MADAM, today we have the first of two episodes on Tristan’s *favorite novel ever,* Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. This behemoth, published in nine honking volumes between 1759 and 1767, is filthy, and silly, and brilliant, and absolutely delightful. Yes, dick jokes abound (good ones! for the most part). But Tristram Shandy is also about challenging, important, and baffling questions: What does it mean to write a life? Have you ever noticed how weird an object a book is? How the f*ck do we know that we know anything? And why, MADAM, do you have such a dirty mind, because the Rev. Doctor Sterne was MOST CERTAINLY NOT about to say the thing you thought he was about to say (how dare you? nudge nudge wink wink).

We read the Penguin edition, with an introduction by Christopher Ricks and edited by Melvyn New and Joan New. It’s a bit old, but Melvyn New’s Laurence Sterne as Satirist: A Reading of ‘Tristram Shandy’ has good context for figuring out Sterne’s iconoclastic place in the whole “rise of the English novel” tradition.

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