Gargantua And Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais

Not too many authors have seen their very names add words to the English language. There's Kafka and Lovecraft and a few others, but even William Shakespeare didn't do it. Maybe the earliest of those who accomplished the feat was Francois Rabelais, and he didn't even write in English, but "rabelaisian" is a term in our language nevertheless. It means "displaying earthy humor" or "bawdy," which is a pretty good description of "Gargantua And Pantagruel," his best-known work.

By modern standards, we might not call this book a "novel" at all. As is frequently the case with ancient or medieval writings, "Gargantua And Pantagruel" is more a series of vignettes than a full-fledged singular story. What's more, although the title characters typically set the action in motion, they don't really appear as main characters consistently. Gargantua appears as a newborn baby at the start of Book 1, and sires Pantagruel at the start of Book 2. Both are giants, although their size rarely gets a mention afterwards. Books 1 and 2 inform us of, respectively, Gargantua and Pantagruel's terrific intellect and their educations, after which the work devotes itself mostly to the doings and travels of Pantagruel's adherents on various faraway islands while in search of the answers to some important questions.

There's no point reading this novel for the plot, however. You should read it for the funny stuff. Rabelais himself makes that suggestion in his introductions, calling upon his readers as "merry drinkers" and telling us that his work is to be imbibed like good wine. He periodically warns us against taking life too seriously, as the priests and monks do – kind of surprising, considering that he was a monk himself.

Then again, how can we take this stuff seriously? One of its best known set pieces describes how Gargantua in his youth performed a series of experiments on himself to see what substance makes the best after-toilet wipe for the rectum. He concludes, in a highly formal speech to his father, that one should use a young, fully-feathered goose, because of the warmth of the flesh and softness of the downy feathers. (Incidentally, Rabelais is far less coy in his language than I am – he wouldn't be caught dead using such a dainty word as "rectum," for instance. Readers of a delicate frame of mind, take heed.)

So there's a good deal here about food and drink, relieving oneself, sexual adventuring, and protecting ourselves against those who wish to take away our joy in those things. Not that it's all sunshine and rainbows, mind. Books 3 through 5 deal largely with the nervousness of Pantagruel's friend Panurge as he considers whether or not to get married. Will a wife spend his money? Beat him? Cheat on him? The two of them ask advice from loads of experts – the wise, the experienced, the just plain crazy – and the hilarity comes from Panurge's insistence that all these authorities are telling him that he'll be happy in marriage, when Pantagruel and the reader can see perfectly well that their advice is quite the opposite.

There's a great deal more, of course, just about all of it funny if not always a silly as the incidents described above, but to return to Rabelais' religious commitment for a moment. As I said, upon first reading "Gargantua And Pantagruel," I was rather startled to see how unenthusiastic it could be about the Catholic Church, having a monk as its author. Various critics describe Rabelais as a humanist first, and that seems accurate – in addition to his membership in a Catholic order, he was also a philosopher and a physician. Behind all the clowning in this novel, we can see a deep concern for human joy and freedom from pain. "Gargantua And Pantagruel" was clearly intended for a popular audience rather than a scholarly one, and the temptation is strong to suggest that Rabelais put in all the dirty jokes so the common folk would buy it and learn, maybe without realizing it, that here was a man of the cloth who was on their side. Now, that's a humanist for you, one who's ready to ignore all his scholarship if it will get his point across to the people. And I suspect he had a whale of a time writing it, too.

Benshlomo says, A wise man knows when it's time to play the fool.