Tristram discusses his authorial difficulties again, telling us that it isn't easy to write a book like his. How do authors manage to introduce unrelated chapters? How can an author express himself on a subject that isn't in the least related to his "story"? We see how Tristram does it: he merely goes ahead and does it; and in pointing out the apparent lack of unity, he shows us what Tristram and his book are like — different from everyone else. The difficulty in getting his father and uncle down the stairs has a moral to it: other writers just drop a curtain on the scene, and the reader takes for granted that everything worked out as it was supposed to. But this writer wants us to see that nothing happens by chance. The writer has the responsibility of taking care of every detail, and if he is to do his job well, he can't take the easy way out. We see the author doing his work and explaining it to us as he does it.
He raises the problem again of catching up with his life: if a life is to be the subject of a book, mustn't all of it be written down for the reader? Obviously it cannot. The question that the reader will ultimately ask is whether Tristram Shandy was finally finished, and the answer will probably be yes and no both. At any rate, the question is an interesting one, and the picture of the writer desperately trying to catch up with himself is a piquant one. We can say that he knows of the problems as well as we do — or, better, he makes us aware of what he knows — and that too is part of the individuality of this writer.
When Susannah comes for the name of the child, and Walter tells her "Trismegistus," we know already what is going to happen. One can almost believe in the unfortunate destiny of the child. Nobody works for Walter; everyone works against him. Susannah almost gets the name right — "Tristram-gistus" — but the ignorance of the curate swings the balance in the wrong direction: he had simply never heard of the name.
Shandean humor — i.e., things aren't really as funny as they seem — dominates. Walter, falsely reassured about the name, goes back to bed. Does Walter believe that everything is all right? — he goes slowly back to his bedroom.
