Catholic-ometer: 3.5 of 5
Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5
Tintin in America is the third Tintin book I ever read, and as a child, I really enjoyed it more than the others, and couldn't explain why. In hindsight, I suppose it was because the book consists almost entirely of action, adventure, daring escapes and victories over people who seem, at first, to have the upper hand.
The story is that Tintin lands in Chicago, fully intending to clean the place up, and bust some crooks. The crooks, for some reason, take him seriously, and Al Capone tries to have him killed. Al Capone himself gets away, of course, (we have to leave something for Eliot Ness to do, after all,) but that's not the end of Tintin's adventures. There are many more gangsters in Chicago who want to make him offers; his help or his head.
The rest of the book is a series of nonstop conflicts between Tintin and the gangsters. Some throw traps in his way, and others try to attack him directly, but Tintin wins out against his opponents in the end, and major busts occur. Ultimately, Tintin's visit in America ends rather abruptly, just as his last conflict with the gangsters does.
I still enjoy Tintin in America more than most of the other Tintin books, but now that I'm older and more savvy, my reasons are different. I enjoy it because, as I see it, there are two major, positive sentiments behind it.
The first major positive sentiment is a love for Old America; the America in its infancy, and indeed, this is the primary thing that Tintin runs into in America. Chicago gangsters, cowboys, indians, steam locomotives and being tied to railroad tracks, oil wells hidden deep underground, beautiful plains, and towering cityscapes. Herge seems to have attempted to work in every piece of American culture that was widely-known at the time, to create a sort of "mythical" America, because I truly think that he wanted America to be a beautiful culture, which could be seen and enjoyed. As unrealistic as this is, and as unhistorical as it may be to have all of these things in the same place and time period, I can appreciate the desire to write this kind of story, and in this way.
The second major positive sentiment is humor. Let's be honest here; the humor in "Tintin in America" is so far over-the-top as to be absolutely absurd, and it's often the little things that clue you in. Tintin, for example, coming to Chicago with the intent of "cleaning the place up," or a gangster walking into a building with a "speakeasy" sign outside of it, loudly proclaiming that it's a speakeasy, as much as the saloon doors that he enters through. There's no way that this stuff wasn't intended to be humorous, just because of how blatantly-ludicrous it all is. In fact, my own view is that "Tintin in America" was intended as something of a parody of American culture; to draw attention to the many cliches and silly elements in the popular American fictions of the time, not unlike Mystery Science Theater in its day.
However, although Herge seemed to want to paint a mythical, culturally-distinct picture of America, he was also somewhat realistic in his understanding of how much America had begun to distance itself from its cultural identity, and he shows this, when he has an entire section of a city pop up over a newly-discovered oil well, literally overnight. I don't think streamlined, industrial business is what wiped out America's identity as a culture. I think it was cultural suicide, motivated by the misguided desire not to "offend" others. Still, I can sympathize with the desire to see America's soul return to something distinct from other nations again; something that can be enjoyed.
Unfortunately, Tintin does do some things in this book that are clearly wrong, such as ambushing someone from behind a corner (who turns out to be a policeman,) and stealing (and subsequently wrecking) a train, so I'm afraid I can't give it a perfect grade, no matter how much I enjoyed it.
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