A JOURNEY INTO RABELAIS'S FRANCE

Unless one has journeyed extensively through France, knowing its geography and history and literary classics, he will find Nock's travels through Tours, Chinon, Toulouse, Montpellier, Aiguesmortes and twenty odd other towns, a trifle tedious. There are comments on architecture, people, customs, topography -- but for the most part the stress is on the Rabelasian theme, with lengthy quotations and frequent references to Piroche, Panurge and Pantagruel, characters not in the category of true and tried familiar friends, to the average reader today. To the uninitiate, these literary detours from the glorified guide book which Nock seems to be writing are as dry as the sands of the desert. There seems a hodge-podge of reading matter, with wise and comical observations on life mixed in with guide book information. The knowledge of Rabelais is profound -- the philosophy interesting --but the two approaches cancel each other. Clever journalism and scholarly analysis make incompatible bedfellows. Not for the general reader, though the pen and ink drawings by Ruth Robinson would indicate that the publisher intended to appeal to that market.