moore differentiates between a story and a plot: "The story consists of the events in a novel as they would occur in chronological order; the plot refers to the novelist’s particular arrangements of those events.” While Moore identifies the three key elements of the story, I don’t think they’re particularly important. What is most appealing is the methodology Sterne uses to convert them into a plot. For me, the most interesting aspects of the novel are the self-referential discussions of the writing of the novel and the relationship between author, work and reader. These aspects are pure metafiction, and you could argue that no author has bettered them, before or after. The Beauty of the Line (or the Line of Beauty) The prevailing view of a narrative in a traditional realistic novel is linear. In the interests of efficiency and speed (i.e., distance travelled divided by time), the plot can be described in terms of a straight line. A straight line has a mathematical and a scientific significance. However, it also has a moral, creative and social significance. A straight line does not deviate to the left or the right. If we don’t deviate, we stay on the straight and narrow. Christians say it is the right path or the path of the righteous. Cicero describes it as "an emblem of moral rectitude”. If the line is vertical, it is upright or virtuous. If something falls from its top to its bottom, it experiences a divine gravitational force. By extension, the righteous feel gravitas. Etymologically, all of these words are related: straight, direct, erect, right, upright, rectitude, righteous. The physical qualities morph into the moral and from there (via recht) into the legal. Just as the right-handed ostracise the left-handed, the straight ostracise the bent, the crooked, the digressive and the divergent. It’s this that Sterne rebels against. He never sets out to follow the straight and narrow. His goal, so long as his neck remains flexible, is to follow his nose and his gaze, wherever they might lead him. And where he goes, so does his tale. It’s our pleasure and privilege to accompany him. The Life of Beauty Sterne takes a straight line and bends or curves it. He makes it more curvaceous, until it is closer to a line of beauty in the sense meant by Hogarth in his “Analysis of Beauty”. To quote wiki: "According to this theory, S-shaped curved lines signify liveliness and activity and excite the attention of the viewer as contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines, or right-angled intersecting lines, which signify stasis, death, or inanimate objects.” Thus, Sterne’s aversion for a straight line reflects an attraction to vitality, motion and dynamism. "Tristram Shandy” is nothing if not about vitality. "So vary'd he, and of his tortuous train Curl'd many a wanton wreath, in fight of Eve, To lure her eye." Milton Of Riddles and Mysteries Sterne’s objection to the straight line is also an objection to the logical processes that appear to govern our understanding of the world. He doesn’t necessarily come across as a mystic. However, it seems that we need at least intuition to experience and enjoy the best that the world has to offer: "We live amongst riddles and mysteries - the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into, and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.” Sterne objects to the plain, the joyless, the boring, that which lacks interest: "There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller, or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain...[that presents nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty.]” Of Conquests and Concupiscence While form might override content in "Tristram Shandy”, it does rear its head in the last trimester of the novel, when it becomes clear that the true concern of the characters, both male and female, is sex. They are, one and all, seeking "something perhaps more than friendship, less than love,” at least to start with. In retrospect, much of the dialogue is just playful or flirtatious or "talking bawdy”, as was the case with Sterne’s predecessor, Rabelais. The ultimate goal, for a male, is to tempt a pretty woman "into a conversation with a pinch of snuff”: "Why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance and sing and say his prayers and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?” Ironically, this was in France, which elsewhere Sterne would describe as "foutre-land”, though I confess I can’t give an accurate contemporary translation of the term. Love and lust and amours (in which the reader longs for uncle Toby to get his oats) consist of thrusts and parries, just as much as any military battle. Fortifications and defences are broken down. Seductions follow campaigns and sieges (if you’re lucky). Of the Love Between an Author and a Reader So, ultimately, Sterne seems to argue, "talking of love is making it.” If so, then you might well agree, what’s the hurry? One lover’s digression is another’s foreplay. The point is to be aligned, if not vertically, at least horizontally. Equally, the process of writing and reading follows some of the rules of attraction and love, at least to the extent that it depends on good communication and the sharing of the creative burdens between the two participants: "Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation…The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.” Thus, when the pleasure is equally shared, it’s possible that Tristram wasn’t necessarily complaining when he moaned, “the more I write, the more I shall have to write.” Perhaps what he really meant was that, the more I love, the more I shall have to love. If this sounds like a "fertile fancy” or mere exaggeration, then, like Sterne: "I beg the reader will assist me here...” SOUNDTRACK: Van Morrison - "Help Me" (from the live album "It's Too Late to Stop Now") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn3GW... Van Morrison - "Help Me" (Live at Montreux Jazz, 2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As03J... Sonny Boy Williamson - "Help Me" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPeP3... Christelle Berthon - "Help Me" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xePm... http://www.harmonica-online.com/artis...

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