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Lifestyle 14 FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2020
Books
Comic hero ‘Asterix’ plans
friendly assault on the NewWorld
With a satirical fictional memoir, Jim Carrey gets real
Mark Kennedy
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have long
adored things from France, like its bread and
cheese. But they've been stubbornly resistant
to one of France's biggest imports: Asterix.
The bite-sized, brawling hero of a series
of treasured comic books is as invisible in
America as the Eurovision Song Contest is
big in Europe. One United States (US) pub-
lisher hopes to change that.
Papercutz, which specialises in graphic
novels for all ages, is republishing Asterix
collections this summer with a new Eng-
lish translation - one speci‰ically geared to
American readers.
"Compared to the great success it is world-
wide, we have a lot of potential here to explore,"
said CEO and Publisher of Papercutz Terry Nan-
tier who spent his teenage years in France.
"We're just looking to make this as appealing to
an American audience as possible."
Enter Professor of French and Spanish Joe
Johnson at Clayton State University in Geor-
gia who has translated hundreds of graphic
novels and comics. He ignored the existing
translation for the United Kingdom (UK) and
went directly to the original French source.
"My driving thing is 'What do I think a kid
will understand?'" Johnson said. "That's in
the back of my mind as I translate it. But still
keeping to the spirit of the original."
Created by comic-strip artist Alberto
Uderzo and writer Rene Goscinny in 1959,
Asterix books have been translated into 111
languages, sold some 380 million collections
worldwide and spawned multiple ‰ilms.
They're set in 50 BC in a region of West-
ern Europe almost entirely conquered by the
Romans. One small village of Gauls manages
to resist, thanks to a special magic formula.
The heroes are the wily and tough Asterix
and his best friend Obelix, a red-haired giant
prone to pratfalls.
Johnson's translations are more stream-
lined and accessible than its predecessors.
In the old books, the Roman camps were
"entrenched". Now, they are "forti‰ied". In the
old, the village leader announced: "And now I
declare the revels open!" In the new, he said:
"Let the party begin!"
One very American change can be de-
tected just a few panels into the ‰irst volume,
when Obelisk warns his pal that the Romans
will be mad because he keeps beating them
up. "Huh!" Asterix replied in the old transla-
tion. "Whatever," he said in the new.
Goscinny died in 1977 and Uderzo, who died
inMarch, took on both thewriting and illustrating
for many years. The last three editions of Asterix
were written by Jean-Yves Ferri and drawn by Di-
dier Conrad. The latest is The Chieftain's Daugh-
ter, released internationally in October 2019.
So far, America seems immune to the se-
ries' Gaulish charms, perhaps due to a history
of being untouched by the Roman Empire or
its citizens not forced to confront Latin, as
they do in Europe.
Nantier thinks there is one good reason
American kids might enjoy the series: A feisty
group of quirky underdogs making an entire
empire look foolish. Sound familiar? That's
the story of the American colonies' ‰ight for
independence from England.
“It is French history, but it’s incredibly suc-
cessful in Germany and England and many
other countries, and in hundreds of languag-
es. It has a universal appeal,” he said.
The books contain slapstick for the kids
and parody for adults. Asterix and Obelisk
travel to Egypt, India, Rome and the Olympics,
among other places.
Much of the humour is based on French
puns of a bygone era, which don't travel well
across borders. The solution has been to tai-
lor each book for different countries, hence
the creation of such English character names
as Ginantonicus and Crismus Bonus.
Most books contain sly send-ups of popu-
lar ‰igures, such as Sean Connery as Agent
Dubbelosix in Asterisk and the Black Gold and
Elvis Preslix in Asterix and the Normans.
When Asterix visits Cleopatra, adults will
chuckle at her resemblance to Elizabeth Tay-
lor, who starred in a 1963 ‰ilm epic about the
Ancient Egyptian leader. (Obelisk, it turns
out, is the reason the Sphinx's nose has been
lost. It was an accident.)
Jake Coyle
NEW YORK (AP) — When Jim Carrey and Dana
Vachon handed in the book they had toiled
on for eight years — a satirical "anti-memoir"
about Carrey's life but with increasingly ex-
treme ‰lights of absurdity — to Sonny Mehta,
the late Knopf publisher said he would put it
out as a novel. Carrey and Vachon protested.
"But Sonny, the project was to blow up
the celebrity memoir," they argued.
"Well, yes," replied Mehta. "But how then
would you explain the ‰lying saucers?"
Memoirs andMisinformation, whichwas pub-
lished on Tuesday, is not an easy book to label.
It opens with Carrey binge-watching Net‰lix while
nursing a split from Renée Zellweger (who, here,
leaveshimfor abull‰ighter), pleading for hishome
security system to "Tell me I'm safe and loved".
There's much that's straight from Carrey's
life, but it's an in‰lated version of his persona
— "a hyperactive child making yuk-yuks," as
the book describes him. With overtones of
Network, Carrey skewers celebrity, Hollywood,
ego and himself. There's Brazilian jiu-jitsu with
Nic Cage, spiritual guru gatherings with Kelsey
Grammar and a Tom Cruise referenced only as
‘Laser Jack Lightning’. Carrey, himself, is jug-
gling movie options: a Mao Zedong ‰ilm by
Charlie Kaufman or Hungry Hungry Hippos in
3¬D. Oh, and an apocalypse is approaching.
