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The World According to Tintin
Lev Grossman on how Tintin comics changed his life:
"To a child reading Tintin for the first time, the books are, of course, completely incomprehensible: They are themselves a foreign country. There are 23 completed Tintin novels in all, and unless your own childhood collection was exceptionally well curated, you would have been lucky to hit on the first one by chance, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, or to read them in anything like the order in which they were written. As a result, you wander haphazardly over the border into Tintinland, at no official checkpoint, with no guide, following no prepared itinerary. It’s a useful introduction to navigating without familiar landmarks."
"Like me, and so many other children of the American suburbs, Tintin was nobody, and he lived nowhere, and he did nothing. In order to do anything or be anybody, he had to travel."
"To a child reading Tintin for the first time, the books are, of course, completely incomprehensible: They are themselves a foreign country. There are 23 completed Tintin novels in all, and unless your own childhood collection was exceptionally well curated, you would have been lucky to hit on the first one by chance, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, or to read them in anything like the order in which they were written. As a result, you wander haphazardly over the border into Tintinland, at no official checkpoint, with no guide, following no prepared itinerary. It’s a useful introduction to navigating without familiar landmarks."
"Like me, and so many other children of the American suburbs, Tintin was nobody, and he lived nowhere, and he did nothing. In order to do anything or be anybody, he had to travel."
AUTHOR:Lev Grossman
SOURCE:Conde Nast Traveler
PUBLISHED: Nov. 1, 2011
LENGTH: 9 minutes (2301 words)