Here I am in a corporate hotel (located on Corporate Woods Road, no kidding) in Rochester, NY, sitting in a giant bed with a Papa John’s pizza. No time like the present to write about Rabelais.
Rabelais’ tales of the giants Gargantua and his son Pantagruel come with their own backstory, namely, the books’ history. First, the inestimable Norwegian Book Clubs consider Gargantua and Pantagruel to be one book, comprising “Pantagruel,” “Gargantua,” the “Tiers-Livre,” the “Quart-Livre” and, potentially, “Le cinquieme et dernier livre des faictz et dictz heroiques du bon Pantagruel” or perhaps just the first sixteen chapters of that book, which are themselves referred to as “L’isle sonante.” Considering that I have read infinitely more Rabelais by this point than pretty much everyone I know, I decided to leave it at the first two. (Actually, while Pantagruel is Gargantua’s son, “Pantagruel” was published first. But I read Gargantua first because it comes first chronologically and also, in later editions, they were printed in the reverse order.) Incidentally, “Pantagruel” was modeled after a “chapbook” published in Lyon in 1932 called “Les grandes et inestimables chroniques du grand et enorme geant Gargantua.” (Gargantua and Pantagruel are Arthurian giants.)
The pilgrims being eaten in a salad
Then there is Rabelais himself, who in addition to being a doctor — cool — was a humanist and a major critic of the Church and the conservative crazies at the Sorbonne. He was labeled everything from a Lutheran to an atheist. Like Shakespeare for English, he invented many words that are still used in French (although not at the same rate, of course, as Shakespeare). He published, incidentally, under the pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier, Abstracteur de Quinte Essence, which is badass.
I never thought that I would have an educated opinion on this matter, but I seriously prefer Gargantua to Pantagruel. (I think that is a common preference.)
First, the story is better. It tells of the birth (his mother is pregnant for three extra months, and then he crawls out of her ear), education, peregrinations (he goes to Paris, where he first urinates on the people and drowns a good number of them, then takes the bells of Notre-Dame to put on his mare), and later life of Gargantua. The latter part of the book tells of the “guerre picrocholine,” where Gargantua fights against Picrochole in a war that starts because of fouaces, a type of bread. Then there’s the part where Gargantua accidentally eats five pilgrims in a salad.
Then, at the end, Gargantua builds an abbey for a monk in his service, named Jean. Its motto, ““Fay ce que vouldras” (“Do what you wish”) is part of Rabelais’ vision of responsible citizenship in a global community (oh wait, no, that’s the Concordia Language Villages motto), where people study religion in a non-hypocritical and humanistic way.
The story in Pantagruel is less engaging, and there is less of a clear message. There is another good giant-related moment when they package a bunch of peasants in giant leather balls so that Pantagruel can swallow them and they can go chip away at the blockage in his intestines. No, seriously.
Meanwhile, my “break” books (I’ve been reading one to two “non-required” books between required ones) are a new Le Corbusier biography and Death With Interruption by Jose Saramago (whose Blindness is actually on the list, but which I’ve already read). Only Saramago can take a silly counterfactual (what if everyone went blind?! what if no one died?!) and make it not only thoughtful, but thought-provoking and lyrical.
