Sherman Boyd

I had the pleasure of watching A Cock and Bull Story last night. It was chaotic, funny and fresh. Obvious, low brow jokes are woven into a tapestry of delicious philosophical irony in this retelling of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by Laurence Sterne. A book I had never heard of before now.

After consulting Google, I decided to read it in an electronic format. Crazy huh? The last e-book I read was this text file, and my horrible flickering Packard Bell monitor left me with a massive headache. I’m hoping my iBook LCD will treat me better.

Also Tristam Shandy isn’t a book that lends itself to a dot txt file. Sterne includes non-textual data in his books, like including an all black page when a character dies. The format would have to be html.

I’ve found a couple of sources:

Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1079

The html version looks good. The yellow around the text doesn’t sit well with me (I suppose I could alter the .css file). At least there is a lot of text on each screen which means less scrolling. It looks like only volumes one through four are available. Like any other Gutenberg file, you can download it for offline viewing.

The Tristam Shandy Web:

http://www.tristramshandyweb.it/home.htm

This one looks beautiful, but doesn’t display much text per screen, which means lots of scrolling. Also you must click on a icon to move to the next page. I don’t see any way to download it (short of using a web ripper). Still, in my totally unqualified opinion this is the most accurate representation of a first edition available on the web. It is complete, with all nine volumes.

Laurence Sterne in Cyberspace:

http://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/Sterne_on_the_Net.html

You can skip the Google search, as Masaru Uchida maintains this excellent directory on all things related to Laurence Stern.

I think I will begin with the Gutenberg version, I just like to be able to hit the down arrow as I read. If I reach the end of the first four volumes then I will switch off to the Tristam Shandy Web.