, What happens when you become conscious of change? In 1936, the American novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald relates what that mental event represented for him in a brief essay, The Crack-up. What were the causes of the 'crack-up'? In fact, in his case, there are so many of them that they become irrelevant: alcoholism and the deterioration of his body, the economic crisis of the 30s, etc. What matters is that a series of tiny fissures (meaningless in themselves) end up one day producing a rupture, Our lives are always caught in processes of becoming

, Either I ignore the change and go on living (not a very good word? surviving?) in a fossilized manner (like Toby or Walter in Sterne's book), or I cross the frontier, I develop a new identity, I invest new territories, I run away in another direction. For it undeniably will have to be a flight away from my former certainties which have suddenly proved to be illusions. (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari analyse Fitzgerald's essay in Chapter VIII of Mille Plateaux. Cf. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2 (Engl. transl, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

, I fully agree with King that words, and more generally, discourse will never bridge the gaps that I suddenly find yawning in my life and

D. W. Allen, Sexuality/Textuality in Tristram Shandy, Studies in English Literature, pp.651-670, 1985.

R. Alter, Tristram Shandy and the Game of Love, The American Scholar, vol.32, issue.2

H. Anderson, Associationism and Wit in Tristram Shandy, Philological Quarterly, pp.27-41, 1969.

C. Banerjee, Tristram Shandy and the Association of Ideas, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, pp.693-706, 1974.

C. Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, 1857. The Flowers of Evil, 1936.

F. Brady, Tristram Shandy: Sexuality, Morality, and Sensibility, pp.41-56, 1970.

P. M. Briggs, Locke's Essay and the Tentativeness of Tristram Shandy, Studies in Philology, pp.493-520, 1985.

G. Deleuze, G. Félix, and M. Plateaux, Éditions de Minuit (collection "Critique"), 1980. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol.2, 1987.

G. Deleuze and . Hume, Histoire de la Philosophie tome 4: "Les Lumières," François Châtelet, pp.65-78, 1972.

G. Deleuze, C. Et-clinique, and É. De-minuit, Essays Critical and Clinical, 1993.

G. Deleuze, E. Et-subjectivité, and P. , Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature, 1953.

G. Deleuze, L. Du-sens, and P. , The Logic of Sense, 1969.

L. A. Ehlers, Lint and Basilicon': The Importance of Women in. Tristram Shandy, South Atlantic Review, pp.61-75, 1981.

R. A. Erickson, Mother Midnight: Birth, Sex, and Fate in the Eighteenth-Century Fiction, AMS Studies in the Eighteenth-Century, 1986.

R. Faurot, Mrs. Shandy Observed, Studies in English Literature, vol.10, pp.579-89, 1970.

L. Fiedler, L. , ;. Fitzgerald, F. S. Flores, ;. Ralph et al., Changeling Fatherhood, Sigmund: Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten, Leipzig und Wien: F. Deuticke, 1905. Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious, 1916.

M. Hardin, Is There a Straight Line in This Text?: The Homoerotics of Tristram Shandy, Orbis Literarum, pp.185-202, 1999.

N. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1962.

D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, 2007.

S. Kierkegaard, /. Enten, and . Eller, , 1987.

J. Kim, Good Cursed, Bouncing Losses': Masculinity, Sentimental Irony, and Exuberance in Tristram Shandy, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, pp.3-24, 2007.

R. King, Tristram Shandy and the Wound of Language, Studies in Philology, vol.92, issue.3, pp.291-310, 1995.

E. Kraft, Laurence Sterne and the Ethics of Sexual Difference: Chiasmic Narration and Double Desire, Christianity and Literature, pp.363-387, 2002.

E. Kraft and L. S. Revisited, , 1996.

J. Lacan, L. Séminaire, and I. Livre, On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Seminar III: Psychoses, 1981.

J. Lacan, X. X. Séminaire, . Encore, and . Paris, The Seminars, Book XX, Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge, Éditions du Seuil, 1975.

J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690, 1975.

P. Loscocco, Can't Live without 'Em: Walter Shandy and the Woman Within, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, pp.166-79, 1991.

C. Lupton, Tristram Shandy, David Hume, and Epistemological Fiction, Philosophy and Literature, pp.98-115, 2003.

J. Mcmasters, Walter Shandy, Sterne, and Gender: A Feminist Foray, English Studies in Canada, pp.441-58, 1989.

M. New, Laurence Sterne as a Satirist: A Reading of, Tristram Shandy, 1970.

R. Perry, Words for Sex: The Verbal-Sexual Continuum in Tristram Shandy, Studies in the Novel, vol.20, 1988.

R. Perry, Words for Sex: The Verbal-Sexual Continuum in Tristram Shandy, Studies in the Novel, pp.27-42, 1988.

L. ;. Sterne and A. R. Towers, The Florida Edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, nine volumes, vol.III, pp.12-29, 1957.