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Wanted: Tintin and Alph Art

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ectoplasm
Member
#11 · Posted: 24 Jun 2004 16:36
i asked in my local waterstone's, and they rang the wholesaler, Gardner's, who told them it was arriving in their warehouse this weekend, and would therefore be in Waterstone's next week. IBIWISI (I'll Believe It When I See It). I saw the French edition in the tintin shop the other week - although the text all seems to be there, the facsimile's of the Herge pages are very small, with the exception of the first few pages (which were the most fully worked at herge's death). Very much an edition aimed at children, and presumably there'll be another super-edition eventually (for Tintin's 100th anniversary? 200th?) for collector's containing all 150 pages of Alph-Art that Herge left behind. You will surely be able to pick up a copy from Amazon.co.uk as soon as it's published here in the UK.

When your daughter eventually reads it, ask her if she thinks Herge finished it or not! ;-)
jock123
Moderator
#12 · Posted: 24 Jun 2004 17:07
Ectoplasm said:

When your daughter eventually reads it, ask her if she thinks Herge finished it or not!

Many a true word is spoken in jest...
Do you know, I have never even considered that the book is more or less how Hergé intended it to be...

Perhaps it is the ultimate in abstraction - having rid himself of the ligne claire and narrative structure, maybe Tintin dies, and the rest of the white pages (presumably going up to P.62) are the void of death which haunted Hergé throughout his life...

Good news though if it makes the shops next week!!
ectoplasm
Member
#13 · Posted: 24 Jun 2004 23:33
That's a very beautiful way of putting it.

I personally believe Herge was in two minds about finishing Alph-Art - he reached a point where he could have gone on and finished it as a conventional Tintin adventure, or left it as it is, and provide a perfect coda, if not to the series - that is The Castafiore Emerald - then to his own talent, and his late habit of 'deconstructing' his own creation.

Tintin in polystyrene, just a white outline, is the ultimate clear line - so clear there wouldn't even be any lines - but it is also a good joke, a parting shot, on all the writers and fans who over-intellectualise Herge's work. I think the message is that when you try to turn Tintin into a work of art, like Enddadine Akass threatens to do, you kill him...as the villain's words suggest, 'expanding' Tintin also 'compresses' him...

Of course, I have myself just fallen into the trap of over-intellectualising Tintin!
Frankymole
Member
#14 · Posted: 24 Jun 2004 23:56
You've also just proved that Alph-Art is a genuine piece of abstract art (as perhaps intended). We can read into what we will!

"Everything happens for a reason."

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