Tristram Shandy is a Work of Genius

I finally finished reading Tristram Shandy a couple weeks back. When I was done, I still was haunted by the question what the heck did I just read? 

Moreover, was it any good? Throughout most of the novel, I kept the consistent opinion that most people I know would hate it, and perhaps among everyone I know, that I alone, with my proclivity for insisting to myself that classics are classics for a reason, and that I should suspend judgment and make it my mission to understand why a particular lauded work is a product of genius, could have read the novel and come away glad that I had done so.

I was sure that most people I know would hate it, and would pooh-pooh it away. Yet in the last few pages, I found myself wishing the story would go on. I was disappointed that it stopped. I wanted more.

The story is chaotic, almost unfollowable at times. Yet the characters seem come alive as they had in few novels I had read. I felt I knew everyone in the story, including the narrator of the title, who purports to tell his life story yet tells almost nothing of it.

I wonder how many people walking the earth right now have actually read Tristram Shandy and agree with me (and Schopenhauer) that it is indeed one of the great products of literary genius of the English language? The number must be very small, yet I feel that if were ever to run across anyone who has read it and loved the experience, that we could talk about it for hours and perhaps days, that we would belong to some secret fraternity of Shandy lovers.

How many books can one say that about?