Monday 19 May 2008

In The Catholic Herald April 24

Tintin's creator was never a far-right propagandist, says Patrick West -

"The Adventures of Hergé, Creator of Tintin by Michael Farr,
John Murray £20 Posterity has not been kind to Hergé. In many ways, his life resembles that of P G Wodehouse. Both authors were unfairly accused of being Nazi collaborators (Hergé having written for the Belgian Le Soir newspaper in the 1940s when it was a sanctioned organ of the German occupying administration); both their works suggested an unconscious misogynistic mindset: Wodehouse's world was one in which the only female characters were airheaded or manipulative girlfriends, or the aunts Dahlia (bossy) and Agatha (terrifying); Hergé's only real female character was the monstrous pest, Bianca Castafiore, based on Maria Callas. And both Hergé's and Wodehouse's tales centred on two asexual characters, one of whom was phlegmatic and rational, the other spirited and tempestuous: Tintin and Haddock, Jeeves and Wooster..."

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