Resisting Linear Form: Sterne and Phillips with “nothing between them but / time”

Readers have certain expectations. Out of any given narrative we expect an introduction, body and conclusion. English words should flow logically one after the other, running from the left to right, in straight lines along the page. Any interruption to this linear process of reading may raise a range of emotional responses, whether it be confusion, anger, awe or insight. Early resistance to a linear reading experience is evident in Laurence Sterne’s 1759-1767 novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Unfolding over the course of nine volumes, this narrative is frequently interrupted with unusual visual and typographic experiments that remain puzzling and intriguing to readers to this day. Likely the most expensive and ambitious of Sterne's experiments is the third volume’s marbled page; a single page coated front and back in a layer of marbled paint, painstakingly and seamlessly constrained within the margins of the text-block. This paper explores the impact of these experiments on the reading experience, with particular attention to the marbled page, by looking towards the reception of Sterne in the contemporary work of book artist Tom Phillips. Despite being raised in the same discussions as examples of works that are intensely aware of their own form, there appears to be little analysis of the connection between Sterne and Phillips. Exploring the reception of Sterne in Phillips’ A Humument illuminates not only how Phillips references Sterne, but also how the very form and design of his work emulates a similar resistance to the linearity of reading and literate culture.   Keywords:  Laurence Sterne, marbled page, Tom Phillips, literate culture, linearity, receptio