The Man Who Left Too Soon Read online

  ‘Translation, of course, has some very specific problems; the translator has to render in another language things which simply cannot be rendered – idioms, for example. You cannot simply translate an idiom. A certain amount of subtle rewriting is sometimes necessary, but you can’t really do that with the exposition – it’s possible, to some extent, with the dialogue.

  ‘I suppose I do a lot of work which might be called mid-Atlantic translation, but I often put in British spellings – and then the publisher takes it from there, changing as they see fit. Interestingly, though, spoken British English is, in some ways, getting close to American. Reading Ian Rankin, these days, I’m surprised by how much sounds American. The phraseology, for instance.’

  Murray is still in touch with Eva Gabrielsson, and had dinner with her in Stockholm while she was working on her own memoir of her time with Stieg Larsson. He points out that she does not speak much about the dispute over the estate, and now prefers to leave matters to the lawyers. Her principal concern, as Murray sees it, is for the literary legacy of her late partner’s work – that it is treated with respect, and that the right decisions are made concerning adaptations into other media.

  Steven Murray nominates Camilla Läckberg as another Scandinavian author he is working on these days whose work inspires him. ‘Camilla Läckberg is a wonderful writer, and her book The Stonecutter is as impressive as the earlier novel of hers that got really good reviews, The Ice Princess. Stieg Larsson may be dead but Scandinavian crime fiction really is in rude health.’

  While the publication of more posthumous novels from Stieg Larsson remains unlikely, there are still some intriguing written items making an appearance – such as a fascinating collection of communications between the author and his Swedish publisher Eva Gedin that offer a host of fresh insights. ‘The Last Letters of Stieg Larsson’ are in fact the e-mails (with interpolations) which were sent between Larsson and his publisher during the months prior to the publication of his first novel in Sweden. The Swedish tabloids published extracts from them when Larsson’s third novel came out, and the e-mails are also available online at a website Norstedts has set up – www.stieglarsson.se – under the heading FÖRFATTAREN (The Author). A hard copy edition has been made available (translated into Italian) by Jacopo De Michelis of Marsilio Editori. They are also available in a deluxe edition of the Trilogy published in the UK by MacLehose Press.

  The Marsilio Editori booklet begins with a résumé of the author’s career (journalist, war correspondent, international expert in far-Right movements, adviser to the Swedish justice ministry, adviser to Scotland Yard) and we are reminded of Larsson’s devotion to defending democracy, whether that involved showing solidarity with Vietnam or supporting the prime minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop. There is also an encomium for Expo, pointing out that it is a research foundation with a very simple aim: to defend democracy and freedom of speech against racist, anti-Semitic, extreme Right and totalitarian movements.

  Unsurprisingly, given the radical agenda sometimes exercised, Expo is described as being free from links to political parties. There is a description of volunteers which has relevance to Larsson: people involved in the work of the foundation come from very different backgrounds, from young moderates to ex-Communists. Anyone who works at Expo has to leave their personal political baggage outside the door.

  Before the quotes from the author, Larsson’s status as the creator of a variety of pieces on the theme of democracy and far-Right movements is established, including Extremhögern, with Anna-Lena Lodenius, and Sverigedemokraterna: den nationella rörelsen (‘Swedish Democrats: The National Movement’) with Mikael Ekman, along with his massive enthusiasm for science fiction. But the most revealing material begins with a direct quotation from Larsson, telling how he started writing in 2001. At first, he says, it was just a pleasurable hobby, writing a text based on the vintage series Tvillingdetektiverna (‘Twin Detectives’), the sequence of children’s books from the 1950s with his former boss Kenneth Ahlbon at TT. It was a fun pursuit for the two colleagues – they calculated that by the time of writing, the fictional heroes would have been 45 and they were about to undertake their last mystery.

  Tvillingdetektiverna was a lengthy series of novels for children inaugurated in 1944 which lasted right up to 1974. Nearly 50 books were published, all featuring the youthful Klas and Göran Bergendahl, identical twins. All the titles incorporated the word ‘mysteriet’ (mystery), e.g. Tunnelbane-mysteriet (‘The Tube Mystery’) or Miljon-mysteriet (‘The Million Mystery’) or Tåg-mysteriet (‘The Train Mystery’). The author’s name, Sivar Ahlrud, was a pseudonym for two writers, Ivar Ahlstedt and Sid Roland Rommerud.

  This extrapolation into the present, according to Larsson (talking to Lasse Winkler in Svensk Bokhandel in October 2004) started him thinking about Pippi Longstocking. How would she behave today? What sort of an adult had she become? How would one define her – as a sociopath, a child-woman? Larsson construed that Pippi might have an alternative view of society and transmogrified her into Lisbeth Salander, making her about 25, a girl completely alienated from society. She doesn’t know anyone; she has no ability to socialise.

