Two things before I really begin . . .
1. I am currently nosed completely under (like a mole, not a ship) working on a new book. This is why I haven’t been blogging (see, perfectly good excuse). But as I don’t work on Sundays, that excuse doesn’t apply right now. Thus, I blog.
2. I hope no one expects me to suggest amazingly original works in this new blog category of mine. Or particularly helpful recommendations. I can only be autobiographical. I can’t say that everything I mention here will be whole grain, wholesome boy-food. The meals I will recount here are meals that sated my appetite, filled me up, and/or left me curious to try new things. Some titles that I intend to trot out will be the literary equivalent of sliced dogs in mac ‘n’ cheese (and that’s no insult in my world).
Right. Down to it then. When I was in 5th grade, Tintin was a rare delicacy. The local library had a few of the adventures on hand (as did my school library). I and my friends caressed every page and squinted closely at every frame. Tintin was not a comic book. Not in our minds. Tintin was a strange world and a wonderful way of being (when a boy with knickers, tufted hair, and a tiny dog named Snowy comes off as the epitome of cool, you know you’re dealing with authorial achievement).
Anyhow, I read that battered old copy of Tintin in Tibet and the creased and taped Flight 714 (among others), and I always began and ended by studying the back cover of each volume, yearning for and admiring the array of tiny thumbnailed covers, hunching further and further over, studying each smudgy detail, trying to imagine what those unattainable stories might include. One in particular drew my eye: the mysterious and typologically unique King Ottokar’s Sceptre.
Yes, I could have begged my librarians to bring in more Tintin, but to be quite honest, I was in 5th grade. It didn’t even cross my mind. And I lived in Idaho, the land of not too many bookstores. And Amazon didn’t exist.
But a day came when my family and I were visiting the strange and distant East, land of my father’s childhood (Annapolis, MD). My sisters and I were trailing behind our parents, wandering up cobbled streets (so ancient!) from the harbor (virtually the ocean!) admiring doo-dads and knives (I bought a Swiss one), pressing our faces on glass and so on, when we came to a little shop window filled with inspiration. I could see a rack, and on that rack, I could see nothing but Tintin.
I had no money. But my parents have always been softies when it comes to books, and they handed me the necessary capital to acquire my very first Tintin.
I returned to the school in my home town, in my home state, and I brought King Ottokar’s Sceptre with me. The book was loaned out, read and reread, folded and rolled and sat on and read again. Currently, it sits on my shelf (along with a few others of its kind), held together with tape, and it has already begun to receive more love and battering from the next generation of Wilson (boy and girl alike).
I give you Tintin.
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