Highlighting the reader as a character in Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne may seem trivial considering the clear use of fictional readers within the text ("sir", "madam", "lord ", et al. .); however, the way Stern makes the reader a character and creates the illusion of participation in the text is much deeper than sporadic discourse with the aforementioned ladies and gentlemen. This essay, through the analysis of volumes 1 and 2 of Tristram Shandy (with the latter volumes in mind), seeks to illuminate Sterne's methods of subverting novel form, interacting with the reader and engaging with the theme of time in relation to the question of the reader as a character in Tristram Shandy. Comparing Newton's Third Law to the italic style of Tristram Shandy, Judith Hawley writes: "For every attempt to make himself [Tristram] go in a straight line, there is an opposing impulse to deviate." This Newtonian peculiarity of Tristram's narrative also encompassed criticism of the book, for for every laudatory reviewer there seemed to be a censorious critic, who found the salacious nonsense of the book unbecoming of a cleric. However, what many teetotal critics of Tristram Shandy failed to notice, was Sterne's pasquinade of novelistic forms, which helped shape the circumstances for the reader to become a character in Tristram Shandy by removing the gap between reader and narrator. Mary S. Wagoner's comment, "...apparently the main subject would be Uncle Toby's tale, but the evidence indicates rather that it is the conversation between Tristram and the reader"2, confirms Sterne's success in creating the reader's relationship with the fundamental narrator. A key element in removing the alienation between narrator and reader in Trist...... middle of paper ......ialogue - 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 Laurence Sterne's Companion, 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). Wagoner, 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).