Everyone should have an Uncle like This

Orhan Pamuk

--Taken from Other Colours, this essay is Pamuk’s preface to the Turkish translation
of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy—Pamuk argues that this book has been
successful in capturing the shape and nature of the reality and life. The essay is
divided into several sections under subtitles.

--1. Prelude:

--Reference to Uncle Toby who is hilarious and talkative—has his obsessions—cracks

jokes and involves in word games—inspite of all his cunning and worldly
experience, he is still a mischievous child at heart— we all have such uncles--every
time this uncle leads us astray, father or mother will warn him—but we are for ever
led by his tales.

--They are good raconteurs (story tellers) we would always love to listen to—Pamuk
compares these uncles to columnists in Turkey who can make stories out of
whatever happens to them—they actually express our own experiences, but from a
new point of view—we would all love to have uncles like this.

--The author is reminded of his own uncle who was interested in mathematical
riddles and his beautiful wife whose beauty could not be diminished by anything in
the house—her two sons are now dentists at Nisantasi (a town in Turkey)—one day
while walking the author looks at the closed door of his uncle’s house and is
reminded of his past.

2. Getting off the Subject:

--The author admits now that he digressed in the prelude and says that this is what
actually happens in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.—we
never come across his life and opinions—only at the end we hear about Tristram’s
birth—Sterne’s hero can talk many things about the world he was born into, but
nothing much about himself—“He is like a happy monkey, swinging from one
branch to the next, never stopping, leaping from subject to subject, always moving
forward.”

--Critics like Victor Shklovsky feel that Sterne actually took utmost care in planning
his book—there are several ways of beginning a book—the best one is closest to
religion—“write the first sentence and leave the second to God the All-knowing.”
--Sterne’s subject appears to be digression.

3. So, What is the Subject?”

--Digression usually makes us bored—there are several reasons why a novel is

boring: long descriptions of nature, not enough sex, or too much of it, some authors
prefer minimalism and others prefer too much detail (for.eg. confused family
backgrounds)—what really makes a novel interesting?

--it is not the presence or absence of the above-mentioned, but the novelist’s skill
and style—a novel can be about anything (Tristram Shandy is a book about
anything)—Sterne has said that he wrote to stave off boredom—it is the narrative
shape that attracts us—“This book is a miscellany of outlandish tales and tongue-in-
cheek sermons.”—the unborn child Tristram gets shaped along the narration.

4. So Tell us the Author’s Story:

--Laurence Sterne was born in poverty in 1713 in Ireland—at 18 his father died—a
distant relative helps him to study theology and the classics at Cambridge—after
graduation he entered the Church of England—he rose through the ranks—at 28
married Elizabeth Lumbley—all their children died and only their daughter Lydia
survived—published Tristram Shandy in 1760 when he was 47 and his wife was
suffering from melancholia.

-We usually expect purposeful and moralistic stories from clerics and Imams (eg.
Imam Nurullah Efendi’s Friday sermons moralise us and frighten us, says the author)
—Sterne was so original—“Although he was a cleric, he invented a form that one
might call the story with no purpose.”—“He does not write toward a particular end,
or to teach a lesson, but just for the pleasure of telling a story.”—to have no
purpose is Sterne’s purpose (it is non-teleological)—because of this Sterne at his time
invited much anger and envy, was chastised for writing pornography, writing too
trivially for a cleric, for his mocking of religion, broken sentences and lack of
grammar...Sterne was also suffering from tuberculosis—still, later in London he
became famous—had “sentimental attachments” with women—other writers were
influenced by him.

5. So All Right, Then, What is the Subject of Tristram Shandy?

--Here Pamuk provides an outline of the story, chapterwise in the first book:
1. The narrator (Tristram) describes the circumstances of his birth.

2. The author talks about the Homunculus (the littleman), i.e., the sperm responsible
for his conception.

3. We discover the next narrator, Uncle Toby.

4. Author speaks about the night he was conceived.

5. Author informs he was born on November 5, 1718.

6. Author warns the reader to stay with him.

7. Difficulties encountered by a vicar and his wife in search of a midwife.

8. The vicar’s Hobby-Horses: playing the violin or painting.

9. An explanation of this dedication.

10. Return to the midwife’s story.

11. Yorick (the name taken from Shakespeare) is introduced.

12. Yorick’s jokes and his sorry end.

13. Return to midwife’s story.

14. Digress about digression—why he has not reached his conclusion.

15. Author’s mother’s wedding certificate and its story.

16. His father’s return from London.

17. Father’s wishes upon returning to the house.

18. Preparations for birth in the provinces and other reflections.

19. Father’s hatred of the name Tristram and other philosophic obsessions.

20. Author scolds his inattentive readers.

21. We approach the birth, though digression continues.

22. Author reflects on digression and says he moves forward.

23. Author is not ready to impede his imagination—speaks about pastimes.

24. On Uncle Toby as a pastime.

25. Groin wound of Uncle Toby (end of first book)

6. So What is the Subject then?

--“The subject is the impossibility of ever getting to the point, the centre, the heart
of the story.”—the author seems determined that the reader should not guess the
content of the next page—the beginning and the end are meaningless and the
middle is obscure—the whole is both taxing to the brain and full of pointless excess
—this is the point—“In its subject as in its shape, Tristram Shandy exactly reflects
real life.”

