The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (35 page)

‘Although Salander is given various psychiatric labels, an accurate diagnosis seems impossible. In this respect, Larsson demonstrates his liberal credentials, because, in actual fact, there is nothing “wrong” with her at all. She is not medically ill. One is reminded of stalwarts of the anti-psychiatry movement, renegades like Thomas Szasz and R D Laing, who suggested that a mind can only be sick in a metaphorical sense, and that “madness” is the only sane response to an insane world. It is unusual for a work of genre fiction to address such profound issues. They are at the very heart of the
Millennium Trilogy
, and provide a satisfying philosophical underpinning to a fast-paced, dramatic narrative. Few people have been able to pull this off, but Larsson succeeds with a light touch and without the usual tub-thumping piety.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: MINETTE WALTERS

P D James and Ruth Rendell were for many years the joint holders of the title ‘Britain’s Queen of Crime’ – but for quite some time, Minette Walters has been co-opted into this august company with her remarkable series of psychologically penetrating novels. She takes the view that the principal reason Stieg Larsson has been such a global phenomenon is because he’s such an extremely accomplished writer: ‘It’s one thing to have a good idea, quite another to transpose it to the page in such a way that the setting, the characters and the plot come alive for the reader. All the best crime and thriller novels have been written by talented writers and one of the benefits of skilful prose and dialogue is that it’s easier to translate.

‘Regarding Salander… we tend to have stereotypical ideas about Swedish girls – blonde, beautiful and leggy – so Lisbeth is refreshingly unusual! You could say that the appeal of Larsson is that he paints the whole of Sweden as unusual. We’ve become used to the dour Calvinism of Henning Mankell and it was surprising to encounter the eccentric, colourful and more chaotic environment that Larsson inhabits. And his days as a crusading journalist introduced him to the true underbelly of his society, which lends real authority to his fiction.

‘I bet that Stieg’s dependence on nicotine helped him write his books. Smokers concentrate better and stay awake longer than non-smokers. I wish I’d met him. I’d have enjoyed sharing a fag outside in the cold while the clean-knickered brigade sat in their highly-antiseptic environment inside and discussed their asthma symptoms.’

Does his death at 50 explain to some degree the success of the books published posthumously?

‘Not in my opinion,’ Minette Walters says. ‘He was too good a writer. He would have triumphed anyway.’

Is he a feminist writer – or is there an element of exploitation in the books? Walters’ answer to this is less clear cut: ‘I’m not sure what feminism is any more so I can’t answer this. For me it’s always been equality between the sexes and I have no reason to believe that wasn’t Larsson’s view.

‘As for his legacy: if any future crime or thriller writer feels they can only succeed by aping Stieg Larsson then they should put their pen away now and adopt a career that does not require original thinking. The curse of any genre is that 90% of authors piggyback off the originality of the other 10%. It’s the originals like Larsson who continue to evolve and develop the art of novel writing.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: MARK LAWSON

In the newspaper the
Guardian
, Mark Lawson, one of the UK’s leading critics and broadcasters, pointed out that on a French beach he had visited, almost every sunbather of every nationality was reading one of Larsson’s novels in the numerous translations: ‘This phenomenon is improbable, given the project’s many obstacles,’ he goes on. ‘The author died before the first book even went through the editorial process and, in most such cases, readers are left with a tantalising sense of the polish further drafts might have provided. And while Swedish crime fiction already had a high reputation – through the Wallander novels of Henning Mankell – Larsson has achieved a global level of acclaim and sales which is very unusual for a story that is not originally written in English.’

Lawson has come up with an intriguing analysis of the reasons why the books have done so well: ‘My theory for the phenomenon is that Larsson took a genre which has generally sold to men – thrillers turning on technology and conspiracies – and feminised it through a highly unusual central character: Lisbeth Salander, who combines the brain of Sherlock Holmes with the martial arts skills of Lara Croft. It’s also likely that the history of Sweden – where an experiment in liberal government was compromised by violence and corruption – resonates with readers in other countries. And the author’s sudden death – although family and fans accept that he was killed by smoking rather than a smoking gun – adds to the sense that the novels contain urgent and dangerous truths.

‘And yet perhaps the books’ triumph should not have been so great a surprise. It is an oddity of Swedish culture that a country often easily ignored suddenly throws up an example in a certain field – Abba, Björn Borg, Volvo – which proves to be a world-beater. Larsson is the latest example.

‘The sadness is that the question which always underlies a reader’s relationship with a favoured author – what will they write next? – cannot apply here, although suggestions that Larsson’s laptop may have contained outlines and notes for many more books are one possible reason why his estate has been so bitterly contested.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir is the Icelandic author of the
Thora
series. With her knowledge of both the Nordic countries and the UK, how different does she feel the response has been to the Larsson phenomenon in the two countries? She says: ‘The success was probably more readily achieved in Scandinavia, Sweden particularly, as these countries are Larsson’s home base in the case of Sweden, and his backyard with regards to the others. But it’s a remarkable achievement where the rest of the world is concerned.

‘It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the
Millennium Trilogy
so mesmerising… but I believe it has a lot to do with the feeling of unfairness evoked, followed by justice being served, in an often colourful manner.

‘Salander is the quintessential heroine, bent but not broken, a unique fictional character that one cannot help but admire despite her socially irresponsible antics. Her background is tragic and in a more “traditional” novel she would spiral downwards, and most likely come to a heartbreaking end. Instead we are introduced to a spirit that must at times repress the urge to lunge out, biding her time to eke out what she considers the wicked deserve. Her unusual “look” is appealing to me – and I can gauge my drinking with the recurring notion that it would be a great idea to have my nose pierced with a ring in the middle like a bull, telling me it is time to stop. It does show that somewhere deep inside me I have a fascination and respect for those who have the guts to go ahead with such things…

‘Larsson was not known at all in Iceland before the
Millennium
books, and possibly this also applies to the other Nordic countries, aside from Sweden. News of fringe politics does not carry over borders.’

