The Lone Caner

***

Chariots of the Gods (1968)

Before you wince, roll your eyes and question my hold on reality, hear me out. I’m aware of the stigma the subject matter has.

There were always books around me, lots of them: my mother was a librarian, and my father’s jampacked shelves were treasure troves to be unearthed at leisure (he promised me his entire collection “one day”, years ago, and I’m still waiting).  It was from these sources that I picked up “Steep Paths” by a now unknown Soviet writer called Vakhtang Ananyan; the Enid Blyton “Adventure” series, all of Willard Price’s short novels of Hal and Roger.  And some very obscure works by the likes of Andrew Tomas, Frederick W. Drake and Erich Von Daniken, which delved into unexplained and mysterious ancient artifacts and discoveries that in some (but not all) cases defy a reasonable explanation.

Stones at Sacsayhuaman – note the size and jointing

Erich Von Daniken could be argued to be the author who launched the seventies craze for ancient world weird stuff – he published in 1968, at a time when UFO research was still on people’s minds. In one book, he catalogued a list of frustratingly inexplicable – or fantastically coincidental – enigmas from the ancient world. Mysteries of construction like the ever-popular pyramids on two continents, the Easter Island statues and Stonehenge; the Nazca lines; the crystal skull; the Piri Reis Map; Antarctica, the Bible and Atlantis. I gobbled this stuff up, and have never lost my fascination for such matters, largely because, discredited as Von Daniken now is, however hokey the whole field has become, not all of what he brought to public attention has entirely been rationally or scientifically explained.  As Mulder once said in the X-Files: “The evidence against it is not entirely dissuasive.”  Amen to that.

Von Daniken tried to suggest that the ancient cultures of the world were connected with aliens; that all these strange monuments and artifacts represented contact with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, and odd statuary and depictions of “Gods” were in fact expressions of how primitive people saw these divine personages.  Okay, fine, I’m the first to say that this is reaching a bit (a bit? I can hear you laugh). But the thing is, the artifacts that Von Daniken described and tried to explain are in themselves, real.  The Piri Reis map exists. The Nazca lines, the pyramids, the crystal skull, the cave painting and statuary – it’s all there.

Where I believe he fell down and brought disrepute into a genre much ignored before and since, is his rather dramatic interpretations.  Even at the young age when I first read the book, I thought he was not just swinging for the fences but the next ballpark altogether.  A round hole in a bison skull dated many thousands of years ago was, to him, not a natural occurrence (the thing ran into a sharp branch, maybe?) but evidence that there were guns in them thar days. The Bible’s accounts of Adam and Eve’s longevity suggested they were extraterrestrials (let’s not even discuss Ezekiel’s vision). And so on and on. You gotta kind of cringe when you read something so far out to left field – people can accept a decent premise, but one that’s that farfetched, with no real grounding?  Man, that’s pseudoscience with a vengeance. And it created problems for all who followed – Berlitz, Tomas, Hancock and others.

Graham Hancock, who wrote the much better researched and much less outlandish, but still critically reviled and controversial “Footprints of the Gods” (which I recommend just because he takes a more moderate approach to much of the same material) tried to revive interest in this subject in the 1990s, but I think he’s treading poisoned ground, no matter how fascinating (and it’s no coincidence that Mulder in the X-Files was never believed either, if you don’t mind me delving into pop culture for an analogy). People simply think it’s all crap.

As time went on, various other authors debunked a lot of Von Daniken’s theses, and he is, these days, sneered at, and mentioned in the same breath as “Little Green Men,” Atlantis, and various cults who believe in astral contact from some Lovecraftian universe.  His theories and the facts he brought to public attention are now fodder for mass entertainment: The “Hab Theory” by Allan W. Eckert tries to be serious but fails and is piss-poor writing to boot, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull took it to Hollywood; Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt, found (yup) a Crystal Skull in “Atlantis Found,” then came Stagate and its TV followers, and all those other novels and films which posit Atlantians, Lemurians, dudes from Mars, or Sirius or what have you. Sigh.  Take me to your leader indeed.

The Palenque tomb carving. Observe hands, nose and seated posture…what is it?

