Metafiction

Reflecting Lawrence Sterne’s comic novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, published 1759-1769 and famed for length, addressing the reader, digressions and generous quotations 

Book I Chapter The First

––––– “I will endeavour to explain with all imaginable decency.” Many years before my life began, madam, my father’s grandfather purchased a tiny farmstead and set to work upon it, growing vegetables for his family, tending a small quantity of livestock; trading produce with local businesses, such as the ostler, a candleman, tailors and schoolteachers–––––so that my father’s father (the former-mentioned gentleman’s firstborn) understood his alphabet and could count up to adequately high numbers to gather wealth, buy additional fields from the farm next door and expand the range of crops to include other corns and grains––––which in turn served well his family, consisting (as you may wish to take note) of my aunt Janet, aunt Mary, uncle Daniel, uncle Mike and my father, the last born––––––they lived with considerable ease in a extended farmhouse, and employed a maid, three farmhands and their own ostler–––––which was not quite luxury. I quote freely (madam, you will forgive the digression, I have no doubt) from a historical discourse describing a life like that of my forebears––––––“The arable field system consisted of a combination of open common fields, and closes – parcels of land bounded by ditches, hedges,, walls and fences. The crops were wheat, barley and oats grown in three-course rotation as the arable was each used in turn for winter and spring grains and then fallowed. Some grew beans, peas, vetch, wheat, barley, oats or rye. Sheep flocks were regularly pastured on downland near the manorial court, maintaining a flock of 300-350; also two dozen each of oxen, calves and chicken.” And so it was (as you may be able to imagine) that my grandfather’s wise husbandry favoured his family, and by not some small chance did this result in the benefits being visited upon my father himself––––––even though he was one born out of time, abnormally inheriting the land and the business sustained thereupon. For my aunt Janet would have been granted some small part of favour, having been marriéd at an early age to one of the men who oftentimes visited the farm (ostensibly for the purposes of being a hired man––––––yet later his deeper motive was revealed as he sought permission to at first woo and then be granted leave to take the hand of the aforementioned aunt, who had fine features, a ruddy complexion and a temperament likely to attract men of some adventure and willingness to be tolerant). Janet’s beau––––––who became, of course, my adopted-by-marriage uncle Amos-Edom––––––spake thus to her father. ‘My Lord, vouchsafe my gratitude to you for these forescore days of fair and righteous hire, in which I have laboured most vigorously on account of these fine haystacks and those ploughed tracks of land––––––as far as the old cedar and beyond the ridge over yonder, where runs the cooling brook and grows the lilies––––––some of which I gathered withal to present them to this your daughter Janet, for whom I have true affection and warmth and by whom I am being chastely considered, having asked her–––––meekly kneeling upon one knee, to allow me to address you thusly, with worthy intention––––––to gain her hand. Now sir, I know such an euphemism hides so much more delight than it reveals (continues for Nine Books, each of Sixty Chapters, not reproduced here, for reasons of mercy) [1]

[1] Book I ancestors; Book II immediate family; Book III inheritance; Book IV & V spending; Book VI completes spending; Book VII famine, pig-tending; Book VIII revelation, return journey; Book IX welcome, celebration