[New-Poetry] Happy Birthday Laurence Sterne!

[Anny Ballardini]

>From the Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the novelist Laurence Sterne, (books by this author) born in Clonmel, Ireland (1713), who became a priest and supported himself and his wife by doing double duty in two different parishes, as well as substitute preaching at a third parish. He did all this preaching in spite the fact that privately he was agnostic. He knew he wanted to try writing fiction, but his friends kept telling him to put it off until he got promoted to higher office.

He finally decided he couldn't wait any more, and began to write his novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760), a fictional autobiography in which the narrator is unable to tell his own story, because he's constantly sidetracked by various absurd digressions on all sorts of subjects. The book is also filled with black pages, excerpts of obscure theological debates, and a graphic representation of its own plotline. 

Sterne participated in all the details of Tristram Shandy's marketing campaign, even specifying the dimensions of the book to make sure it could fit into a gentleman's coat pocket. His efforts paid off and the book made him famous. Sterne's work influenced many writers of the 20th century, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett. Author Italo Calvino said, "[Sterne] was the undoubted progenitor of all the avant-garde novels of our century." 




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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
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