Friday Memories of Books That Shook My World
My four Georgia grandchildren, all of whom are voracious readers, are enthralled with graphic novels. As I watch their delight in Japanese manga and in the Five Worlds, Amulet, and Princeless series, I think of my own childhood love affair with Tintin, by the Belgian artist Hergé.
I remember scouring bookstores throughout Paris when we were there in 1962 trying to track down every volume. David, Jonathan and I couldn’t read them then, given that they were in French, but we could three years later when we spent the year attending a Paris school (by which time I was 13, Jonathan 10, and David 8.) I’ve written about our difficulty in finding Tintin au Congo (1930), which the author had withdrawn from circulation since it is blatantly racist. (We found it on the last day in a used bookstore.) The other books are far superior although even they have the colonialist plot of “enlightened European travels to exotic cultures and saves them.” But that’s not what attracted us.
The books allowed our imaginations to roam freely. Tintin is always poking around in wonderful interiors, such as Incan tombs, haunted Scottish castles, Egyptian pyramids, Chinese opium dens, underwater shipwrecks, secret treasure rooms, and lunar caves. There’s always excitement as he is chloroformed or knocked out at least once in every book. My own kids grew up on the English translations but I’ve never been able to make the adjustment. For me, Snowy the dog will always be Milou, Professor Calculus will always be Tournesol (meaning “sunflower”), police inspectors Thomson and Thompson will always be Dupond and Dupont. Oh, and Tintin is not pronounced like the dog actor.
As I look back, I think the series spurred us to do our own exploring, providing us with a narrative framework. Every Thursday (which French kids get off) the three of us visited historic sites, such as the Cluny museum, with its unicorn tapestries; Notre Dame, with its gargoyles; the naval museum at the Palais de Chaillot (which reminded us of Le Secret de l’Unicorn and Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge); the Louvre (I especially was riveted Nicolas Sebastien Maillot’s giant painting The Raft of the Medusa, with its desperate survivors); and the Chateau de Vincennes (from which a prisoner is rescued in the sequel to the Three Musketeers). It’s as though we ourselves were Tintin, venturing out into new and exotic places.
I use the word “exotic” deliberately, referring to Edward Said’s critique of the West for “orientalizing” the “exotic east” and “inscrutable orient.” While Hergé is undoubtedly guilty, it’s also the case that every culture exoticizes other cultures. I remember Tintin in America, which sees the United States as a combination of wild frontier (with Indians wearing headdresses) and urban landscapes run by gangsters. My own Slovenian students, when they visited us in the United States, imagined they would encounter Hollywood America, where beautiful people lounged by large swimming pools ingesting drugs.
My later travels abroad continued to tap into Tintin’s fascination with the foreign. When I spent a college semester in France, I got as close as I dared to a teargas-filled demonstration; burrowed into every castle and Roman ruin I came across; and was enchanted by Mont Saint-Michel. Years later, thanks to Tintin, it seemed natural to pack up our three kids for a Fulbright year in Yugoslavia (this in 1987, before Slovenia had broken free). The castles we encountered there reminded me of the one in Le Sceptre d’Ottokar, my first Tintin book and my favorite.
My longing to visit the Incan ruins, meanwhile, was set in motion by Les Sept Boules de Cristal and Le Temple de Soleil. A few years ago Julia and our son Darien gifted me with trip to Peru, which was magical.
I don’t know whether Tintin’s job as a journalist played any role in my working for newspapers my first two years out of college—perhaps not as we see him doing very little journalism—but I sense that he reinforced certain values. I certainly took note of his readiness to help people in distress and was struck by him punching out a Brit for bullying a Chinese man in Le Lotus Bleu. Few things make me angrier than people tormenting those who are vulnerable, and I have called out colleagues for insensitive behavior to office assistants.
I was also impressed, in Tintin au Tibet, by how he risks his life in the Himalayas to save his young Chinese friend Chang, who has been carried off by the Abominable Snowman. The Tibetan monks comment on his great heart, which is how I saw him as well. I was also impressed by how his faithful friend Captain Haddock is prepared to cut his climbing rope when he slips, thereby saving Tintin. Loyalty to friends, even if it involves sacrifice, is of paramount importance.
How much are we shaped by the books we read? I think of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, who is enticed to a sea life by his “light holiday reading.” When surrounded by the “babel of voices” of the other sailors, we are told that Jim
would forget himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men—always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.
If you know the novel, then you know that Jim falls short of his ideal. Bookish fantasies and adult reality “keep little company together nowadays,” to borrow from Shakespeare’s Bottom. Yet even though I haven’t lived Tintin’s adventurous life—not even close—I can see how his determination to do good and his own devotion to duty had an impact.
