Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin

A deeply sad book about a deeply sad man. I came away from this biography of Herge feeling much more ambivalent about him as a person, but I appreciated that Assouline did not feel the need to sugar coat his life. By this account, Herge was not a very nice person in his personal life but managed to pour all his good impulses and traits into the iconic character of Tintin.

In the past I have given Herge a pass for his collaboration during the war since I believed his actions did not in any way bolster the Nazi regime, but reading more details about his time at Le Soir and his continued support of collaborationists, right-wingers, and blackshirts after the war (even if it was just because they were his personal friends) makes me think show more differently. It's no surprise that during these years he turned away from representing political intrigue in the Tintin books and instead produced what I believe are his masterpieces of fantasy-adventure: the Crystal Balls and Unicorn double albums.

However, it is also heartbreaking to read about him as a man who was basically reviled by his beloved country in the wake of the war, but whose creation was adored as a quintessentially innocent symbol of Belgium. His celebrity reputation mixed with his less-than-salubrious personal life and deeply-felt religious and political crises must have put him through absolute torture. That he was able to keep working (however sporadically) despite bouts of clinical depression makes me even more thankful for the wonderful humor and adventure of the Tintin books.

A minor annoyance: the translator sometimes does not change the names of characters that are different in the French/English versions. He also does not use the published English translations when quoting dialogue but performs his own translations from Herge's French text. This results in inconsistencies with the English canon of Tintin and occasional confusion for the reader. (I have noticed that this occurs frequently with scholarly or nonfiction books about Herge/Tintin that have been translated from French.) show less