Reasons to read Rabelais (other than the chapter on defecation?))

It's at times very funny and generally easy to read, there are some really odd scenes and chapters that are no doubt unique in world literature (a four-page list of card games, virtually all of them apocryphal I think, and entire chapter devoted to discussions of various ways to wipe your ass); it has given us two adjectives, Rabelaisian and Gargantuan - and for all that what is Rabelais's Gargantua & Pantagruel really about? At the top level, it's a grand tall tale, a comically exaggerated account of a the birth and life of the giant Gargantua, which gives Rabelais the opportunity to exaggerate everything: Rabelais is never satisfied with one adjective, oath, or image but he piles them on in superabundance. It's also the most "earthy" book of its time and of any time, full of descriptions of farting and shitting and numerous other bodily functions. (Not surprising to learn that Rabelais was a doctor - the book is full of medical arcana as well.) But is there a reason to read this long novel other than as an entertainment? - yes, I think so: I do agree with the notation on the Penguin edition I'm reading that this is a cultural monument as well. Gargantua heads off to Paris with his tutors to undergo a liberal education - one of the first literary examples of humanism - but while he's study music and literature and mathematics and languages etc. he gets summoned by his father, a king or prince of sort, to fight in battle against some invading forces - one of those completely meaningless medieval skirmishes that is all about turf and territory. Father tries to negotiate a peace, unsuccessfully, and the giant Gargantua called in like a Scud missile - so what we are beginning to see unfold is the conflict between a world focused on the individual and on learning and accomplishment and a world built on hierarchy, strife, and control of territory.