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Product Description
The Independent
‘Entertaining insights into one of the most celebrated of all comic strips’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Seven
‘His chatty style is so forcefully confident and his argument so tightly constructed and so well-supported...It’s brilliant’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
He is called McCarthy but must be french to have written this.
Highly entertaining but at times infuriating as he stretches
his initial premises beyond credibility. Despite this
unputdownable and worth a second go just in case he might be right.
Highly entertaining but at times infuriating as he stretches
his initial premises beyond credibility. Despite this
unputdownable and worth a second go just in case he might be right.
32 of 44 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What have, Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, Barthes, Baudelaire, Freud, Bataille and Bachelard got in common? Give up? They all appear in this book. Tom McCarthy has obviously picked up the student's guide to French literary theory and forced every element from the Tintin stories into one of these theories or another. The effect is unintentionally hilarious as he seems to be trying to convince us how clever he is by mentioning all these theorists. What someone forgot to tell him is Foucault and Barthes are (arguably) structuralist, Derrida (post structuralist), Freud (psychoanalytic) etc etc. When I studied these theorists they were all quite distinct from one another in how they approached texts. By using them altogether McCarthy loses his focus very early on. I was giggling gleefully at the pretentions of the first chapter and by the time he was trying to convince us that the Castafiore emerald is the opera singer's clitoris I was having a lovely time taking the p***! McCarthy does not 'discover' the hidden meanings in the text because most his 'discoveries' are not there. He picks a scene, thinks of a totally obscure theory or text to link it too and shoe-horns the two together, just like the ugly sisters trying on the glass slipper in Cinderella! McCarthy should learn that intelligence is not quoting as many theorists and obscure texts as possible, it is using one theory to completely construct a coherent argument without going off on a tangent.
11 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This bear-hug of a book suffocates its subject with far too much earnest theory and no mischief or laughter. it's clear the author loves the Tintin books; alas, then, that he nearly draws all the juice out of Herge's light-touched, mysterious and beautiful masterpieces with the usual dull postmodernist gabble of signs and signifiers and secrets!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
the real world behind the comic
I read all of Tintin as a child, but only now, thirty-plus years later, thanks to Tom McCarthy's book, I finally gained admission to the hidden parts of the Tintin universe, which... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Michael Gross
Nice try
It's not a bad idea using French intellectuals for identifying "hidden messages" in the Tintin books. Read more
Published 22 months ago by A reader
Not for Tintin fans
Extremely pretentious. Not having come across the author before, I assumed I was reading the work of an opportunistic undergraduate; someone with more entrepreneurial spirit than... Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2010 by Eight Seven
Electrifying - What's up?
This book is: thrilling, convincing, fun, intriguing, and it ultimately re-invigorates the reading of Tintin. Read more
Published on 23 May 2007 by Hodge
maybe postmodernism can be fun
a present from a friend who knew I was a tintin fan - it's made me think postmodernism might be other than a pretentious dead end. next stop foucault.
Published on 16 Nov 2006 by A Reader
Hidden Hergé
This is a fascinating book, I found it really interesting to read in conjunction with more conventional criticism on literary 'greats'. Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2006 by Lee
A good read
I think this is a fascinating look at the influences and themes behind Hergé's Tintin and I also believe that it is a book for Tintin lovers and for anyone with an interest... Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2006 by J
Tintin and the undergraduate essay
Little more than an overlong undergraduate essay in the "compare and contrast" style. The author has too little intellectual reference and too much time on his hands.
Published on 21 Sep 2006 by Marco Rizotto
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