Essay
HergÃ©
When the Belgian cartoonist HergÃ© died in 1983 at the age of 75  The New York Times saw fit to run only a brief  182-word obituary  picked up from Reuters. But in the Francophone world  HergÃ©âs death was front-page news  inspiring the kind of orgylike coverage reserved in America for fallen statesmen and overdosed pop stars. Belgian politicians asserted HergÃ©âs greatness  while the French philosopher Michel Serres went so far as to declare that the cartoonist was the author who has had the âmost impact on contemporary French life.â
Granted  many people on this side of the Atlantic are also fans of HergÃ©âs best-loved creation  the tuft-haired boy reporter Tintin  who  along with his trusty dog  Snowy  foiled serial bands of smugglers  gangsters  kidnappers  spies and crude ethnic caricatures across the pages of 24 book-length  Saturday-morning-serial-style adventures. But even Tintinâs most passionate American devotees may choke on the French author Pierre Assoulineâs observation  in his scrupulous but stolid biography  HERGÃ: The Man Who Created Tintin (Oxford  $24.95)  translated by Charles Ruas  that âtoday  some speak with some justification of a âTintin century â signifying the 20th.â American exceptionalist that I am  I had presumed the 1900s belonged to Mickey Mouse or Batman â or maybe to that relative latecomer Bart Simpson. Though I like Tintin too  I wouldnât even give him a decade. A year or two seems about right  alongside other not-quite-epochal worthies like Zonker Harris and the Fantastic Four.
And perhaps that year is the one now ending  which marked the 80th anniversary of Tintinâs inauspicious birth in the childrenâs pages of Le VingtiÃ¨me SiÃ¨cle  an anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist Catholic newspaper. Publishers have taken note: in addition to Assoulineâs biography  originally published in France in 1996  we have an academic study  âThe Metamorphosis of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults â by Jean-Marie ApostolidÃ¨s  translated by Jocelyn Hoy (Stanford University)  as well as âThe Art of  HergÃ©  â a planned three-volume anthology from Last Gasp press devoted not just to the cartoons but also to  HergÃ© âs impressive  sometimes glorious work as an illustrator and graphic designer. (The second volume will be out in March.) Back in Belgium  a MusÃ©e HergÃ© opened this past June in Louvain-la-Neuve (which should have been the name of a 1920s screen siren)  while in Hollywood Steven Spielberg has been busy directing âThe Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn â set for release in 2011 and the first of a projected series.
Aside from earnestness  an interest in world affairs and a slapstick sense of humor  one doesnât glean much sense of authorial presence in the Tintin books  for all their lively charm.  HergÃ©  is a somewhat remote presence even in Assoulineâs biography â the author himself concedes he is âelusiveâ â though to be fair  the cartoonist seems to have been a tough nut to crack. Like Tintin   HergÃ©  rarely revealed much of  himself  beyond a public facade of wholesome  cheerful industriousness. Of course Tintin  the relentless do-gooder  didnât possess any private life at all  a perpetual adolescent with no family of origin and no hint of angst or hormones â even the Hardy Boys had girlfriends â or anything else that makes real adolescents interesting (if impossible). We donât even know why  he  insists on having  his  hair cut like a blue jayâs.  HergÃ©   born in 1907 as Georges Remi ( his  pen name derives from the French pronunciation of  his  reversed initials â AIR-zhay)  was a darker and more conflicted character: a workhorse who suffered from depression and periodically chucked  his  responsibilities for months at time; a moralist who was also a philanderer; a staunch Catholic who in later life embraced Taoism; an entertainer of children who didnât particularly like them or have any of  his  own  except for an adopted 7- or 8-year-old orphan  he  forced  his  first wife to return after a couple of weeks  which is just about the cruelest thing I can imagine.
Tintinâs adventures began in 1929 with a trip to the Soviet Union  where our hero blew the lid off Bolshevik perfidy. Next up was a jaunt to the Congo  where he instructed childlike natives about the wise and benevolent glories of Belgiumâs colonial system. Full of inner-tube lips and appalling dialogue (âWhite master  you come quick! Lion him get mad!â)  âTintin in the Congoâ has in recent years been quarantined by libraries and purged from the canon by HergÃ©âs American publisher  Little  Brown. It is often cited as a stain on his legacy  as it should be  though I would point out that many other beloved cartoon characters â Bugs Bunny and Popeye come to mind â have similar skeletons in their closets. Years later   HergÃ©  would dismiss his early books by saying  âThey are not very intelligent  I know  and do me no honor: they are âBelgianâ booksâ â meaning  in Assoulineâs explication  that they were âself-satisfied and narrow.â Fortunately  HergÃ©âs skills as an artist and storyÂ­teller waxed as his taste for bourgeois agitprop waned.
But then there is âThe Shooting Star â begun in 1941 under Nazi occupation when  HergÃ©  was working for the collaborationist newspaper Le Soir  in which Tintin faces off against Blumenstein  a greedy  hook-nosed Jewish-American financier. In later years  an apologetic but defensive HergÃ© â he would tone down Blumensteinâs nose in postwar editions and change his name to Bohlwinkel â shrugged off accusations of anti-Semitism by saying âThat was the style thenâ (well  yes)  or comparing his Jewish caricatures to ethnic jokes about âpeople from Marseille  or the Scotch.â As Assouline plainly points out  âHergÃ©âs equations seem willfully obtuse.â Not that he suffered for them or his other wartime sins: he avoided retribution following liberation  and Tintinâs popularity only grew.
