Really, has the novel as a genre ever done justice to its inspired, rambunctious beginnings? Certainly the below riff from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel reveals just how lacking in verbal wit the contemporary novel is compared to Rabelais' 16th-century proto-novel masterpiece. Enjoy! (The translation is by J. M. Cohen)"After that," said Gargantua, "I wiped myself with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a slipper, with a game-bag, with a basket--but what an unpleasant arse-wiper that was!--then with a hat. And note that some hats are smooth, some shaggy, some velvety, some of taffeta, and some of satin. The best of all are the shaggy ones, for they make a very good abstersion of the faecal matter. Then I wiped myself with a hen, a cock, and a chicken, with a calf's skin, a hare, a pigeon, and a cormorant, with a lawyer's bag, with a penitent's hood, with a coif, with an otter. But to conclude, I say and maintain that there is no arse-wiper like a well-downed goose, if you hold her neck between your legs. You must take my word for it, you really must. You get a miraculous sensation in your arse-hole, both from the softness of the down and from the temperate heat of the goose herself; and this is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the intestines, from which it reaches the heart and the brain. Do not imagine that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian Fields arises from their asphodel, their ambrosia, or their nectar, as those ancients say. It comes, in my opinion, from their wiping their arses with the neck of a goose....