But the mysteries continue to tantalize and confound, holding us in a peculiar kind of thrall.  Science and historians have still not managed to come up with a convincing explanation of how the pyramids were built to such exacting specifications, let alone how old they really are (I leave it to you to decide whether the mathematics supposedly inherent in the dimensions is relevant or not), and to such gargantuan proportions; the Palenque tomb carving (above) does oddly resemble a man sitting in a device of some kind; what the hell was behind the Nazca lines, those huge drawings scraped into the Peruvian earth which cannot be seen except from the air? How did the meso-American and Egyptian civilizations move blocks of stone that weighed many tons (there’s a single block that is estimated to weigh 200 tons, an object our own largest cranes would have difficulty moving); and then build walls that had cunning joints with no mortar, following no rational pattern?

Von Daniken might have taken us for a grand ride, either through misguided ideas of his own or a desire to cash in on a fad he saw. I don’t really care, myself, long since having twigged to the weaknesses of the interpretations, and the theory.  But the objects themselves remain, their stories unanswered. Perhaps one day we will find the real truth behind such peculiarities in our history and culture.  For the moment they nag and tease and beg more questions than can be answered, fascinating us with a potential history we have thus far not bothered to address.

The Coming Plague is a book about disease in the modern world.  Not diseases that originated in the 20th century (though certainly this figures in the writing), but about how diseases in our  world – specifically during the 1950s to the 1990s – spread, were identified, fought, and in some cases, ultimately conquered. It may sound like a dry subject, but Laurie Garrett’s prose, eye for the quirky detail and the topicality of the theme in a world made fearful by SARS, swine flu and H1N1, make it a riveting read.

The book is divided up into chapters that focus on a series of individual tiles that gradually make up a more compelling mosaic.  Rather than solely concentrating on dry statistics and stultifying boring histories, it takes the point of view of the famous CDC  disease cowboys of the era: men and women from the US Centers for Disease Control with scientific degrees and a quest for adventure who roamed the world trying to identify and quell outbreaks of diseases that heretofore were small and localized, but which in an increasingly integrated and mobile age threatened to bloom into something much more serious.  Beginning in 1962, it explores the emergence of hemorrhagic fevers in South America and Africa, and gives us fascinating stories (I’m not trying to make light of the suffering of its victims, merely to say how well the narrative is presented) on the Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, yellow fever, lassa fever, Ebola…and AIDS.

Interspersed with the major themes of increasingly virulent viral diseases are occasional side trips relevant to the whole, such as that of Legionaire’s disease, the resurgence of sexually transmitted diseases after the optimism of seeing penicillin-based drugs nearly eradicate them; feminine hygiene and the dangers of super-absorbent tampons. And then there are chapters on topics as important as recognizing the cities as centre points for the spread of diseases (particularly their poorest sections where drug use and needle sharing is rampant); the increase in drug-resistant super-bugs; and by far the most poignant series of chapters, on AIDS.

Several things occurred to me as I read this book in 1996, and again to write this review: Garrett correctly sounded the horn on how important it was to control disease by open communication between government, the people and the medical establishment (something that horribly failed in the case of AIDS); how superbugs were becoming more, not less common; how the optimism of eradicating smallpox was cruelly smashed by simple evolution and inconsistent global public health policy; and how correctly she noted that modern mass transit (national and international) coupled with crowded megalopolises and poor urban centers, created optimum conditions for efficient disease spread. It’s not the first time this had been posited: it’s the first time I had read it presented so well, though.

If I had a fault to find with the book it is that it presents, on some subjects, too little: malaria, for instance, could have been more comprehensively dealt with (especially how the banning of DDT promoted its resurgence) – and having had it many times myself I think it criminal how few resources are devoted to its suppression even now; the focus is on disease control from an overall American perspective, but there are fewer mentions about other nations’ efforts in the same areas. In other words, I wanted more, which is perhaps a bit shameless considering this thing is 750 pages as it is.