When  [TGT]  died in 1983 at the age of 75  The New York Times saw fit to run only a brief  182-word obituary  picked up from Reuters. But in the Francophone world  HergÃ©âs death was front-page news  inspiring the kind of orgylike coverage reserved in America for fallen statesmen and overdosed pop stars. Belgian politicians asserted HergÃ©âs greatness  while the French philosopher Michel Serres went so far as to declare that  [TGT]  was the author who has had the âmost impact on contemporary French life.â
Granted  many people on this side of the Atlantic are also fans of HergÃ©âs best-loved creation  the tuft-haired boy reporter Tintin  who  along with his trusty dog  Snowy  foiled serial bands of smugglers  gangsters  kidnappers  spies and crude ethnic caricatures across the pages of 24 book-length  Saturday-morning-serial-style adventures. But even Tintinâs most passionate American devotees may choke on the French author Pierre Assoulineâs observation  in his scrupulous but stolid biography  HERGÃ: The Man Who Created Tintin (Oxford  $24.95)  translated by Charles Ruas  that âtoday  some speak with some justification of a âTintin century â signifying the 20th.â American exceptionalist that I am  I had presumed the 1900s belonged to Mickey Mouse or Batman â or maybe to that relative latecomer Bart Simpson. Though I like Tintin too  I wouldnât even give him a decade. A year or two seems about right  alongside other not-quite-epochal worthies like Zonker Harris and the Fantastic Four.
And perhaps that year is the one now ending  which marked the 80th anniversary of Tintinâs inauspicious birth in the childrenâs pages of Le VingtiÃ¨me SiÃ¨cle  an anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist Catholic newspaper. Publishers have taken note: in addition to Assoulineâs biography  originally published in France in 1996  we have an academic study  âThe Metamorphosis of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults â by Jean-Marie ApostolidÃ¨s  translated by Jocelyn Hoy (Stanford University)  as well as âThe Art of   [TGT] â a planned three-volume anthology from Last Gasp press devoted not just to the cartoons but also to  HergÃ© âs impressive  sometimes glorious work as an illustrator and graphic designer. (The second volume will be out in March.) Back in Belgium  a MusÃ©e HergÃ© opened this past June in Louvain-la-Neuve (which should have been the name of a 1920s screen siren)  while in Hollywood Steven Spielberg has been busy directing âThe Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn â set for release in 2011 and the first of a projected series.
Aside from earnestness  an interest in world affairs and a slapstick sense of humor  one doesnât glean much sense of authorial presence in the Tintin books  for all their lively charm.   [TGT] is a somewhat remote presence even in Assoulineâs biography â the author himself concedes he is âelusiveâ â though to be fair  the cartoonist seems to have been a tough nut to crack. Like Tintin   HergÃ©  rarely revealed much of  himself  beyond a public facade of wholesome  cheerful industriousness. Of course Tintin  the relentless do-gooder  didnât possess any private life at all  a perpetual adolescent with no family of origin and no hint of angst or hormones â even the Hardy Boys had girlfriends â or anything else that makes real adolescents interesting (if impossible). We donât even know why  he  insists on having  his  hair cut like a blue jayâs.  HergÃ©   born in 1907 as Georges Remi ( his  pen name derives from the French pronunciation of  his  reversed initials â AIR-zhay)  was a darker and more conflicted character: a workhorse who suffered from depression and periodically chucked  his  responsibilities for months at time; a moralist who was also a philanderer; a staunch Catholic who in later life embraced Taoism; an entertainer of children who didnât particularly like them or have any of  his  own  except for an adopted 7- or 8-year-old orphan  he  forced  his  first wife to return after a couple of weeks  which is just about the cruelest thing I can imagine.
Tintinâs adventures began in 1929 with a trip to the Soviet Union  where our hero blew the lid off Bolshevik perfidy. Next up was a jaunt to the Congo  where he instructed childlike natives about the wise and benevolent glories of Belgiumâs colonial system. Full of inner-tube lips and appalling dialogue (âWhite master  you come quick! Lion him get mad!â)  âTintin in the Congoâ has in recent years been quarantined by libraries and purged from the canon by HergÃ©âs American publisher  Little  Brown. It is often cited as a stain on his legacy  as it should be  though I would point out that many other beloved cartoon characters â Bugs Bunny and Popeye come to mind â have similar skeletons in their closets. Years later   HergÃ©  would dismiss his early books by saying  âThey are not very intelligent  I know  and do me no honor: they are âBelgianâ booksâ â meaning  in Assoulineâs explication  that they were âself-satisfied and narrow.â Fortunately  HergÃ©âs skills as an artist and storyÂ­teller waxed as his taste for bourgeois agitprop waned.
But then there is âThe Shooting Star â begun in 1941 under Nazi occupation when  HergÃ©  was working for the collaborationist newspaper Le Soir  in which Tintin faces off against Blumenstein  a greedy  hook-nosed Jewish-American financier. In later years  an apologetic but defensive HergÃ© â he would tone down Blumensteinâs nose in postwar editions and change his name to Bohlwinkel â shrugged off accusations of anti-Semitism by saying âThat was the style thenâ (well  yes)  or comparing his Jewish caricatures to ethnic jokes about âpeople from Marseille  or the Scotch.â As Assouline plainly points out  âHergÃ©âs equations seem willfully obtuse.â Not that he suffered for them or his other wartime sins: he avoided retribution following liberation  and Tintinâs popularity only grew.