Gargantua and Pantagruel

This collection of books began with the highest of the high, then proceeded immediately to tank miserably until it reached the lowest of the low. I read the version translated by Samuel Putnam, and in his hands, the word "lively" in the title was very well suited. The first book of Gargantua was a revelation, rich with linguistic acrobatics, profound in silliness, and filled to hilarity with hyperbole. I enjoyed every moment.

Then Pantagruel was born, and I wished he never was. I prefer the father, and the apple fell far from the tree. The first book on his life contained nothing I can remember. The second book contained hundreds of pages of a meandering conversation about whether or not his friend should marry. The third book had 20 or show more so pages on a missing hatchet? What a waste of my time. show less

This whole series is stuffed with references to ancient greece, ancient rome, references to the bible, medieval history and philosophy, and i mean caked with so many classical references while being so verbosely fancy and grotesque at the same time, that if you'd get rid of them you could probably read these five books all in one sitting. Critics love to take a dump on Ready Player One for namedropping 80s and 90s pop culture brands and references, but still consider Pantagruel a literary masterpiece because it was written by a white man some five centuries ago, whatever floats their boat, but I'll never get their point.
And yes, I am well-versed in classical culture and history, but still found Pantagruel an insufferably tedious read. show more My favorite scenes and the only ones that I deem as worth remembering were Panurge's sign debate and some passages in Gargantua, but that's all there's to it, these works are extremely outdated and unsuitable for a modern audience, also the repetitive poop and pee and ass jokes weren't funny, at all. show less

Well, it's done: I got through Rabelais. I plowed this 16th century classic of arse-wind symphonies, infarctious bum-hole fruppery, codpiece flip-flappery, and vertiginous piles of latinate verbiage, much of which only a scholar from the Beansquiddle School of Counterposed Argumentation and Juxtiperous Scholary Assidification would understand, or profit therefrom. . .

And for all that, it was fun. Yes, the complaint that I formed early on was that the writing was overwhelmingly verbose. Despite the outlandishly bawdy humor, it took forever to get through what I took for pointless descriptions, words piled up in a groaning sideboard of verbiage, chapters with no apparent aim toward what I supposed should be the meat of the enterprise: show more advancing the plot. But that complaint, I finally realized, was really my 20th-century American upbringing speaking: my get-out-of-my-way-I'm-in-a-hurry, time-is-money, let's-be-serious-I-don't-have-time-for this, nose-to-the-grindstone, and put-it-in-a-sound-byte upbringing.

By comparison, today's novels are written almost in short hand where an economy of words wins. Blogs must be digestible in two minutes or less. We can quit any newspaper article after only three sentences and come away with its essential point. We've basically re-written Descartes to: I stress, therefore I exist. . .

On the other hand, with 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' you have sat down with someone from the 16th-century and you must not be interested in getting anywhere in a hurry. You must be prepared to sacrifice the entire afternoon to careless, rambling conversation where the person repeats himself, gets sidetracked in colorful but pointless tangents, tells lewd jokes, flirts with passersby, pauses frequently to order more beer, farts at will, and has a love for rattling off endless lists: of popular games, of foods appearing at a banquet, of ways to run someone through with a weapon, or the best materials to use in an outhouse.

The characters Gargantua and Pantagruel are of a race of giants, and in a satire the figure of a giant is often a device for showing human traits writ large. It occurs to me that Rabelais' use of this literary device may be seen as a kind of rejoinder to Plato's 'Republic'. In 'The Republic,' man was writ large in the form of an ideal city to explore the question: how should a man live? Then, in 'Gargantua and Pantagruel,' perhaps the corollary occurs: the city or society is writ large in the form of a giant man to explore the question: what is the end of life?

And if this be the case, then Rabelais tell us, in effect, to chill! There you go! There's your modern urge to reduce everything to one formulaic pithy equation: just chill. Rabelais seems to be saying: what's the use in being so pretentious and tight-assed? Humanity is funny, flawed, tragic, comic, both beautiful and ugly - and driven by passion and appetite more so than its rationality. Relax, understand this, and stop pushing. If you don't mind bawdy jokes, gutter humor, satire, and enough crude body functions to start a riot in a whorehouse, this will be a delightful, if somewhat long read. Let it have its effect on you. On other hand, “If you say to me, master, it would seem that you were not very wise in writing to us these flimflam stories, and pleasant fooleries...” as Rabelais writes, near the end of Book II, “I answer you that you are not much wiser to spend your time reading them." Tis a sentiment truer than meets the eye, because to respond out of impatience to this book is to have missed much of the point. show less

Once upon a time, I was reading books on a list of "100 Significant Books" in Good Reading to make sure my mind didn't turn to mush. I was surprised to find I honestly adored just about everything on the list--until I came to number 25, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. Reader, I hated it.

Its author is one of those names that's become a word in itself, such as Machiavellian, Shakespearian, Darwinian, Freudian... This is how "Rabelaisian" is defined, quite accurately, on Merriam-Webster.com:

1 : of, relating to, or characteristic of Rabelais or his works
2 : marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism.

Gross is right, with a side of crude, and as for the "bold naturalism"--just know that means nature as in show more bodily effluvia, not the beauty of the wild. There's perhaps nothing more tedious than reading through a longwinded book that's supposed to be uproariously funny and wise but only bores you silly, when you're not going ewwww--and I have been known to laugh at bawdy Shakespeare jokes. This book is pedantic, rambling, misogynistic, and Rabelais was way too overfond of lists. Very, very long lists.

I do get its importance. Sorta. I can certainly see the line connecting Gargantua and Pantagruel to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Joyce's Ulysses, even Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Have I mentioned how much I hate Wicked? I do. (Not a fan of Ulysses either.) I also get how subversive and irreverent it was when published. Nevertheless, as one reviewer put it, there's only so much codpiece jokes one can take. (Never mind poop and fart jokes.) show less

I think anyone who loved Tristram Shandy will at least like this book, which comes from a similar place of joy and chaos and learned ... well, *stuff.*

If you *hate* books like Tristram Shandy, well, you probably won't like this. And I probably won't like you. :^) Oh well.

The translation and notes by the improbably-named Screech are very, very good. Top class.

Imagine that the world insisted that Dante's Comedy, the Vita Nuova, the writings on Monarchy, his book about using Italian instead of Latin, and some random thing written by someone claiming to be Dante were all one book, and insisted on printing them together in one 2000 page behemoth. That is what happens here. 'Gargantua' and 'Pantagruel' are rollicking. The third book no doubt repays close study by people really into the Renaissance and who get off on making fun of the Papacy. The fourth book is somewhere in between. The fifth book, according to this translator and editor, isn't by Rabelais at all. Now, these are four utterly different books. I recommend the first two to everyone who appreciates a good dick joke. If you're really, show more really, really keen on puns, know latin, greek and hebrew, and are deeply, deeply invested in whether it's better to be a Lutheran or a Papist, you'll probably get a lot from the third and fourth. But even if that's the case, I'd go with the first two books here and Erasmus' 'Praise of Folly,' which is funnier, more comprehensible, and much, much shorter.

So, if you're in college and someone offers a course on Rabelais, you should definitely take it. If you're in the soi disant real world, maybe go with the name-calling and farting of 'Gargantua' and 'Pantagruel' instead. show less

I read this years ago in the Everyman's Library edition, which reprints an old translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart. Urquhart has been criticized for taking liberties with his translation--i.e., not translating the text "accurately." To that I say: so what! I'm never going to read this book in French. And Urquhart was himself a brilliant writer, and his translation is a marvel. So over-the-top funny and strange, such verbose genuis, I had a hard time putting it down.