Autumn II. Tristram Shandy

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Autumn I. Hawkweed

How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon one, either one knows not why, or in consequence, perhaps, of some most trifling suggestion. Yesterday I was walking at dusk. I came to an old farmhouse; at the garden gate a vehicle stood waiting, and I saw it was our doctor’s gig. Having passed, I turned to look back. There was a faint afterglow in the sky beyond the chimneys; a light twinkled at one of the upper windows. I said to myself, “Tristram Shandy,” and hurried home to plunge into a book which I have not opened for I dare say twenty years.

Not long ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly thought of the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller; and so impatient did I become to open the book that I got up an hour earlier than usual. A book worth rising for... A book which helps one to forget the idle or venomous chatter going on everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a world “which has such people in’t.”

These volumes I had at hand; I could reach them down from my shelves at the moment when I hungered for them. But it often happens that the book which comes into my mind could only be procured with trouble and delay; I breathe regretfully and put aside the thought. Ah! the books that one will never read again. They gave delight, perchance something more; they left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever. I have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me. Books gentle and quieting, books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to be pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps when I lie waiting for the end, some of those lost books will come into my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I owed a kindness -- friends passed upon the way. What regret in that last farewell!

Alpha.

Ha! My constant references to Uncle Toby and Tristram Shandy pay off. Like Ryecroft, it has probably been at least 20 years since I last read Laurence Sterne, and all I can imagine, from his opening, that would remind him of the book is the arrival of the doctor at the beginning of the novel to oversee the perpetually delayed birth of young Tristram. Here's a great quote from the book that always reminds me of Emmanuel Kant,

I hate set dissertations, -- and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception...

And as has happened every time I’ve referred to the book myself, this reference makes me want to jump back in and read it again. The problem -- the curse -- of loving books like this is that it is so hard to find sympathetic ears when you feel the urge to praise the cunning debate about the "squirt" (Can you save the soul of the not-quite-infant by squirting it with Holy Water before it clears the birth canal and actually enters the world?) or to sympathize with Toby’s war injury (groin) or to marvel at The Marbled Pages. 

(And speaking of the Marbled Pages, here's something I didn't know about the early editions of the book: 

It encapsulates the spirit of the pioneering book as a whole, and gets at the good old—or, in Sterne's case, not yet invented—theme of the reader's personal subjectivity. In the words of Sterne scholar Peter de Voogd, "Each marbling is unique, as is each reading of Tristram Shandy. It is fitting that your copy of Tristram Shandy is different from mine, since your subjective experience of the book is different." The Marbled Pages

Pretty amazing for a book first published in 1759.

Today an electronic version of The Marbled Pages could do the original one better by including an algorithm that alters the graphic each time the file is displayed. This would represent how the book changes with each re-reading.)

Thanks to the miracle of email, I at least have the option of sending out a quick message to the college professor who first assigned me the task of reading this odd book. I have also pestered her with questions about Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. This is perhaps extending the definition of “continuing education” past the breaking point, considering that these reading assignments are now 40 years in the past. But I feel those first readings were mostly wasted (though also necessary, of course), now I would get so much more our of the study of literature and philosophy than I did in my late teens and early 20s. Perhaps college degrees should be given out provisionally pending your completing your studies 40 or 50 years on?

The Other Cafe.

Besides the Bank Cafe, I also frequent another cafe that is slightly more convenient -- being on my hill -- and that is in almost every way the opposite of the Bank Cafe. The Other Cafe occupies a space in a Victorian apartment building that previously housed a corner market. Aside from a couple seismic retrofit steel beams, it is all of wood and probably a hundred years old. There is a narrow mezzanine reached by a tight little staircase that I am amazed meets codes. The fit-out is, if anything, more trendy, but much less corporate, than the Bank Cafe. The tables and counters downstairs are of a plywood I particularly like the edges of. The coffee beans arrive by bicycle.

The food here is better but also more expensive. The WiFi is usually much better -- though not today. The music is much less predictable. Often there is good jazz but the staff chooses what to play and some of them have peculiar taste. Overall it makes for a nice change of pace. I was skeptical that the place would draw enough business when it first opened, but it is almost always packed. Not infrequently I have to move on to my third favorite cafe because I can’t find a seat here. Today I lucked out and got a seat at one of the window counters. The light here is great for reading but a bit bright for the computer. As at the Bank Cafe, I’m not sure what everyone else is doing here for such long periods of time. Like me, they are probably all working after a fashion, or so I imagine.

Walking over here just now I saw something strange that I’m noticed several times before: It seems that there is a curious sub-set of crazy street people who can’t (for some mysterious reason) walk on the sidewalk -- they are always walking in the street regardless of traffic. The only place I tend to walk in the street is in Chinatown because the sidewalks are often so crowded as to be impassable. Perhaps, for some people, a normal sidewalk is subjectively just as overcrowded? Perhaps cars and trucks are not perceived as being quite as invasive? Really, I have no idea.

Next: Autumn III. Time regained again.