Chapter
One – The Plot
Well,
gentlefolk, at least that’s out of the way!
Chapter
Two – The Characters
Young
Tristram Shandy, so unfortunately misnamed, is so young he’s still in the womb.
He doesn’t even condescend to appear until volume three! This means he writes a
bagful of pages before he even has access to paper, pen and inkhorn. But there
is his good father and perhaps better mother, who at the outset suffer the
ignominy of being depicted clock-winding.
There’s Uncle Toby, who has a passion for fortifications. In fact,
verily indeed, whatever compass point provides the direction for whatever
conversation, up will pop Uncle Toby and let off about mullions, parapets and ´scarpments.
And don’t expect any assistance with vocabulary! Toby’s servant Trim and a
forgetful maid called Susannah complete the cast. But there are others
everywhere walking in and out of the tale, a farce acted through the momentary
opening of doors, a trip to France and an occasional visit to the parlour for a
pipe or a snifter.
Chapter
Three – The Style
There
will be no chapter three. The greatest of all philosophers, the very
Slawkenbergius, assures us that the inclusion of third chapters inevitably
lowers to tone of a tome, so these notes will have no chapter three, just to
repeat what was said earlier. Thus, as a result of this pontification that we
may not cross, this particular chapter three does not exist and is hereby deferred
until chapter LXVIII of volume six.
Chapter
Four – Noses
We
all have one, we are told. Restating this perhaps more precisely, so that the
good Doctor Hume might not be tempted to issue his objections, we all have the
potential to possess one. But nose possessors beware! Be they long and
judgmentally wagging, heavy and lewd or retroussé and apologetic, no nose is
safe when the infant must be drawn forth into the world with newfangled
assistance such as metal forceps.
Imagine the relative frailty of the protrusion compared to the grip of
metal tongs! And if the child be a male, let that be the end of it! Or perhaps
the end off it…
Chapter
Five – The Moral
Morals
were always questionable. And since there is nothing left to say on the matter,
let’s let chapter five be the same as chapter four. Except let us also include
reference to nonsense, absurdity, Monty Python, Cervantes, Rabelais and perhaps
anyone else who cares to call in. Including the young Tristram Shandy,
gentlemen, the poor unfortunate lad whose memoir this reported ‘novel’ claims
to be. Hilarity also must look in to confirm the status of masterpiece, a
status obviously to be achieved the moment the redoubtable author, one Laurence
Sterne, placed his pen upon paper in Shandy’s name. And let it also be said,
that, despite its two and a half centuries of age, the memoir may sound
surprisingly modern, if the word Pythonesque be validly employed. Not all
readers might be of the opinion, but in the end, what does it matter?
Chapter
Six – The End and The Plot Again
So
that’s it! The end. Please have a look at my website.