And his death?

‘The idea that he was assassinated is not one that has many followers although there are always those that believe in conspiracies. I am really tempted to join their ranks, being a chain-smoking workaholic.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: HÅKAN NESSER

There is no question that Håkan Nesser – who lives both in London and his native Sweden – is comfortably one of the most adroit practitioners of the Nordic crime novel. He’s a man of immense good humour – but possesses a firing-on-all-cylinders readiness to tell it exactly as he sees it: ‘People seem to love Stieg’s books everywhere, but the worldwide enthusiasm may have more to do with the monotheism connected with all kinds of hype. Everybody reads the same books these days, unfortunately – and seems to need to follow this herd instinct.

‘Salander is the key to the success of the Stieg Larsson books, of course. Well, you’ve got a super-smart underdog, beaten by society, but invincible… it’s a formula that’s worked before, hasn’t it? There is no such thing as a Swedish way of writing crime fiction; that can be said with certainty. My writing differs totally from Stieg’s; he’s a political action writer with a lot of pathos, and I like his books very much, but the Swedish crime fiction boom is a market phenomenon, not a stylistic confluence.

‘Before the crime novels, Stieg was known only to those with an eye on the stuff
Expo
worked with, i.e. neo-Nazis etc. As to his death… well, he died from smoking too much and working too much – there’s absolutely no doubt about that. Other theories are just bullshit journalism.

‘The first film of his books was very well received. The second one had a cooler reception – in fact, I’ve only seen the second one, and I’m afraid it was very bad. Everything was reduced and simplified to action and violence. Can anyone fill his shoes? Frankly, I’m simply not interested. I’m responsible for my own writing, and that’s enough. A Swedish publishing house has been trying to hype a pen-name writer, and perhaps they have succeeded; he was bought by a number of countries at a book fair last April. The problem is that the book is an unbelievable concoction of speculative shit.’

WRITERS ON STIEG LARSSON: HENRY SUTTON

Henry Sutton, the literary editor of the
Daily Mirror
, is also an accomplished novelist (his most recent book is
Get Me Out of Here
), and is working in the area of crime fiction in writing a continuation of R D Wingfield’s Inspector Frost novels. He has a slightly unusual take on the
Millennium Trilogy
: ‘Actually, it’s in my nature to steer clear of phenomenally popular novels, but one really did have to pay attention in this case. Initially, I have to say, I don’t think the book has been brilliantly published in this country. I don’t think his publishers capitalised on who he was and the fact that the book was already doing supremely well around the world – I think it was a missed trick there. But you can’t argue with the subsequent success of the book. And while we are talking about reservations, I have to say that I did find some of the translations of the books a little clunky –
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
, for instance.

‘There are other problems with any kind of translated fiction, but I would have thought it was more feasible to render a translation of a popular genre – such as crime fiction – so that it is more in tune with the original. The same might be said of literary fiction as well, but crime fiction has certain common denominators, even the more innovative examples, which can be accessed in a good translation.

‘As for the reasons for the success of books, I’m not sure I agree with the received wisdom that the author’s early death is such a major factor in the acclaim. Actually, his death was a tragedy. The books might even have done better had he been alive – he would have been around to promote them, to talk about them – and there would have been a stronger sense of where these books were coming from. In the final analysis, of course, the author really shouldn’t matter. The books themselves should stand up, without the need to know anything about their creator – and that’s certainly the case with Larsson. It’s something of a modern phenomenon, I think, this need to relate the author to his books. This process of scrutinising and examining the author’s life to illuminate the books – well, I’m not convinced that it’s always particularly helpful.

‘Of course in Larsson’s case, he was a journalist – and a very considerable journalist, at that – and the correlation between his work as a journalist and his fiction can’t be ignored; of course, there are parallels and echoes. There are his concerns: the feminist issues, the socialist issues and his writing on the extreme Right. Knowing all that, it’s hard to disassociate it from the character of Blomkvist in the books – of course, anybody who knows the facts will see the parallels. But this desire to examine the life of the writer – whether it’s J K Rowling, Dan Brown or Ian Rankin – well, I understand the impulse, but I’m not really sure that it’s illuminating. When I write my own novels, I am asked who a particular character is based on, and although all my characters are, I suppose, extrapolations of fragments of my personality, in the final analysis that doesn’t matter – they have to work as discrete entities.

‘As for the fact that one of the central characters, Mikael Blomkvist, is clearly a surrogate for Larsson himself – well, I think that’s mainly of academic interest. What interests me about Blomkvist – and what amuses me – is that I find him almost ludicrously Scandinavian! The frosty exterior which conceals a warm interior; that studied detachment which is so much a part of his whole rationale – and the fact that he’s coming from this morally unimpeachable place.’

Thinking laterally, how would Sutton have reacted to the first book had it been put out under its original title
Men Who Hate Women
, and promoted as a literary title rather than a crime novel? Could the book have functioned with this other identity? After all, much literary fiction has a healthy dose of crime these days.

‘I really don’t think that the first book could have been sold as a literary novel. Stieg Larsson knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how to get narrative functioning, he knew about the form: short, episodic chapters – and he knew how to shift from scene to scene in a kind of cinematic fashion. And the use of P.O.V. – he knew how to do all the classic stuff; it is as if he’d read the manual, and I don’t mean that in any dismissive sense. But it’s not great literary fiction.