But I freely admit that modern history is catnip for me.  I like knowing how things developed, how the world I live in was formed by the decisions (good or ill) of those who went before.  I think that in our modern world of popular appeal, instant news and always-on hypermedia, we often lose sight of what’s really important, ignore more global themes and lose ourselves in a vacuous haze of noise. The Coming Plague was a dash of cold water on complacency — and to my mind the news of the last fifteen years regarding global pandemic scares could almost form the next chapters of this fascinating, informative and highly readable work of an often-neglected subject, by an author who knows how to make the case.

Henry Kissinger is both respected and reviled as one of the most powerful American Secretaries of State ever (he also concurrently held the post of National Security Advisor) but there’s little argument that as an author and analyst the man is in a class by himself.  Nowhere, in my not-so-humble opinion, is this more clearly to be seen than in his doorstopper of a book about statecraft, Diplomacy.

Diplomacy is not for the timid, and should be avoided by those whose taste runs into fiction or who have the adult equivalent of ADD.  Admittedly, we at the club have ploughed our way through Ayn Rand, and the running joke is always that we’ll get to War & Peace in the next century or so as long as we get enough notice, but we’ll have to really brush up our socks and burn the midnight oil to get through this one if we ever relaxed the non-fiction rule. At 900+ densely-crowded pages and 3lbs, here’s a book for men with hair on their chests.

Starting with the end of WW2, Kissinger jumps backwards to the origins of the European system of international relations which developed after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and summarizes some three centuries of diplomacy between the western powers, giving generous time to France’s attempts to keep Germany disunited in the 17th and 18th centuries, the results of the post-Napoleonic-wars period, and the massive impact that Wilsonian idealism – so derided by a contemptuous Theodore Roosevelt who was a proponent of realpolitik if there ever was one – had on contemporary American foreign policy.  It is a vast and sweeping tapestry of history with characters as recognizable as Metternich, de Richelieu, Bismarck, Stalin, Hitler, Giap, Nasser and the 20th century American Presidents striding across the stage.

In its analysis and readability, it is, in most parts, masterful, I dare say brilliant.  Aside from George Kenan’s extraordinary essay “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (also known as the ‘Long Telegram’) written in 1947, I doubt I’ve ever read its equal in a non fiction work for sheer incisiveness and clarity of prose. I particularly enjoyed Kissinger’s dissection of Metternich and Richelieu’s maneuverings, and how Stalin survived the invasion of his country, as well has the psychological portraits of the many world leaders figured in the book. Kissinger’s recounting and analysis of events in which he himself played a part – the Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli conflict among others – are somewhat less compelling, listing slightly more towards an apologia or explanation for actions taken by him, than a straightforwardly objective breakdown.

I have read Diplomacy cover to cover at least three times since I obtained it, and my scribbles, highlights and jottings mark many pages.  It has informed my world view, shed light on historical events and charges my desire to read more about real events and real people, every time I crack the cover. It is dense, scholarly, long and not a light read, so reader, be warned: this is not a trivial intellectual exercise for the scholastically disadvantaged…a solid grounding in history is almost a prerequisite, and Kissinger makes no concessions to you. But for those who manage to dive in and swim to the other side of this sea of scholarship, I can almost guarantee that you’ll walk away with more than you went in with and possessing a greater respect for diplomats and their efforts worldwide.

*

NB. This is irrelevant but I wanted to mention it: the book was given to me by Ken Hermann from Vancouver, a good friend and professional colleague from my first overseas job in Central Asia, back in 1995.  He lent it to me as he was leaving for his turnaround, and died the very same day, along with ten other Canadian expats and three Russian pilots, when the MI-8 helicopter they were in crashed in the Tien Shan mountains. I keep it and look at his name on the flyleaf every year, and remember him and all the others.

The Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam’s study of the 1950s remains, after three readings, one of the most enjoyable works of history I ever picked up by accident. I was in a small bookstore on Yonge Street in Toronto and needed two more books to round out the $25 I was spending. The other one has long since been relegated to a shelf somewhere, but I keep picking this one up every year or two to go through it again.

