Doctor Slop Doctor Slop Dr Slop is a choleric physician and "man-midwife" in Laurence Sterne's novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" (1759). The doctor is summoned by Tristram Shandy's father to attend his son's imminent birth. Slop makes his first appearance in Chapter 34 of the novel, where he is described as: He is portrayed as an incompetent quack, arriving at Shandy Hall having forgotten his array of "vile instruments" and "obstetrical engines", which have to be urgently sent for. In performing a forceps delivery of the baby, Slop damages the infant Tristram's nose, much to his father's consternation,
Laurence Sterne Foster Wallace. Italo Calvino referred to "Tristram Shandy" as the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century". The Russian Formalist writer Viktor Shklovsky regarded "Tristram Shandy" as the archetypal, quintessential novel, of which all other novels are mere subsets: ""Tristram Shandy" is the most typical novel of world literature." However, the leading critical opinions of "Tristram Shandy" tend to be markedly polarised in their evaluations of its significance. Since the 1950s, following the lead of DW Jefferson, there are those who argue that, whatever its legacy of influence may be, "Tristram Shandy" in its original context actually represents