Focusing the reader as a character in Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne may seem trivial given the clear use of fictional readers in the text ("sir", "madam ", "lord", et al.); however, the way in which Stern transforms the reader into a character and creates the illusion of participation in the text is much deeper than sporadic discourse with those aforementioned gentlemen and madams. This essay, through the analysis of volumes 1 and 2 of Tristram Shandy (with the latter volumes in mind), seeks to illuminate the methods used by Sterne to subvert the novelistic form, interact with the reader and address the theme of time in relation with the question of the reader as the character Tristram Shandy. Comparing Newton's third law to the excursive style of Tristram Shandy, Judith Hawley wrote: "For every attempt to make himself [Tristram] go in a straight line, there is an opposing impulse to deviate."1 This Newtonian peculiarity of Tristram's narration also sums up the book's criticism, for for every glowing review there seemed to be a censorious reviewer, who found the book's salacious jokes unbecoming of a cleric. However, what many sober critics of Tristram Shandy missed was the pasquinade of Sterne's novelistic forms, which helped create the circumstances for the reader to become a character in Tristram Shandy by removing the detachment between the reader and the narrator. Mary S. Wagoner's comment, "...the main affair, apparently, would be Uncle Toby's account, but the evidence points instead to the conversation between Tristram and the reader"2, justifies Sterne's success in the relationship between the reader and the narrator. primordial.A key element in eliminating the distance between narrator and reader in Trist...... middle of paper ......dialogue - Essays by and in response to Douglas Jefferson, ed. Janet Clare and Veronica O'Mara (University College Press, 2006). Keymer, Thomas, Sterne, the moderns and the novel, (Oxford University Press, 2002). New, Melvyn, "Sterne and the Modernist Movement", in The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne, ed. Thomas Keymer (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Ross, Ian Campbell, Laurence Sterne - A Life, (Oxford University Press, 2001). Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Ian Campbell Ross (Oxford World's Classics, 2009, Oxford University Press). Waggoner, Mary S., "Satire of the Reader in Tristram Shandy", in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol.8, No.3 (Fall 1966; University of Texas Press), pp.337-344. Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, (Chatto & Windus London, 1974).