Halberstam’s central thesis is that while the sixties was a seminal decade in American life – Vietnam, the counterculture, birth control, rock and roll, peace, love and what have you, all rocked the nation – the germination for many of the events that defined that decade actually originated before that, in the immediate post-war years.  More, many smaller, less visible, but not less impactful occurrences also happened during the fifties which arguably had more far-reaching effects: Levittowns, the Cold War, discount stores, the beginning of the black migration from the south to the northern industrial centres, the origins of the Beat generation, the changes in cinema, decline in radio, advertising, research on contraception, fast food (the chapter on MacDonalds’s is brilliant)…I can go on and on.

Halberstam’s masterstroke is to make his chapters short and tightly focussed instead of droning on for hundreds of pages on grand themes that would inevitably try the patience of a scholar.  Starting with the late 1940s, he sketches the main events from a political perspective.  Truman, MacArthur, the origins of the Cold War, atomic reasearch, the return of GIs from service, the nascent middle class, are all touched on briefly.  After that he ranges more widely, and not always chronologically, because his chapters tend to focus on one thing at a time.  In a book this large – okay, okay, it’s 800 pages long — I’m amazed that it contains as much as it does in 46 succint chapters.  And if the book has a weakness, it’s that the chapters are not labelled, only numbered, so one is not sure what one is getting into until halfway through a section (this is why my edition has my chapter titles inked in – “Rosa Parks and the advent of Civil Rights”, or “the 1952 Presidentials” and “The emerging impact of TV”…and we won’t even discuss the highlighting that is on almost every page).

David Halberstam was a journalist and author who cut his teeth reporting on the Viet Nam war, and wrote a seminal work on US hubris leading to that debacle and the subsequent influence of those policies and decisions called “The Best and the Brightest,”  which I also recommend highly. He first came to my attention when I read his book “War in a Time of Peace” which discussed the low intensity conflicts that raged following the end of the cold war and how the US dealt with them…in particular, Haiti, the Balkans and Somalia. He was a Pulitzer prize winner and loved baseball and sports, about which he also wrote several highly regarded books.

This glowingly positive review is probably not going to change anyone’s mind.  If you’re not into history or current affairs, well, then I doubt I can convince you to pick up a tome this large in between all your other concerns.  I myself usually take about a month to go through it.  But if you are at all interested in the history of the 20th century and the forces that shaped American society and culture – and by diffusion, that of much of the western world – then this book is well written, informative and one of the best of its kind.

Book Review: Shogun – James Clavell

James Clavell was the real thing.  A prisoner of war in Changi (source of the inspiration of his first novel, King Rat) he somehow managed to rise above his experiences in war to write perhaps the definitive fictional account of pre-Tokugawa Japan in Shogun. Sure Christopher Nicole wrote a truer account in his novel Lord of the Golden Fan, but it lacked the snap and punch of Clavell’s creation, lacked the in-depth research, the feeling, the entire mentality of Japan. Let me put it this way: at the end of Shogun, you spoke some Japanese and had more than an inkling into the entire mindset of the culture.  Few novels I’ve ever read have such a sense of verisimilitude, or drew you so deep into the complex inner life of an entire people.

The story follows Jonathan Blackthorne, ship’s navigator, who is blown by a storm into a bay in the Japanese islands in the late 16th century.  The story follows him through his initial hostile reception by the local daimyo (feudal lord) and Portuguese priests, through to his secondment to the entourage of the daimyo Toranaga and his gradual assimilation into Japanese ways of life. And what an assimilation it is, because Clavell contrasts the western mind with that of the Japanese, makes us understand the utter foreignness of one to the other, the politics, obligations, dietary practices, and in Blackthorne’s learning, we learn alongside him.

Alongside this is a primer on history and politics of pre-Edo Japan. For those who know nothing of this, there was a period of many years where various powerful families and clans and feudal lords battled for overall supremacy in Japan (the late Warring period); in  the late 16th century one general managed to unite most of the four main  islands but could not take the title of shogun (regent for the emperor) because of his common birth: after a rash invasion of Korea and China, he died, and one of his regents finally took power and stabilized the empire for over two hundred years until Commodore Perry forced the islands open in the 19th century.  Shogun tells the tale of this interregnum and the steps leading up to the decisive battle of Sekigahara in 1600 (with foreshadowing of the taking of Osaka castle later…but I digress).