  When planning the trilogy, Larsson decided that he needed a counterbalance to the Lisbeth character, and that was to be Mikael ‘Kalle’ Blomkvist, a 43-year-old journalist who works on his own magazine, Millennium. The action was to revolve around the editorial offices of the magazine and around Lisbeth, who doesn’t have a very active life. Larsson decided that the narrative should involve a variety of people, of all types. He opted to work with three distinct groups of characters. One group focused on Millennium, which has six employees. The secondary characters would not appear just to swell a scene: they would act and influence the plot; Larsson did not want a closed universe. Then there would be a group centred on Milton Security, a firm run by a Croatian. Finally, inevitably, there would be the police, characters who act independently. The author’s game plan was that in the third novel of the planned sequence, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place so the reader could understand what has happened. But he wanted the books to be about ‘something else’ as well. Usually, in crime novels, the reader is not shown the consequences of what has happened in the preceding novel in a sequence. His plan was that this would not be the case – there would be a synchronicity and intertextuality.

  The creation of crime fiction was something of a nocturnal activity for the author; few were party to this secret pleasure in Larsson’s life. He stated his aim clearly: more than being tendentious or aspiring to be classic literature, he considered that the primary function of a detective story narrative was to entertain the reader (though he acknowledged that – having transfixed the reader – Larsson might be able to freight in his own concerns about serious issues).

  In November 2004, after Larsson’s precipitate death and the dispatch of his final manuscript, his colleague Kurdo Baksi, who makes an appearance in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, was obliged to undertake on his own something he customarily shared with Larsson – Baksi was to hold a meeting to commemorate Kristalnacht, the night of anti-Semitic violence in Nazi Germany. Larsson describes Baksi as being ‘like a little brother’ to him, and speculates that he’ll find it amusing that Baksi has a part in his novel.

  Larsson, with a journalist’s thoroughness, was exercised over such issues as how many printed pages corresponded to a million letters, and wondered if there was a formula or a limit for the thickness of a book. He discussed with Eva Gedin the details of the shape of the final book, demonstrating a willingness to readily submit to the editorial process, and – to those who felt the books needed more rigorous editing – that he would have been more than flexible concerning such issues. He told Eva Gedin that he would be delivering a manuscript in which the story would be complete, the dialogue would not be polished or individual details sorted out. Pointing out that he would need more time for this, Larsson remarked (poignantly, in the light of his brief morta
lity): ‘We’ve got enough time before the book is due to be printed.’ But he was happy for Eva Gedin to intervene with her red pencil at this stage, and said he would revise the whole thing after having received her comments.

  Larsson’s commercial canniness, which might surprise those who see him as primarily an ideological campaigner, extended as far as the promotion of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: he mentioned an idea he’d been entertaining for a year about creating a website focusing on Millennium, and asked some pertinent questions – a marketing idea such as this for an internet-based sequence is, of course, appropriate.

  In reply to both of these points, Eva Gedin reassured Larsson that she wouldn’t yet make any changes with a red pencil – but talked about meeting up to discuss the more substantial corrections that may have been needed to be made in book one. She praised the construction of the books, but counselled interventions to be made on the level of line editing – and approved the notion of a website.

  All of this, of course, is proof of the careful and fastidious editing process that Larsson would have been able to avail himself of had he lived.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHAT I WANT TO SAY

  On 30 April 2004, an e-mail from Larsson to his editor Eva Gedin offered an unusual insight into the journalist’s life as a manager at the Expo offices. He notes that he has just discovered that it is Walpurgis Day and that his colleagues in the editorial office are complaining and are keen to go home – or to vacate the offices for a few beers. He says he has promised to let them go after 9 o’clock that evening – a reminder of the managerial status of a man we perhaps think of as a lone investigative journo. Arranging holidays, time off, dealing with staff sicknesses – these everyday problems do not sit easily with the romantic image that people may nurture of the solitary reporter, but they are the quotidian reality for those who run magazines – as Stieg Larsson did. In fact, it’s one of the elements that the three Swedish films of the Millennium Trilogy succeed in transferring very persuasively from page to film; Millennium looks like a real, functioning magazine, with all its attendant problems.

  Larsson mentions that the editorial secretary has been obliged to sleep in the offices of Expo for the last two weeks – and that his colleagues are even starting to talk about a trade union (amusing, given the left-wing sympathies of everyone on the magazine!). Revealingly, Larsson communicates his own lack of faith in his abilities as a writer, and acknowledges that his articles improve markedly after an editor has got to work on them – an insight with a possible bearing on the posthumous disagreement over his skills in this area. He is used to making revisions and having them made; in other words, he notes, he is not hypersensitive about such matters. In perhaps the most striking revelation in these exchanges, he talks about the ‘obsessions’ he nourishes that he won’t give up on easily, and that will feature in the books. He thinks (he says) that the first chapters of Book One are long-winded and that it takes some time for the story to exert a grip, but his aim was primarily to fashion a strongly realised dramatis personae and vivid locales before the narrative gets into gear. Even Larsson admirers might concede these reservations – the first book, by general consent, could have done with some judicious editorial tightening.

  Those same Larsson admirers will, of course, be intrigued by his discussion with his editor about what he wanted to say with these books. It’s clear that he was keen to shake up the tropes of detective fiction in as many ways as he could. The introduction of Mikael Blomkvist in the narrative, for example, takes place exclusively via the investigation carried out by Lisbeth Salander.

