Metafiction

Tristran Shandy

The Smoking Batteries": Trim, Toby's corporal, invents a device for firing multiple miniature cannons at once, based on a hookah. Unfortunately, he and Toby find the puffing on the hookah pipe so enjoyable that they keep setting the cannons off. Illustration by George Cruikshank. (Public Domain)

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Original Air Date: 
March 12, 2006

Laurence Sterne's 18th Century novel "Tristram Shandy" is a staple of college English Literature courses everywhere. The 600-odd page book-within-a-book-within-a-book is filled to the brim with digressions, stunts and frazzled chronology. For many it's unreadable. For sure it's unfilmable. This time on To The Best Of Our Knowledge, Tristram Shandy the film. We'll review it, we'll compare the film to the book. We'll even sing about it.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge
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Neda Ulaby, NPR reporter and cultural critic, talks with Jim Fleming about the film adaptation of Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy."

To The Best Of Our Knowledge
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Jim Fleming talks with novelist Wesley Stace. He explains why "Tristram Shandy" is one of his favorite books.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge
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Steve Paulson produced this essay/report on the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge
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Steve Paulson talks with a contemporary master of metafiction - writer Robert Coover. Coover's latest novel is "A Child Again."

To The Best Of Our Knowledge
Audio

Saul Williams has been hailed as hip hop's poet laureate. He talks with Anne Strainchamps, and we hear some of his work.

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Last modified: 
August 02, 2024