I know this sounds somewhat dry, but trust me, it is anything but. Strategy, tactics, political maneuvering, great battles, treachery most foul, love all tender, ninjas, samurai, madams, sex, violence, swords, guns, power and command, all wrapped up in a long, delicious serving of a novel that isn’t afraid to go where the story leads, without compromise. And in all that we meet characters not soon forgotten: Blackthorne, Toranaga, Mariko, Tsukku-san, Ishido…the list is long and distinguished.

This is the novel that introduced Japan to the average western reader. From battle ethics and seppukku to hygiene, diet and cha-no-yu, the interwoven narrative lines flow harmonically, like fish in a Zen rock garden pool. Beautiful, economical and seamless, Clavell’s insights on human nature have produced a masterwork of historical fiction, not to be missed by any.

And if that isn’t enough for you, well, there are always those ninjas.

NB The full TV miniseries is faithful to the book and is not a television event to be missed if you can get the entire thing.

A young woodsman called Richard Cypher (hint hint) is out in the woods, pondering the murder of his father, when he sees a beautiful woman (is there any other kind?) being stalked by four men. He intervenes, and rescues her from death. From this rather quick beginning, Terry Goodkind has spun the tale of “Wizard’s First Rule.” “When writing a short story,” Chekhov supposedly said, “Finish it, then chop the first three paragraphs.” We get dropped into the action so rapidly in “Wizard’s First Rule”, that one suspects Goodkind may have known the quote.

WFR (I’m a little too lazy to be typing the whole thing every time I refer to it), is, at first blush, a groaning retelling of Tolkien.  When you think about it, it has all the trappings: innocent youth going on quest to save world – a sylvan northern place, of course – from evil bad guy, aided by friends and (of course), old wizard.  It’s a bildungsroman from start to finish – though finish may be the wrong word, since this book is the first one of eleven equally weighty tomes. Why me God?, I groaned as I saw the stat: can these things not be afflicted with the Multiplicate Virus?  Was I gonna have to plow through millions of words in order to grasp what amounts to an introduction?

And Terry Goodkind, who published this work in 1997, doesn’t make the going easy either.  After a that rather lurching beginning that drops us so disconcertingly into the main events, he tediously sets up character and world and scene in what consists of half of a 900 page novel.  It’s like the journey to Rivendell took twice as long. He mixes elements of Middle Earth, the Quest, the numinous object and modern pop culture in a medieval setting in often intriguing ways. It’s quite a read.

This version of Middle Earth is a land divided into three spheres: Westland, without magic, Midland with it, and the more easterly realm of D’Hara, also with magic. The three lands are separated by a now-failing boundary which once prevented passage between them, set there by wizards long ago, but still within memory of the living. The ruler of D’Hara, an evil emperor (aren’t they all?) called Darth Vader – sorry, Darken Rahl –  is taking over Midland and possesses magic greater than even that wielded by the great wizards of old.  In a nutshell, it becomes Richard’s task to stop him, since Darken Rahl is bent not only on world domination, but actual world destruction.  One wonders what he’ll do with the wasteland he ends up with.

WFR is a self-contained story – much to my relief – and to some extent suffers from what I term “First Novel Syndrome” – which is that suspicious effluvium one finds in some first novels: occasional loose plotting, language that doesn’t ring true, motivations and interactions and events that occur just a little too conveniently. In this instance, these matters exist and can be spotted – the sudden appearance of Scarlet is a particularly egregious (and irritating)  example of the phenomenon in action – but are fortunately not always that obvious.  It’s sad that a novel this ambitious and this taut needs to resort to clumsy plot devices to get our boy out of a corner Goodkind has written him into.

I can go on about the world Goodkind has created, the characters he populated it with, and the backstory and history with which he fleshes things out, even the long narrative and intricate plot: but that would be pointless. In a series of this kind the crucial questions are always the same: is the world a unique one, populating our mental landscape with new images and distinctive characters? and are the old legends of our time woven in new and spellbinding ways?

