Interesting conservatives, some of them Catholics
By Tom Smith
Check
this out.
As to who Pantagruel was, and what a new one might be, see
this. Maybe I should read Rabelais. Doesn't this sound just right?
With this mirthful temperament towards all that is humane and with frightful anger directed against the forces that would squash such things, Rabelais used laughter, parody, and what the Russian Literary Critic Mikhail Bakhtin called “grotesque realism” as a means of subverting the pillars of official culture and the proto-totalitarian orders of society. Pantagruelism is, according to Rabelais, “a certain jollity of mind pickled in the scorn of fortune.” It is that odd cast of mind which allows one to see the corruption everywhere, including in oneself, while still loving the world.
To me that sounds like just the frame of mind one should have.
posted by thomas at 7/20/2004 10:54:00 PM
