Gargantua and Pantagruel

Book written by François Rabelais

It has been a few decades, but the truth of the matter is that I did not read everything assigned in high school English class. I read a lot of it, but sometimes it was just too much to ask. I specifically remember two works: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gargantua and Pantagruel. No doubt I remember both lapses because the teacher made the pieces seem worthy of the attention of a teenager like me. Wilde will have to wait a bit more, but I have now read the Rabelais’ entire masterwork. Let English teachers everywhere rejoice!

In school, we actually read a few mere excerpts from Gargantua and Pantagruel from one of those Norton anthologies that were everywhere at the time. I checked both volumes of the Everyman Library version out of the local library for this go-round. I mention this because it has an interesting introduction about the translation (the originial was written in Renaissance French), which was done in the 17th century, nearly a hundred years after Rabelais’ death. It seems Thomas Urquhart, the translator, tended to expand on the jokes. So, the numerous funny lists could always use a few more puns. For that matter, Rabelais’ may have been making up words. I wouldn’t know, but the English text is littered with unexpected terms. Let me open at random. Pages 322/323 of Volume One contain the following words: chironomatic, culbutizing, ithyphallos, Jack-pudding, sempiternal, etc.

Yes, we’re all wondering why someone would read all of that. The fact is that the books are funny. The pages are littered with jokes, many of them filthy. Rabelais’ made fun of the Catholic church, lawyers, doctors, soothsayers and bureaucrats endlessly. He had no patience for bad rulers or pointless wars. Relations between men and women provide endless fodder for ribald humor.

Written as five books filled with short chapters,

the plot moves along at a staggering pace. Halfway through, I realized that it felt most like reading someone’s blog as a long-form work. In this case, it was not exactly autobiographical so much as an unending work of fiction.

Also, the perspective gained is truly remarkable. This was written before Shakespeare and Cervantes. The reality is that people were fed up with hypocrisy and stupidity five hundred years ago. They did see all the ways that warmongers took advantage of people’s credulity. Getting married was a shot in the dark for happiness. Monks (like Rabelais) had children and did much worse things. There are no original sins. Our fault is refusing to recognize them when they reappear before they do more harm.

What’s weird is that I can’t justify encouraging anyone to read this. It is definitely hard work. The references to contemporary events are beyond anyone but a true scholar of the period to comprehend (I am not one). The jokes were written long before modern theories of humor took hold. For instance, the idea that the best jokes list three things was a long way off. Any funny list for Rabelais started somewhere around ten and ended upwards of a few hundred.

Lastly, the books end with… well, let’s just leave it at they do end.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 127 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

She’s Too Much For My Mirror

Song written by Don Van Vliet and performed by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band

The comedian Marc Maron does a routine where he talks about waking up one morning and realizing that today is the day that he is going to get into Captain Beefheart. All his life has been preparing him for this moment. In some ways, this blog series has been an extended exploration of life as preparation for moments, be they moments of inspiration or moments of exultation.

Certainly, Captain Beefheart is not something that can be approached lightly. It’s the aural equivalent of reading Franz Kafka or looking at Jackson Pollack. I’m not suggesting that any of these are necessarily highbrow entertainment or even that they lack entertainment value – only that they are such a response to the world around them that it may be difficult to find them funny or comprehensible without context.

Soon as anyone brings up context when I’m approaching a work of art, I cringe because I don’t want to work. The dirty secret about context is the other secret shared by Kafka, Pollack and Beefheart: the context for their art is the lives that we have lived. Kafka requires a minimal degree of experience with bureaucracy and Pollack is helped by looking at some paintings, though merely imagining that the world around us could be framed is potentially sufficient.

Beefheart does ask that we listen to the radio for a few hours. You just need to know what his music is reacting to. Then you start listening to Trout Mask Replica. Pretty much the first words that follow are, “That’s different.”

Your experience may vary,

but it is highly likely that your response will be tied to your comfort level with “different” as well as just how different it seems. Some days, we can be ready for John Cage and Ubu Roi. Other times, Kraftwerk is a step too far.

Hopefully, many moments fill life. John Campbell wanted us to find our bliss, but that feels like a plateau. Reaching a good place is a blessing. For better or worse, I like a view that changes. Still, there is a wide difference between the view on a long walk in my neighborhood and an early morning walk in Chennai.

Don Van Vliet heard this music first and then managed to convince other people to help create the recordings. The question had to be whether or not it was a bridge too far. A few years ago, I heard a well known Hollywood director talking about a widely-disparaged and generally unpopular film that he had made. He was at a party once when someone approached and told him how much the film had meant to her. He remained undecided about whether the effort had been worth it. Even so, he deeply appreciated the connection made with someone.

Captain Beefheart never sold a massive amount of records. They truly had to land on the prepared set of ears at the proper moment. The question that I would ask Beefheart and his co-conspirators: is it more of a surprise that you were so widely ignored or so widely embraced?

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 128 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Ishiyakushi

from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô gojûsan tsugi no uchi), also known as the Gyôsho Tôkaidô

Print by Utagawa Hiroshige

We love visual stories. That’s why museums put those long descriptive placards next to the hoary portraits. Without a story, it’s just someone’s ancestor wearing a costume with all the interest of your neighbor breaking out the photo albums during a Super Bowl party. Realistically, some of the stories don’t help. Honestly, we don’t know these people and we’ve seen old Chevy’s before.

Just as Renaissance tapestries with all their built-in action garner far more interest than a portrait of a long-dead duke beside a globe, Hiroshige attracts the eye because of the inherent story behind the picture. Photography is frozen moments, generating the most excitement the finer the moment is cut between one action and the next. We can see what precipitated the moment and imagine what follows.

Ostensibly, Hiroshige made pictures of mountains and roads (among so many other things). He was a print-maker trying to make sales. If you asked me for a picture of a mountain, then it would be in the center of the page. With a little luck, I could persuade you that it was covered in snow. I might get away with one big line curving up and then down. All done. No action on anything less than a geological scale. (“Wait for it… wait for it…”) Realistically, I’m not sure how much better it would get if you asked for fifty drawings of a mountain. I would probably break out the big box of crayons.

Please understand

that this is not about usage of raw materials. Hiroshige mastered that, but he was not alone. This is about composition, which is where inspiration passes through innate artistic sense to power the imagination. Surely, he possessed the technical skill to create what he envisioned- but that vision in the first place is the miracle.

I see this picture and I want to pull on a coat. I want to get inside and sit beside the fire with a hot drink and good companions. The action has involved me.

Film has reduced our exposure to the tales available in static images. We give up picture books at an early age. Even our comics (serial and in the newspaper) have simplified their images while requiring multiple panels to impart information. The ability to absorb a story in a single imprint is a gift that has driven our survival as a species. That’s how we know what is going on- a single facial expression or a sudden flight of a bird. We receive more and more information in our visual stimuli and understand less and less.

Our art may claim to reflect the speed of society, but reaction to the world is a responsibility sometimes better left to moments of contemplation.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 129 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.