Rating: 
Summary: "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
Review: "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
A 16th-century medical doctor and Catholic monk, François Rabelais spent decades writing a series of five books, collectively known as "Gargantua and Pantagruel," that became wildly popular for their dark and bawdy humor. To this day, the massive tome still ruffles religious feathers. The current edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Rabelais "a revolutionary who attacked all the past, scholasticism, the monks; his religion is scarcely more than that of a spiritually-minded pagan.... His vocabulary is rich and picturesque, but licentious and filthy."
Sex, drinking, utopian ideals, and heretical philosophy populate this fantastical saga that follows the adventures of a giant and his son. What's even more intriguing are the multitude of hidden messages, Gnostic insights, alchemical secrets, and herbal obsessions (e.g., cannabis) that bubble far beneath the surface of these tall tales.
Hey, the book is dated, no doubt. But it can still get the Church's metaphorical cloisters all bundled up in a ruffle... so don't let the Pope catch ya readin' it, son.
(This review is being posted on Amazon under the legal approval of a Creative Commons License -- material can be used elsewhere so long as the original author and website are credited. Author: Lucas Brachish. Website: celebritycola.blogspot.com)
Rating: 
Summary: great stuff
Review: Damned good and brilliantly innovative. No doubt of its influence on experimental writers from the 16th century onwards.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't even bother with J.M. Cohen's translation
Review: I am not commenting on Rabelais, whom I would give 5 stars, but rather on his translator J.M. Cohen. Cohen's translation of Gargantua departs so far from Rabelais' syntax and vocabulary that it is outright scandalous. If Rabelais uses the phrase "et à non autres", you can count on Cohen rendering it "and to everyone" instead of the correct "and to no others". If Rabelais wanted to say "and to everyone" nothing prohibited him from doing so: French is no different from English in at least this respect. There is always someone in translating classes who asks the teacher, say, "Can't one render the phrase 'es ist nicht unmoglich' 'it is possible?'" as opposed to the correct "It is not possible." The answer, of course, is "OF COURSE NOT! THIS IS NOT YOUR TEXT; IT IS THE AUTHOR'S: YOU'RE _HIS_ TRANSLATOR!!!" But Cohen's rendering above is only one example; there are much graver mistakes at higher structural levels: one need look not beyond the first paragraph, for example: it turns out that Cohen's paragraph breaks off after the third or fourth sentence, while in fact the original text begins with a paragraph that extends for, if I remember, more than one page. Apparently Cohen thinks that he can invent paragraphs for Rabelais whenever he feels it will make things more clear or easier to read. If such intentions don't bother you, then fine, buy this text; but if translators who refuse to say things as the author said things bother you, then order instead the very good (i.e., literal) Urquart translation.
Rating:
Summary: precursor of de Sade
Review: I decided to read this after noting Henry Miller's enthusiasm for the book in The Tropic of Cancer (I figured if Miller liked it, it must be good). I was sorely disappointed. I have nothing against bawdy or scatological humor on principle, but I found Rabelais simply boring, tasteless, and completely bereft of genuine humor. This is the sort of thing that gets guffaws from 12-year old boys who think that simply using foul language makes them endlessly witty. If you want early novelists with a tendency toward the bawdy and/or scatological, I recommend Boccaccio, Cervantes and Sterne. And if you absolutely, positively must wallow in a cesspool of disgusting smut, go to the master - the Marquis de Sade.
Rating:
Summary: Broad, Common, Vulgar, Crass and Unspeakably Funny!
Review: If you thought the vulgar humor in such films as PORKY'S and AMERICAN PIE was a modern phenomena, you're in for a shock: both are fairly mild in comparison with the works of Rabelais, which plumb the depths of human crassness in full Renaissance style. Writing before European authors had codified the novel as a form, Rabelais presents a series of very episodic tales about the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's trickster friend Panurge--and the three vomit, belch, fart, and engage in a number of equally distasteful bodily functions across page after page in some of the funniest writings found in the whole of Western literature.But unlike contemporary bad-taste comedy, Rabelais is hardly willing to let his reader go with just a laugh. There is sharp intelligence behind his naughty laughter--and he directs his considerable wit at everything from education to fashionable society in page after page of unspeakably hilarious incident. (My own favorite passage concerns the trick Panurge plays upon the fashionable, church-going lady who spurns his attentions; it never fails to throw me into near-hysterical laughter.) Vividly written and extremely memorable, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL is the sort of stuff they don't teach in highschool... and more's the pity: it would probably convert more students to the classics than all the Romantics combined. Truly serious scholars should, of course, compare various translations, but the Cohen translation will do the trick for the more casual reader. Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: VOMITUS PRIMUS!
