“ Readers have never been quite sure about François Rabelais. On the one hand, he has been called the most difficult of all French writers, a sly social critic, and a Renaissance James Joyce pushing language beyond the brink of sense. On the other, actually reading Gargantua and Pantagruel is a lot like going to a Slovak or Ukrainian wedding in an Ohio steel town, where you pay a dollar to dance with the bride, eat way too much kielbasa and stuffed cabbage, drink yourself silly, and spend half the evening listening to somebody’s red-cheeked uncle tell dirty jokes and tall tales.
— Michael Dirda
