Sterne deconstructed the novel before the novel even existed as a stable form, in 1759. The narrator cannot tell his story in order. The digressions are the point. Blank pages, black pages, marbled pages serve as metafictional provocations. Borges, Calvino, David Foster Wallace: every postmodern novelist descends from Sterne.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.