And so I must be honest: once one gets past the issues I mention, slogs on past the halfway point when all is made clear (more or less), when one finally has a good grasp of the issues, the history and the culture of the world…then things really do take off.  And better yet, Goodkind clearly had his multiplicated stretch-limo of a series in mind from the beginning, since it is obvious he is setting things up for future novels (full disclosure: in researching WFR, I peeked at summaries of what comes later), and that gives this book a solid historical and cultural grounding and a richness and depth not always found in fantasy wannabees and pretenders to Tolkien’s throne. Stilted and choppy dialogue aside – too many conversations take place simply to inform the reader – the core relationships between Richard, Zed and Kahlan are solid (if straightforward), and required. And I have to admit: Goodkind enjoys springing surprises on us, he changes direction on a dime, and yet his plot makes good use of all previously supplied information – he does not cheat.

The fantasy books that stick with us are those that have a strong storyline, do not bore and have both environments and characters we care about. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, the worlds of Fionavar, Middle Earth, Earthsea, Discworld and Donaldson’s Land are all places that have colonized our imaginations and enriched our reading with their magic and heroic tales. Now here is the world of WFR – imperfect, intriguing, interesting and powerful. Not all will be enthused by having to read eleven books, and like Jordan’s epos The Wheel of Time, it may fail at the back stretch: but with this one work, Goodkind has created an entry that, if it avoids the pitfalls all too common inn the genre, may rise to share a table with the best of them.

I’d say that for a book I started out disliking, that’s no faint praise.

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake is a family drama that illuminates the author’s signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations. The novel takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With empathy and insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.

What has made this book stand out is the quality of the writing (Lahiri won a Pulitzer for her previous book of short stories “The Interpreter of Maladies”), quite unlike most plot driven books we have read.  There is a certain voluptuousness to the prose, something about its elliptical style, that draws you into the mental world of each of the characters; and the evocative descriptions of everyday life, the small details of what it is like to see the western world through eastern eyes, resonates deeply.

To some extent, as an outsider to many cultures, I appreciate this level of storytelling — but on a reread, I found that what moved and interested me most was actually the interplay of relationships between generations, between father and son, child and parent (and indeed it is on this aspect that our discussion focused most intensely). And, as something at right angles to our previous reading, it proved a welcome challenge and stimulating topic by virtue of its difference and change of direction.

Tintin is becoming a worldwide phenomenon (again) as a result of Jackson & Spielberg’s 2011 film adaptation (long overdue, in my opinion, and thank the Lord they didn’t do it in live action). Me, I’ve been a fan since my childhood, and have had the entire collection at several points in my life (they keep getting pinched by young friends and relatives, who are drawn to the adventures and Herge’s signature drawing style). I wanted to do a review of one of his adventures, even though, to purists, I imagine that it is not necessarily a book per se, but a comic. Well, maybe, but as literary works in their own right, comics have their own pride of place, and we cannot readily ignore them. And who is to say the primarily visual medium of Tintin is in some way less because of it?

Tintin in Tibet is to my mind one of the most straightforward and artistically rendered comic strip of the series, and possesses one of the strongest, simplest story lines. Tintin, after reading about a plane crash in Tibet, has a dream that his young Chinese friend Chang (first encountered in the much more politically aware The Blue Lotus created in 1934/1935) is still alive, and resolves to find him. Drawn in a minimalist style with much empty space and clear renderings of the harsh Himalayan mountains, the story follows Tintin and his two companions to the crash site, to the search in the forbiddingly desolate terrain and there isn’t a moment when you aren’t eagerly turning the pages to see what’s next. Here, for a wonder, supporting characters are minimal – no Calculus, no twins, no Castafiore, no Wagg, Abdullah, Rastapopulous, Alan or any villain. And indeed, none is needed – the story and its clarity of drawing are as as devoid of excess as a haiku. And, it might be added, as strong.

