The bestselling, Cold War espionage writer John Le Carré had an explanation for the popularity of spy stories.
Our modern experience of our employer and spouse, he said, is that of a conspiracy. Accordingly, from first thing in the morning, we dress up for a role, disguise our feelings and poke around beneath the surface of things. Espionage turns out to be a metaphor for ordinary life, the Cold War a dramatic image of the class and sex wars.
In which case, what accounts for the phenomenal success of the Millennium trilogy by the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson? What is his anti-heroine, the gothic punk Lisbeth Salander, an image of? Why do newspapers report that on so many beaches for the past couple of summers, it is Larsson that is being read?
Some background: The book sales of the Millennium trilogy of thrillers are record-breaking by any standard. The last volume of the trilogy – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest – is the first e-book to exceed sales of one million.
Leading directors have competed for the right to shoot the American film versions. The actor chosen to play the lead male role of the journalist Mikael Blomkvist is current Bond actor Daniel Craig.
And that is not even the juicy part, which remains that of the semi-sociopath with a photographic memory and a genius for mathematical patterns: Lisbeth Salander.
A lot of ink has been spilt about the great characterisation, marvellous plots and fast pace of the books. So much praise has been lavished, that it might seem that the intrinsic merit of the storyline requires no further explanation.
In fact, however, around eight leading British publishers turned down the English translation. They could not see how they could “build up” an author with only three books (Larsson having died suddenly at 50 in 2004, shortly after handing in his manuscripts to his Swedish publisher).
But it must also have had to do with the writing. It is repetitious, digressive and generally not very good by conventional technical standards: his characters all nod when they agree, furrow their brow when thinking with puzzlement, bite their lower lip when thinking anxiously, and throw looks out of the corner of their eye.
And many women readers – to go by blog discussions – do not even like the fact that the male lead charms so many strong women (he goes to bed with around three per book), even though Larsson always has the woman take the initiative.
Finally, the plots are not exceptional. The first novel, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is a “locked-room” mystery whose weak resolution draws on all the clichés of straight-to-cable horror movies. The second is a standard police procedural, with a James Bond-style villain. The third is a routine blend of a state conspiracy thriller and a courtroom drama.
So what explains the runaway success? Of course, there is no single factor. For example, one has to do with the reading market: Larsson took the techno-thriller, which usually has a largely male readership, and feminised it – drawing in a huge female readership.
Critics and readers alike have obviously zoomed in on the sheer fascination of the character of Lisbeth Salander, truly a memorable figure. However, in the frequent comparison to “a Lara Croft for adults” something has been missed, not just about Salander but also about why the digressions, seemingly bad writing, exaggerations and the much criticised level of violence actually “work” for the novels that Larsson has written.
They are best seen as graphic novels in prose. Larsson worked for many years as a graphic designer and loved spaghetti westerns: The furrowed brows, corner-of-the-eye looks and bitten lower lips are the standard iconography of the close-ups of superhero comic-strips and spaghetti westerns. Larsson’s digressions and trivial details resemble the longueurs of the latter genre (and Tarantino films).
And Salander is not so much a Lara Croft as a cross between Batman and Catwoman: her tragic origins, social isolation, her eventual financial independence and ownership of Wasp Enterprises, her mastery of detection, boxing and disguise, above all her dark gothic dress and make-up, which function as a costume... Larsson has created not a “character” (certainly not a complex one) but a mythological figure.
Understanding this, we can see why the repetitions do not matter. A myth is structured around satisfying repetitions of the same motif. We don’t care about the clichés: we see them as archetypes. Above all, we keep wanting to see the heroine in action since it is she who is the real mystery: the first volume is about the mystery of why she does what she does; the second is an origins story; the third is about Judgment Day.
The shopping lists, the casual sex, the circle of friends and enemies are clues meant for a Facebook generation used to trawling through the posted trivialities of their friends and children to snoop beneath the surface appearance of things.
Salander the disciplined super-hacker, who unsentimentally overcomes her childhood traumas, unique and abnormal, fated to be single turns out to be a fascinating heroine for... an audience chained to its computer screens, awash in teary-eyed TV chat shows about “victims of society” and dating games, and perpetually unable even to stick to its summer diet vows. Is it so strange?
ranierfsadni@europe.com