Review: In a graduate school discussion of Rabelais with my advisor, the profusion of vomit, not to mention other corporeal effusions, in Rabelais "came up." I suggested the term "Wretch Lit" as a general epithet for literature of this nature, including Celine, Bukowski, P. Roth, et al. Anyway, Rabelais is more than just good puking fun, and much more than the root of a grand adjective; he is an artist of the highest calibre. In the 16th century, when Europeans were just beginning to carve out long fiction as a form*, a development that would culminate in the 19th century when the novel became the dominant mode of belles lettres, Francois Rabelais led the French fictionist camp. His stories, while not exactly novels by today's reckoning**, are brilliant examples of longer fiction. His works are lusty, vivid, implausible, riotously funny, carnal, explicit, inventive, sensual and alive. He is a remarkably deft satirist and his major works--"Gargantua" and "Pantagruel"--give us a poignant, if sidelong, glimpse into the climate of his day. The Everyman series is always good, and this is certainly no exception. Anyone who wants to understand, and to appreciate, the modern novel must begin with its antecedents--and Rabelais has a substantial place in this. *Of course, the "novel," or something remarkably close to it, had long since flourished elsewhere, Japan and Egypt most notably. Lady Murasaki Shikibu, for example, an 11th-century writer, had developed the form further than Europeans would until the mid-19th century (misogynists and Eurocentrists beware!). Her "Tale of Genji" is a sophisticated story of Imperial Court society, a work of "psychological realism" that had no equal in Europe until Flaubert. **Because they lack coherent linear plot, a classical "dramatic arc," and traditional character development, we don't call them novels, per se. Of course, postmodern novels don't have these elements either, quite often, yet we insist they are novels as such. Funny. Of course, scholars do love categories, especially when they fit neatly into a chronological schema. So, because Lawrence Sterne and Rabelais are from "the past," we can't call them postmodern, and we can't look at their writings as novels--they just aren't polished enough....
Rating:
Summary: VOMITUS PRIMUS!
Review: In a graduate school discussion of Rabelais with my advisor, the profusion of vomit, not to mention other corporeal effusions, in Rabelais "came up." I suggested the term "Wretch Lit" as a general epithet for literature of this nature, including Celine, Bukowski, P. Roth, et al. Anyway, Rabelais is more than just good puking fun, and much more than the root of a grand adjective; he is an artist of the highest calibre. In the 16th century, when Europeans were just beginning to carve out long fiction as a form*, a development that would culminate in the 19th century when the novel became the dominant mode of belles lettres, Francois Rabelais led the French fictionist camp. His stories, while not exactly novels by today's reckoning**, are brilliant examples of longer fiction. His works are lusty, vivid, implausible, riotously funny, carnal, explicit, inventive, sensual and alive. He is a remarkably deft satirist and his major works--"Gargantua" and "Pantagruel"--give us a poignant, if sidelong, glimpse into the climate of his day. The Everyman series is always good, and this is certainly no exception. Anyone who wants to understand, and to appreciate, the modern novel must begin with its antecedents--and Rabelais has a substantial place in this. *Of course, the "novel," or something remarkably close to it, had long since flourished elsewhere, Japan and Egypt most notably. Lady Murasaki Shikibu, for example, an 11th-century writer, had developed the form further than Europeans would until the mid-19th century (misogynists and Eurocentrists beware!). Her "Tale of Genji" is a sophisticated story of Imperial Court society, a work of "psychological realism" that had no equal in Europe until Flaubert. **Because they lack coherent linear plot, a classical "dramatic arc," and traditional character development, we don't call them novels, per se. Of course, postmodern novels don't have these elements either, quite often, yet we insist they are novels as such. Funny. Of course, scholars do love categories, especially when they fit neatly into a chronological schema. So, because Lawrence Sterne and Rabelais are from "the past," we can't call them postmodern, and we can't look at their writings as novels--they just aren't polished enough....
Rating:
Summary: A most healthy, wise, gallant and happy type of a story!
Review: Monsieur Rabelais' wit, wisdom and sophistication are of the highest order. His faith in a certain type of physical and mental education gives us evidence of the basic goodness and perfectibility of man. There is no other novel that gave me so much mirth ,enlightenment, and seriousness about learning . With the development of "bonhommie", the author says, one can attain well-being. "DO AS THOU WILT because men that are free, of gentle birth, well bred and at home in civilized company possess a natural instinct that inclines them to virtue and saves them from vice. This instinct they name their honor." This is truly a world masterpiece. Merci beaucoup Mr. Rabelais!
Rating:
Summary: A most healthy, wise, gallant and happy type of a story!
Review: Monsieur Rabelais' wit, wisdom and sophistication are of the highest order. His faith in a certain type of physical and mental education gives us evidence of the basic goodness and perfectibility of man. There is no other novel that gave me so much mirth ,enlightenment, and seriousness about learning . With the development of "bonhommie", the author says, one can attain well-being. "DO AS THOU WILT because men that are free, of gentle birth, well bred and at home in civilized company possess a natural instinct that inclines them to virtue and saves them from vice. This instinct they name their honor." This is truly a world masterpiece. Merci beaucoup Mr. Rabelais!
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: Rabelais has a unique, pointed sense of humour that is still funny centuries after it was written. I'll never think of cuckoldry in the same way after reading this classic.
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