Reading Groups

Tristram Shandy with Evan James

Once a week Wednesdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 7:30 pm EDT March 9 to May 11, 2022

Online via Zoom

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The ‘With Book’ option includes a copy of Tristram Shandy at a 10% discount.

A literary sensation when it was first published in the 18th century, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne is one the most playful, self-reflexive, and inventive novels in all of English literature. An energetic comedy of digressions, of “hobby-horsical” obsessions and of meta-commentary on novel-writing itself, it is a reading experience like no other—a trickster text full of formal ingenuity and delight. Together, we’ll tackle this legendary comic masterpiece and literary oddity volume by volume, cultivating our appreciation for the work in weekly discussion and learning about some of the social and cultural context from which it sprang in all its Shandean glory.

For the first session, please read Volume I (pages 1-63 in the Modern Library Classics edition).

Led by

Evan James

Evan James

Evan James is the author of Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe: A Novel and I’ve Been Wrong Before: Essays. He received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing at The University of Iowa, The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, The Center for Fiction, and Pierrepont School, where he built and oversaw the growth of the Creative Writing department for four years. His work has appeared in Oxford American, the New York Times, the Iowa Review, Travel + Leisure, Ninth Letter, Catapult, the Normal School, and elsewhere, and he has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Yaddo, The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He lives in Brooklyn.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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