Brian Tivol
                                                               21w765j

Both of the books assigned were so utterly filled with digressions,
associative presentations, juxtapositions of parallel story elements,
and "framing" of one story with another, that trying to list all the
examples I can find would be ridiculous.  Instead, I'm going to list
the examples from each book that particularly struck me.

In Tristram Shandy, I especially liked the thread about the midwife in
Book I.  After spending all of Chapter VI discussing the importance of
her role, Tristam then goes on to get completely off-track, discussing
Hobby Horses and selling praise.  Again, at the beginning of Chapter
XIII he apologizes for straying, stresses how important she is, and
then drifts away again, never returning to the midwife.  My pick for a
digression is from Chapter XIII, where after saying that everyone in
the world loved the midwife, he then proceeds to define exactly what
he means by "the world".

My example of associative presentation is Tristam's linking between
the story behind his name and the fact that certain religions allow
babies to be baptized in utero.  I liked this bizarre linkage, and the
little bridge between them, even if it was only put in the book to set
up a joke about baptizing batches of sperm.

For juxtaposition, I picked the mention of Toby's hobby horse.  After
rambling about hobby horses earlier in the book, Tristram brings them
up again, but this time he doesn't actually ask the reader directly to
compare the two instances.  Often, with other stories, he'll bring
back some old topic or explicitly mention some sort of link, but that
wasn't the case with the hobby horses.

Tristam tells the story of Yorick framed within the story about the
midwife.  Yorick is introduced relative to the midwife, that is,
Tristram explains the timing of his story and his locale in terms of
the midwife's.  On both sides of the story, Tristram comes back to the
story about the midwife, which he actually never finishes.

Well, that's one of each from Tristram Shandy.  Now, Dictionary of the
Khasars.

For my example of digression, I thought it would be appropriate to
find a case within one particular entry.  In the beginning of the
entry about Dr. Suk in the Red Book, there's a good digression: After
reading that Suk wakes up with a key in his mouth, we then read what
else he does in the morning, such as visiting his mother.  We read an
account of one such visit, and then are brought back abruptly to Suk
waking up with the key in his mouth.

Finding one example of juxtaposition of parallel story elements or one
example of associative presentation in this book feels too trivial to
be worthwhile.  But, for associative presentation, I'll pick the entry
on Ku in the Green Book.  It's quite short, yet manages to reference
quite a few different entries from each of the three books.  For
juxtaposition of parallel story elements, I think I'll just point out
that the Dictionary is composed of three different books.

In the Yellow Book, in the middle of the entry on Samuel Cohen, we
find Cohen looking through old papers and finding a story about Adam
Cadmon.  That's a classic method for framing one story within another.