Finnley Wren: His Notions and Opinions, Together with a Haphazard
History of His Career and Amours in These Moody Years, as Well as Sundry
Rhymes, Fables, Diatribes and Literary Misdemeanors stands as one of the
greatest American responses to the thrown gauntlet that is Tristram
Shandy. An innovative, uproarious sentimental education, this novel
marries the mordant satire of Wylie's Generation of Vipers to what might
in other hands have been an ordinary story of frustrated ambition and
frustrated love, turning forty-eight hours' worth of drunken
conversation into an emotional and typographical explosion.