Herge created Tibet as an anodyne to his personal problems of the time: he was in love with a young woman in his office and did not know how to end his relationship with his wife of the past three decades; he had been having nightmares of white (a cartoonist’s writer’s block, maybe?) and wanted to put together something simpler, something starker. After some batting around of ideas he came up with this one, and it ended up being serialized in Le Journal de Tintin in 1958, and published in book form in 1960. For what it’s worth, his nightmares ceased, he chose the path of divorce, and Tibet is considered one of his finest works.

Tintin is a character thought up by the Belgian author in the 1920s.  Officially his profession is that of a reporter, though he really looks too young for the role – he’s usually referred to as a “boy reporter” — and doesn’t do much writing throughout the series of his adventures: he often seems more like a boy scout than a professional of any kind. His distinctive shock of upturned hair and his white fox-terrier Snowy first appeared in 1929 when Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared.  By the time Tintin in Tibet was released thirty years later, the character and his colorful supporting cast was already known the world over…and least recognized in that other great stable of comic book characters, the USA. He had never had a girlfriend, was still the same age, seemed to have no real source of income, was still able to jet off to have adventures in strange places at the drop of a hat…and remains popular to this day (and no, I won’t get into the gay motifs many have commented on).

There are several aspects to the perennial attraction of Tintin’s adventures.  First and foremost is the artwork.  Herge championed a drawing style from which American comics had long diverged (and continue to diverge) – that of clear lines which presented extraordinary detail in a single frame, without ever actually overcrowding it. Called ligne claire, the characteristics of such artwork are an absence of shading and hatching, which provide all elements within the frame equal importance, defined only by relative perspective.  Too, while the characters in the frame are somewhat cartoonish, the background detail is highly realistic.  It’s almost tailor-made to capture the young mind, and when you think about it, the early Superman and Batman comics from the thirties also displayed this kind of style, though with less background detailing and gradually increasing shadow and contrast.

Secondly, there is sly wit and humour throughout the entire series, embodied in vivid and memorable characters. The detectives Thompson and Thomson (they are specifically noted as not being twins on the official website), and their “to be precise” gags (note their mustaches, the only way they can be told apart). Cuthbert Calculus, the boffin who is hard of hearing and has that bizarre combination of brilliance and naivetee (and endearingly literal approach to conversation – Sheldon Cooper is his modern-day incarnation) that so characterizes the comic scientific cliché.  The cynical (but loveable) near-alcoholic whisky-loving, oath-uttering Captain Haddock, whose name the scatter-brained opera singer Bianca Castafiore can never quite remember.  Snowy himself, and his little side comments.  And all those other secondary characters who popped up here and there throughout the decades in one adventure or the other: Jolyon Wagg, Chang, General Alcazar, Abdullah and his doting father, Sir Francis Haddock, Red Rackham, Rastapopulous Rex, Olivera de Figuera, Zorrino. It’s a well-populated tapestry and aficionados know them all by heart. Tintin and his sidekicks may be a bit one-dimensional, but there’s no question that the richness of the storytelling and artwork carry you along past such complaints.

Those who are familiar with Tintin will recognize his similarity to a Boy’s Own story – a rip-snorting adventure yarn that takes you along with its young protagonist to exotic locales in order to solve dastardly crimes and make the world a safer place.  It’s really not meant to be taken too seriously. Still, for its time it was quite a bit ahead of American comics, and displayed a respect for other cultures which came about as a result of much controversy over previous editions of Tintin’s adventures (most notably Tintin in the Congo) which had embarrassed and affected Herge quite deeply.  Herge had often been seen as a collaborator with the Nazis in the post-war years, even though his work of the time was staunchly and deliberately apolitical – probably these experiences and the outcry over negative portrayals of indigenous people made him more sensitive to such perceptions in both his later work and the subsequent revisions of his earlier comic strips.

Tintin’s adventures encompass sci-fi, mystery, adventure, exploration, mysticism, horror, technology, bigotry and humour. I think everyone who likes Tintin has a favourite, not least because of the broadness of its themes. I like them all, and some less than others, but it’s a mark of its strength that the whole canon remains one of those pieces of my literate life which left such a mark that I keep buying and re-buying the series, even as I pass my own sell-by date. Hopefully, one day, my own boy and his in turn, will appreciate it as much as I do.