  ‘I tried to create protagonists who are radically different from the usual characters in detective fiction,’ Larsson states. ‘That’s why Mikael Blomkvist doesn’t have ulcers or problems with alcoholism or existential anguish. He doesn’t listen to opera or dedicate himself to some strange hobby like model aeroplanes or something similar. In general he doesn’t have any problems and his main characteristic is that he behaves like a stereotypical “whore”, something that he himself recognises. I also consciously inverted the gender roles: in many ways Blomkvist plays the part of the “bimbo” while Lisbeth Salander has ways of behaving and qualities that are characteristically “male”.

  ‘A fundamental rule was never to idealise crime and criminals, nor to make the victims stereotypes. In the first book I created the serial killer by merging three real cases. Everything that is described one can therefore find in real police inquiries. The description of the rape of Lisbeth Salander is based on a case that happened in Östermalm three years ago… I wanted to avoid the victims being anonymous people; because of this, I dedicate a lot of time introducing Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson before [their] murder.

  ‘I hate crime novels where the protagonist can behave however he likes or do things that normal people can’t do without consequences. If Mikael Blomkvist shoots someone, even if he does it in self-defence, he ends up in court.

  ‘Lisbeth is an exception simply because she is a sociopath with psychotic traits and she doesn’t function like normal people. She therefore doesn’t have the same perception of what is “right” or “wrong” as normal people, but she also suffers the consequences.’

  Larsson goes on to say that he wanted to fashion a realistic cast of characters surrounding his main protagonists, for instance by granting Dragan Armansky a lengthy introduction in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to establish that he will be a recurring figure. In The Girl Who Played with Fire, the cadre of coppers working around Bublanski and Sonja Modig are foregrounded. And in the final book, Blomkvist’s lawyer sister Annika Giannini and his colleague/lover Erika Berger are brought centre stage. It’s interesting to note the problems he mentions with Lisbeth’s sometime-lover Miriam Wu: ‘I don’t know exactly what to do with her,’ he writes – and it might be argued that she is one of the least successful characterisations in the sequence. Larsson is aware that his solitary heroine can’t have strong friendships and simultaneously maintain her marginalisation.

  These valuable documents became available in English in 2010 as part of a handsome Millennium Trilogy box set (published by MacLehose Press). Gedin talks about Larsson’s ‘marvellous mix of humility and self-assurance’ – and confirms that the first three books he planned to write were always conceived as an organic trilogy. It was also clear, according to Gedin, that Larsson had every intention of becoming a successful crime writer, and that his publisher could expect much more such work from him. Gedin also provides a nicely balanced view of the much-rehearsed dispute between the author’s partner Eva Gabrielsson and his father and brother, and makes the telling comment that there is one voice signally missing from the continuing discussion of Larsson’s work and legacy: that of Stieg Larsson himself. Gedin reveals her thoughts about publishing the e-mails between herself and the late author, wondering if there might be something in them to interest readers – surely an unwarranted modesty on her part, given the immense and all-consuming interest in the author and his books since his sudden death. She explains that she had not looked at the e-mails even once since Larsson’s demise, but that looking at them again reminded her of his voice, his manner, and the enthusiasm they both shared when bringing to fruition the three projects that had so engaged them – and she notes how unusual it was for a three-book deal to be offered to a first-time writer. She also discusses how obdurate Larsson became when she expressed her reservations about his original title for the first book, Men Who Hate Women, pointing out how this sounded off-putting, resembling a dour non-fiction title. Larsson promised to think about changing the title, but decided to stick to his guns and claimed that several friends he had spoken to had agreed with him that the original was the perfect title. Larsson, as we now know, got his way in Sweden, but the title was changed elsewhere (and, frankly, few would argue with the fact that the change was a particularly perspicacious decision).

  Gedin also notes that Larsson paid great attention to detail when discussin
g the minutiae of the books – something that will hardly come as a surprise to admirers of his habit of luxuriating in his infinitely detailed and information-packed narratives. But he also makes a point – in no uncertain terms – about how much he wishes to avoid all the paraphernalia involved in promoting a book (signings, television chat shows, etc) – and states that the idea of becoming a commodity to be sold in this fashion really does not appeal to him. Of course, the author’s precipitate death spared him this particular ordeal, but, nevertheless, it is clear that Larsson was not a writer who lived in an ivory tower, attempting to ignore the realities of selling a book in a crowded marketplace. He was well aware that specific ‘hooks’ needed to be found to exploit the commercial potentialities of his books; ironically, of course, he was not to know that one of those hooks would be his own mortality. Gedin ends her discussion of these now-celebrated e-mails with an especially poignant comment: Larsson had told her that he felt comfortable and nourished in the extremely sympathetic author/editor relationship he found at Norstedts, and confidently believed that his publishers would do their very best for him. But he fully realised that work needed to be done on the books. After their final exchange, Larsson wrote that he was waiting to hear Eva Gedin’s reservations about the manuscripts – reservations he was never to hear. Two weeks later, she was to receive the telephone call telling her that the author with whom she was enjoying working and for whom she foresaw such a shining future was dead. She knew that her job – to publish the books in a form that would have pleased him – was just beginning.