ADAPTING TRISTRAM SHANDY by Adria Young Submitted in ...

Commentary about Tristram Shandy mirrors the commentary within Tristram
Shandy; the intertexts of the novel are adapted into this “comic book about the writing of
a comic book about the writing of a novel about the writing of a novel” (Rowson 69),
which makes Rowson’s version both critical and metacritical. The reader is made aware
of the difficulties of reading Sterne’s narrative in an imitation of the difficulty Trim
encounters reading Sterne’s sermon paralleled by Pete’s interruption in the graphic novel
narrative. Just as Walter and Toby interrupt the reading of Yorick’s sermon in Volume II,
Pete interrupts the interruptions: as Pete walks out of the eighteenth-century panel and
into a desert, he yells, “I’m not spending another minute listening to those old twats
sitting around talking a load of old cock” (Rowson np). Rowson’s engagement with the
reader, as interpretative of Sterne’s text and interpretive through commentary,
renegotiates the conventions of narrativity,
and interacts with the contexts of the
original source text. Rowson’s unflattering
caricature of Samuel Johnson, for example,
(Figure 7) who holds a book under one
arm and spouts off his famous opinion of
the novel, gestures to the “Anti-Shandean”
criticism Sterne received for the novel’s
unconventional and difficult structure. 63
Part of Shandyism is the difficulty inherent
in processing the convergence of media.
47
Figure 7. Dr. Johnson.