About the book: 1968 / Stern's masterpiece is unconditionally recognized as "Tristram Shandy" (Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). At first glance, the novel appears to be a chaotic jumble of amusing and dramatic scenes, skillfully outlined characters, various satirical attacks and bright, witty statements interspersed with numerous typographical tricks (pointing fingers in the margins, a blackened (“mourning”) page, an abundance of significant italics). The story constantly goes off to the side, interspersed with funny and sometimes risky stories, which are generously provided by the author’s wide reading. Digressions constitute the brightest sign of the “Shandian” style, which declares itself free from traditions and order. Criticism (primarily S. Johnson) sharply condemned Stern's arbitrariness as a writer. In fact, the plan of the work was thought out and drawn up much more carefully than it seemed to contemporaries and later Victorian critics. “Writing books, when done skillfully,” said Stern, “is tantamount to a conversation,” and in telling a “story,” he followed the logic of a lively, meaningful “conversation” with the reader. He found a suitable psychological justification in the teachings of J. Locke on the association of ideas. In addition to the rationally comprehended connection of ideas and concepts, Locke noted, there are their irrational connections (such are superstitions). Stern divided large periods of time into fragments, which he then rearranged in accordance with the state of mind of his characters; this is why his work is “regressive, but also progressive at the same time.” The hero of the novel, Tristram, is not at all the central character, since up to the third In the volume, he remains in an embryonic state, then, during early childhood, appears on the pages from time to time, and the final part of the book is devoted to the courtship of his uncle Toby Shandy for the widow Wodman, which generally took place several years before the birth of Tristram. The “opinions” mentioned in the title of the novel are mostly those of Walter Shandy, Tristram’s father, and Uncle Toby. Loving brothers, they at the same time do not understand each other, since Walter constantly goes into vague theorizing, trumping ancient authorities, and Toby, not inclined towards philosophy, thinks only about military campaigns. Contemporary readers united Stern with Rabelais and Cervantes, to whom he openly followed, and later it turned out that he was a harbinger of such writers as J. Joyce, Virginia Woolf and W. Faulkner, with their “stream of consciousness” method».