ederwin's review against another edition
3.0
This adaptation is very faithful to the spirit of the original 1760s novel. That is both good and bad. The novel is amazing in the way it uses techniques that we think of as post-modern many years before that term existed. (But so did Don Quixote, so maybe we should re-think our terms.)
The novel is kind-of hilarious in the way it goes off on tangents and then makes digressions on that and tangents off that and never gets to the point. (In a 9-volume novel about the "Life" of Tristram Shandy, the main character isn't even born until well into the 3rd volume.) But that same tendency is tiresome after a while and I never finished the novel. (Sterne himself seems to be bored by it before the end.)
I did finish this adaptation, but I had to force myself. Again, it is hilarious in bits, but also tedious in bits.
Sterne "borrowed" (or "stole" or "plagiarized" or "sampled") bits of many other literary works in Tristram Shandy. Much of that wasn't realized at the time. Here, Rowson samples many different styles of visual art, and that is often obvious. Examples: Hogarth (Gin Lane), Da Vinci (Last Supper), Herriman (Krazy Kat), etc. .... And he brings in literary critics and deconstructionists and ... pretty much a bit of everything.
Standard graphic novel gripes here: printed too small to appreciate all details, and some bits are lost in the fold of two-page spreads that don't lay flat.
The novel is kind-of hilarious in the way it goes off on tangents and then makes digressions on that and tangents off that and never gets to the point. (In a 9-volume novel about the "Life" of Tristram Shandy, the main character isn't even born until well into the 3rd volume.) But that same tendency is tiresome after a while and I never finished the novel. (Sterne himself seems to be bored by it before the end.)
I did finish this adaptation, but I had to force myself. Again, it is hilarious in bits, but also tedious in bits.
Sterne "borrowed" (or "stole" or "plagiarized" or "sampled") bits of many other literary works in Tristram Shandy. Much of that wasn't realized at the time. Here, Rowson samples many different styles of visual art, and that is often obvious. Examples: Hogarth (Gin Lane), Da Vinci (Last Supper), Herriman (Krazy Kat), etc. .... And he brings in literary critics and deconstructionists and ... pretty much a bit of everything.
Standard graphic novel gripes here: printed too small to appreciate all details, and some bits are lost in the fold of two-page spreads that don't lay flat.
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