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A review by screen_memory
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
4.0
The world of Gargantua and Pantagruel is one of utter farce. Both men are giants who, upon their birth, kill their mother owing to their sheer size, and the world Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram and obvious self-insert of Francois Rabelais) details is similarly ridiculous.
Gargantua gives his father an extensive account of what environmental and structural features he has wiped his ass with; both Gargantua and Pantagruel defeat advancing armies by drowning them in a stream of piss; Alcofribas, having been accidentally swallowed by Pantagruel, discovers an entirely new world complete with its own sun in the firmament within his mouth; Pantagruel's companion, Panurge, spends an entire book lapsing between deciding to marry and deciding against marriage so he can't be made a cuckold; and lists of ingredients, animals, nicknames for a particular character, and other minutiae are columnized and span multiple pages.
The prose is energetic and lively, and, despite the archaic language from having been written in the 16th century, it is almost never a dull read (as long as one tends to quickly skim over the lists spanning multiple pages, or disregards them altogether).
Gargantua gives his father an extensive account of what environmental and structural features he has wiped his ass with; both Gargantua and Pantagruel defeat advancing armies by drowning them in a stream of piss; Alcofribas, having been accidentally swallowed by Pantagruel, discovers an entirely new world complete with its own sun in the firmament within his mouth; Pantagruel's companion, Panurge, spends an entire book lapsing between deciding to marry and deciding against marriage so he can't be made a cuckold; and lists of ingredients, animals, nicknames for a particular character, and other minutiae are columnized and span multiple pages.
The prose is energetic and lively, and, despite the archaic language from having been written in the 16th century, it is almost never a dull read (as long as one tends to quickly skim over the lists spanning multiple pages, or disregards them altogether).