It may sound far-out, but for Carrey, truth
lies in ‰iction. Even ‰iction in which Kelsey
Grammar and UFOs collide.
Memoirs and Misinformation is the lat-
est reinvention of the 58-year-old star of Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Eternal Sun-
shine of the Spotless Mind and The Truman
Show. After veering into painting and politi-
cal cartoons, it's yet another new medium for
Carrey. (Vachon wrote 2007's Mergers & Ac-
quisitions .) The book, Carrey said, "is dearer
to me than anything I've done."
The "illusion of persona" is the chief sub-
ject of Memoirs and Misinformation. In the last
decade or more, Carrey has worked to decon-
struct the best-known version of himself and
make room for an emotional life that his public
identity — "un‰lappably fun," Carrey called it —
didn't allow. He has spoken about bouts with
depression and his ongoing spiritual journey.
He has worked less frequently and sought sat-
isfaction away from Hollywood.
Make no mistake: Memoirs and Misinfor-
mation is funny. But it's also a sober medita-
tion on mortality, sel‰hood and the drive to
entertain. A conventional memoir was never
an option. "At the very least they're reordered
for effect," said Carrey.
"From an early age, what I've always no-
ticed about Jim is that he can change form,"
said Vachon, who, after ‰lying out to ‰inish
the book, has been stranded in Hawaii by the
pandemic. "His memoir needed to be one
that did that because that's his truth."
For Carrey, a cartoonishlymalleable, head-
to-toe comedian of absurdist abandon, the
urge to perform began in his working-class
upbringing outside Toronto with a mother
who fought depression and prescription pills
and a father he calls "a magical being".
"I watched him be animated and loving in
sharing this gift that he had. I went: That's a
great thing to be," said Carrey, the youngest
of four. "I could make my mother feel better.
A lot of comics come from moms in need.
My mother was a child of alcoholics and she
didn't get the love that she needed, so her
kids were there to give her that love that she
was missing. Especially me. I thought I could
heal her. I thought I could save her life."
That desire to be bigger than yourself and
to bring joy to others is something Carrey
both values sincerely and considers danger-
ous. "If it becomes an addiction to exception-
alism," he said, "That's a bad place to be."
The book reminded Carrey's longtime friend
and The Cable Guy producer Judd Apatow of
when he ‰irst met Carrey. He was then a suc-
cessful impressionist who, "on a dime," stopped
doing impressions and began improvising his
entire act, Apatow recalled. "It was like he just
cracked open his brain to see what was inside."
"We all start out young and ambitious and
we have our dreams and we think our dreams
will make us happy," said Apatow. "And I think
Jim was aware very early on that that's not
how it would go down."
Carrey isn't sure when he began to feel
"Jim Carrey" cleaving away from himself.
Fame was fun, he said, until it wasn't.
"I tripped along for a long time," Carrey
said. "No one understands the value of ano-
nymity until they lose it. You could say, 'Well,
that's what you asked for'. Yes, but it's what
a child asks for before they become an adult
and understands what something means.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's an odd
thing and it keeps you in the house."
There were low points. After the apparent
suicide of Carrey's former girlfriend Cath-
riona White, he was sued for wrongful death
by White's husband and her mother. Carrey
denied involvement and counter-sued. By
2018, the suits were dismissed. Memoirs and
Misinformation features plenty of farce, but
there are also scenes of Hollywood tragedy
that echo some of Carrey's heartaches.
"It really became an exercise of being able
to say the things that are important to say in
the most creative and abstract way possible
and to deal with real painful and jarring mo-
ments in my life," said Carrey.
Lately, Carrey has seemed to ‰ind an
equilibrium. He's starring in Kidding, a
Showtime series with darker and more mel-
ancholic tones, and he was widely praised
for his performance in Hungry Hungry Hip-
po - correction, Sonic the Hedgehog. He
has been busy sending out letters and book
copies to everyone who makes cameos in
the book.
"You can't make a book about persona
without personas," said Carrey, quickly not-
ing "it's done with love". "One day I had to
call Nic (Cage) and say, 'I wrote you into my
‰ictitious memoir'. I hardly got the sentence
out and he said, 'I'm so honoured'. He was
amazed I had given him all the best lines."
Is Carrey at peace? "I get there," he said.
As eager as he seems to be to take "Jim Car-
rey" and tear him to pieces, he seems — at
least through a computer window thousands
of miles away — at ease in his own skin.
"Whatever it was, it was the perfect com-
bination to get us here to this moment," Car-
rey said of his life. "So I don't regret it at all."
Johnson's task was of the toughest he's
faced: Asterix is very textually driven and
pun-heavy, sometimes requiring him to come
up with a similar joke to the original or even
a new song to replace an outdated one. Even
the sound effects are different. When a huge
rock landed in the old version it went "Ker-
plonk!" In the new it goes "Thuddd".
“Fundamentally, the stories are about
friendship. That’s the story that we’re always in-
terested in talking about as a as human beings,”
Johnson said. “It’s a winning formula, I think.”
The series seems less dated than its con-
temporary Tintin, which often depicted peo-
ple of colour in racist ways. While the world
of Asterix is not immune, the new US volumes
remove such horri‰ic images and sticks to the
original notion that no one people are better
than any other.
"Nobody looks pretty in there. It's all rau-
cous. The Gauls themselves are portrayed as
a brawling lot that can't get together," Nantier
said. "So nobody comes out of it unscathed.
Everybody is skewered happily."