Pierre Assouline, Charles Ruas, "Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin"

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Pierre Assouline, Charles Ruas, "Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin"

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One of the most beloved characters in all of comics, Tintin won an enormous international following. Translated into dozens of languages, Tintin's adventures have sold millions of copies, and Steven Spielberg is presently adapting the stories for the big screen. Yet, despite Tintin's enduring popularity, Americans know almost nothing about his gifted creator, Georges Remi–better known as Hergé. Offering a captivating portrait of a man who revolutionized the art of comics, this is the first full biography of Hergé available for an English-speaking audience.

Born in Brussels in 1907, Hergé began his career as a cub reporter, a profession he gave to his teenaged, world-traveling hero. But whereas Tintin was "fully formed, clear-headed, and positive," Assouline notes, his inventor was "complex, contradictory, inscrutable." For all his huge success–achieved with almost no formal training–Hergé would say unassumingly of his art, "I was just happy drawing little guys, that's all." Granted unprecedented access to thousands of the cartoonist's unpublished letters, Assouline gets behind the genial public mask to take full measure of Hergé's life and art and the fascinating ways in which the two intertwine. Neither sugarcoating nor sensationalizing his subject, he meticulously probes such controversial issues as Hergé's support for Belgian imperialism in the Congo and his alleged collaboration with the Nazis. He also analyzes the underpinnings of Tintin–how the conception of the character as an asexual adventurer reflected Hergé's appreciation for the Boy Scouts organization as well as his Catholic mentor's anti-Soviet ideology–and relates the comic strip to Hergé's own place within the Belgian middle class.
A profound influence on a generation of artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the elusive figure of Hergé comes to life in this illuminating biography–a deeply nuanced account that unveils the man and his career as never before.

Review
"Assouline has sketched a portrait of Hergé that is as clean and concise as one of the man's own drawings."–Financial Times

"Assouline handles his difficult subject with objectivity and occasional distaste. He has interviewed Remi's closest surviving associates, including his wives, and is an expert on the stories and Remi's many later revisions. It is hard to imagine the job being better done."–The Sunday Times (London)

"Assouline highlights yet again that all-too-common divide between the flawed private man and the admirable creative genius. … [T]hose fascinated by the strange lives of creative geniuses may want to read Assouline's fine, if somewhat disillusioning, biography."–Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"Assouline … serviceably captures the major events of Hergé's life."–Bookforum

"Assouline will inform and edify America's Tintin devotees."–San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] scrupulous but stolid biography."–New York Times Book Review

"Mr. Assouline, a journalist and film producer…is generally judicious and fair, determined to make his subject sympathetic."–New York Times

"[A] well-written biography … Assouline, a journalist, makes the best of the grey-all-over Georges Remi by exploring the contrasts between his life and the colorful figures he invented, Tintin and Hergé."–The New Republic

"Assouline is the highly-regarded biographer of Georges Simenon and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and his penetrating study, Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, will add to a growing international reputation."–Taki's Magazine

About the Authors
Pierre Assouline is a prominent French journalist and writer. His has written several novels as well as acclaimed biographies of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and detective novelist Georges Simenon. He is also a film producer and was the 2007 winner of the prestigious Prix de la Langue Française.

Charles Ruas is the author of Conversations with American Writers and a frequent contributor to ArtNews and Art in America.