by Zoë Pollock
Ted Scheinman celebrates Laurence Sterne’s 1759 novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman as the premiere example of attention deficit literature:
Sterne invites us to skip passages that bore, forget passages that displease, to hop and jump between chapters, and to reimagine scenes to our own liking. In elevating to muse-status his own fickle fancy, Sterne indulges ours, creating a book that is less a novel than the longest sustained joke in the English language. And yes, it is long. But here’s the secret: you don’t really need to finish it to get the joke.
The take-away:
Information overload is not a new phenomenon — it’s sort of just part of being alive. Our current objects of distraction may be somewhat newer and shinier, and fewer of us read Latin and French, but the Shandean truths abide. If Sterne can teach us anything, it is to enjoy the flightiness of our mortal minds — not to lament, but to laugh.
The Dish 