Tristram opens his account of his life and opinions with a sense that it was all over before it was even begun: "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me." And thus Sterne begins his exploration of the difficulties of creativity - both sexual and literary. In doing so, he pushes the conventions of the early novel to extreme limits.