Though Tristram is always present as narrator and commentator, the book
contains little of his life, only the story of a trip through France and
accounts of the four comical mishaps which shaped the course of his life
from an early age. Firstly, while still only a homunculus, Tristram's
implantation within his mother's womb was disturbed. At the very moment
of procreation, his mother asked his father if he had remembered to wind
the clock.