7. So you’re saying What, That This is What Life is Like?

--Life is like this and novelists write their books with the express purpose of
provoking it—Novels raise questions about the shape and nature of life—Great
novelists (there are only a few) remain in our memory not because they evoke these
questions directly, but because they evoke these questions in their structure,
language, atmosphere, voice and tone while describing life’s petty and extraordinary
details—Our ideas about life are shaped and confirmed by romantic melodramas—
when we read a particular novel, we understand life in a different way—Great
authors provide us witha new way of understanding life.

--Tristram Shandy defies our fundamental understanding of life—both expert

readers and readers with simple tastes are troubled by the book and leave it half way
—they complain: “Life is not like this.”—the book defies our narrow rules of life—
(Sterne was criticised for immorality and confused use of grammar)—but in solitude
the reader wil agian pick the book—Even Samuel Johnson disliked the book:
“Nothing strange lasts. Tristram Shandy will never last.”

--Orhan Pamuk expresses his joy on writing the forward to the Turkish translation of
Tristram Shandy after 240 years of its first publication.

8. So What has this Book Taught me?

-- Pamuk says he lives in a poor country where novels are read not for pleasure, but
for their utility—the literate help the illiterate in endearing books—Great books will
improve them—Tristram Shandy is rich with the stuff of life—its rituals, states of
mind, and refinements.

--War and Peace details the Battle of Borodino; Moby-Dick is an encyclopedic

account of whaling— while Tristram Shandy is about a boy born in the 18th century
Ireland who becomes an English vicar—Pamuk places Tristram Shandy along with
Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605 and
1615), Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532—1564) in “scholarly wit” and
“philosophical humour.”—in Tristram Shandy there are digressions, sweeping
philosophical statements, extravagant shows of erudition, the studies of character
and the human soul—everything is here, but balanced by the fine wit and mock
solemnity—Sterne overturns great philosophical questions—great novels overturn
big ideals—author gives two examples: 1. Don Quixote (story of a character poisoned
by chivalry), 2. Madame Bovary (a character poisoned by romantic novels).

--The “”realist” scene at the end of Madame Bovary (where Emma Bovary succumbs
not to a book, but to adeadly drug) had huge impact on literature all over the world
—this overdose of realism poisoned Turkish literature too—Turkey too succumbed to
this superficial and flat reality—it was a realism borowwed from Europe (in a
Eurocentric world view, Europe was the source of all truth)—until Ulysses was
published 65 years later, Turkey was influenced by this flat realism by Flaubert (who
visited Istanbul in 1850).

--Had Gargantua and Pantagruel and Tristram Shandy been translated earlier, we
would have been influenced by them—and would have become more open to the
complexities of our lives—like Ulysses, Tristram Shandy too saved the Turks from
superficial realism—Pamuk asks his people to listen to this novel.

9. So Here it is, the Fundamental Lesson this Book Teaches:

--The logic behind all legends, religions and phillosophy is to teach us fundamental
truths—this exercise is called a grand narrative—it usually takes the form of a
detailed story and is more literary than commonly thought—centred on a character
whose mind is set on an essence, a quest, a point in the distance—a character who
basks in the glory of this grand narrative is a rounded character, whereas a character
who is consumed by one desire, eg. Carnal pleasure, or pursuit of money, is a flat
character—they are one-dimensional and caricatures—but Don Quixote is not a
caricature, but a rounded person.

--Tristram Shandy tells us that however stable a character is, his mind and life will be
much more untidy—“Our lives do not have a centre, a single focal point; what goes
on inside our heads is too chaotic for us ever to achieve such focus. Life is like that
too: Like Tristram, we spend our times jumping from one subject to another...”

--Agrand narrative can never give you a true picture of life –we are ever open to
distraction—Summary: Life does not resemble that which is narrated in great
novels, it resembles the shape of that book in your hands—but beware: “Life
doesn’t resemble the book itself, just its shape. Because this book cannot bring any
story to a conclusion and cannot, in fact, make sense.”

10. Finale:

--“Life has no meaning, only this shape...All great novels open your eyes things you
already knew but could not accept, simply because no great novel had yet opened
your eyes to them.”