Writing about my favorite hero, Tintin

Monoceros' mummy is in town. Good, healthy food at last.

So this is how the wishlist works - someone buys something and Amazon doesn't inform you, the item just disappears off the list. I have so many books on my list that I couldn't figure out which titles LK had purchased. Not a good thing - having so many books on the list!

I've been churning out pages for my travel writing class. One of my essays let me research (and indulge in) my favorite illustrated hero - Tintin. I wrote about the Chateau de Cheverny, a castle in France's Loire Valley, which inspired Herge so much he wrote to the owners, asking if he could use its facade for Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock's home. (It's Moulinsart in French).

Facts:
- Tintin is an investigative reporter, but is seen submitting a story to the newspaper only once in the entire series.
- Current count of Captain Haddock's curses/insults: 220
- Tintin's "uniform": blue sweater, white shirt, plus fours (golfing pants)

I'm interested to discover why Tintin isn't popular in the US when folks everywhere else in the world - Congo, India, Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Italy - know and/or love Tintin. Perhaps the case is similar to Enid Blyton's books, which feature golliwogs (in only a few titles). One of the earlier issues of Tintin, Tintin in Congo, stereotyped the natives in Congo, so that must have been the offending factor. Herge himself confessed that he was ashamed of his early work. The rest of the titles certainly made up for it - Tintin grew and smartened up in books like The Blue Lotus and King Ottokar's Sceptre. The US censors were unforgiving though. Enid Blyton was never published here, but at least you can find Tintin books if you know about them in the first place. When I used the line "Billions of blistering barnacles" in a poetry exercise years ago, only my professor knew its source. He asked if anyone else was familiar with it. Silence, of course. Turns out he'd lived in Switzerland for a time, and he'd bought the books for his children. Maybe someone ought to set up a Tintin club here.

I'll be working on my thesis for the rest of the week. Rest won't come till the weekend. Oh, and grading too. And the usual prep work for teaching. More thoughts later.

Posted by Monoceros at April 10, 2005 12:09 PM