The Man Who Left Too Soon Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  STIEG LARSSON TODAY:

  Developments and Discoveries

  The books of such notable thriller writers as Ian Fleming and John le Carré have become highly collectable – particularly in good condition first editions – and it is salutary to note the speed with which Stieg Larsson has joined this august company. The Rare Book Guide states that by 2009 the British first edition of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was selling for about £400, while the relatively common US first edition could be obtained for a little under $100. UK first editions have apparently been changing hands on eBay, with a copy in near fine condition fetching £425 ($710). Already, internet sellers are pricing their books at £500 and more, promoting them heavily as investments. Leaving aside any discussion of simple evaluation versus exploitation, this sounds prescient – Larsson is showing every sign of becoming one of the most collectable of authors.

  There is, intriguingly, another incentive for purchasing first editions – those copies signed by the translator ‘Reg Keeland’ (the nom de plume of Steven Murray) – are, as mentioned earlier, sought-after in their own right. And the auguries for future price hikes in the first edition market of Larsson are either good or bad, depending on your point of view: good if you’re a dealer, watching the value of your stock rise, and bad if you’re a Stieg Larsson aficionado wanting to replace your second edition paperback with a glossy, un-foxed first edition.

  Inevitably, with any phenomenon such as the posthumous success of Stieg Larsson there is something of a backlash, and as sales records continue to be broken by the Millennium Trilogy on an almost daily basis, it was perhaps inevitable that the naysayers would become more vocal. In fact, almost from the beginning, that is to say, from the publication outside Sweden of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there have been those who have opposed the enthusiastic chorus of approval the work of the late author has enjoyed. Interestingly, the bursts of negativity are very different from those accorded to other highly successful but not critically highly regarded authors such as Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer; with these writers, it is almost a badge of honour among clued-in readers to bring up how maladroit the writing often is when discussing their impressive sales. No such knee-jerk reaction is to be found in most book club, or other literary conversations about Stieg Larsson. His reputation as a ‘literary’ writer – along with that as a popular thriller writer – persists, possibly due to two factors. First, most readers continue to regard translated Scandinavian fiction as being more worthwhile or ambitious than more obviously mass-market fare; and second, the fact that Larsson is published in the UK by the highly respected literary publisher Christopher MacLehose lends his work a certain cachet. Nevertheless, any admirer of Larsson will have found that discussions of the Millennium Trilogy often include a remark from at least one participant along the lines of: ‘But don’t you think he’s rather overrated?’ It is interesting that those looking to dent the late writer’s reputation rarely use his borrowings from other writers as ammunition for their campaigns. A few anti-Larsson bullets might be found from a perusal of Daniel Pennac’s Write to Kill (translated from the French in 1999 by Ian Monk and published by Harvill Press), which boasts a bushel of Larssonian central ideas: a protagonist with a bullet lodged in the brain, a coma, a publisher/journalist/writer character, a wizard with computers, malign and corrupt authorities – perhaps it’s a book that found its way onto Stieg’s bedside table. Other pre-echoes of the Millennium Trilogy include a female character using revamped passports, fake identity cards, wigs and make-up so that she can adopt a succession of different identities – a character, in fact, described as being ‘about as mortal as a hero in a comic book’. The superhuman survival abilities here may ring some bells for Larsson readers. She also boasts phenomenal Asperger’s syndrome-style skills at calculation, makes a fortune and exacts revenge on a slew of enemies.

  Such dissenting voices, however, are showing not the slightest sign of diminishing the author’s ever-growing posthumous popularity, and certainly the details of his life and the disputes over his estate seem to throw up new stories and revelations at least once a week. What’s more, these stories are reported in the national press of most western countries – and on the news pages, rather than being consigned to the ghetto of the books pages.

  One of the most intriguing stories to appear in 2010 concerned an aspect of the author’s life beyond the word processor: we were to learn about Larsson’s involvement with real-life revolutionaries – Eritrean guerrillas, no less. In the pages of the London newspaper The Guardian, journalist Homa Khaleeli filled in some fascinating information that had emerged via one of the author’s friends, John Henri Holmberg. Suggesting that Lisbeth Salander’s expertise with weaponry had some antecedents in her creator’s own life, readers were told that Larsson had instructed Eritrean women in how to use grenade launchers. The details concerning this (not widely known before 2010) were sketchy, but – according to Holmberg – in 1977 Larsson had travelled to Eritrea and had contacted individuals he knew in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), a revolutionary Marxist organisation that was using violent means to bring about their country’s independence from Ethiopia. Larsson’s hands-on engagement with the dispensing of death (in however laudable a cause) was abruptly cut short when he began to suffer from a kidney inflammation and was obliged to leave Eritrea. This startling story was corroborated by Graeme Atkinson, European editor of Searchlight magazine (for which, of course, Larsson had acted as Swedish correspondent) and a close friend of the author. Atkinson acknowledged that Larsson had indeed made this trip to Eritrea, saying: ‘Stieg was a revolutionary socialist and believed in a better life and equality for all.’ Atkinson went on to speak about how disturbed Stieg Larsson was by the continuing crushing poverty in Africa. Significantly, Atkinson added that Larsson had travelled the country to take part in the armed struggle – which meant becoming part of the fighting and even facing live bullets. The effect of the story was seismic, proving to some that Larsson was no armchair revolutionary but was prepared to put his beliefs to the test on the most dangerous of front lines. But others voiced the opinion that his passionate desire to change society throughout the world was best conducted through his pioneering investigative journalism, rather than by becoming directly involved in violent action. There was no doubting, however, that the story added some lustre to Larsson’s reputation, although the image of him handling a grenade launcher seemed a touch unlikely.

  There were other revelations concerning Stieg Larsson in 2010. According to Susan Donaldson James of ABC News, one of the most unsettling incidents in The Girl Who Played with Fire had an equally disturbing real-life antecedent. Readers who remember the scene in which two men bind and rape a young prostitute who has been co-opted into a sex trafficking ring will have seen it as an example of the author’s rigorous and unsparing attitude towards a certain kind of male sexuality. But Kurdo Baksi (who worked with Larsson) revealed the fact that, at the age of 15, the author witnessed a gang rape committed by people he knew, and he failed to intervene. Sometime later, Larsson, suffering agonies of guilt, pleaded with the girl to forgive him for his inaction, but she declined. Larsson’s reading of American fiction was prodigious, and if this is a truthful recollection of an incident that really happened in the author’s life, it is nevertheless strongly reminiscent of a similarly gruelling scene in the classic novel by the American writer Nelson Algren, Never Come Morning, in which the too-pliable hero allows a gang rape by friends to take place without doing anything to stop it. The incident in which Larsson was involved has elements that were to leave a mark on him for the rest of his life. These elements begin with the fact that the girl was named Lisbeth. According to Baksi, Larsson’s moral cowardice over the incident scarred him psychologically, and was one of the reasons behind him writing the novels. Baksi has apparently been making attempts to track down the real victim of the rape and has his own passionate desire to avenge the incident in some
way. He accounts for Larsson’s inability to act at the time by noting that he was both young and insecure, and believes that his loyalty to his friends was a key factor in stopping him from doing what he knew he should have done. Obviously, his shameful reluctance to intervene would come to be one of the most painful and guilt-inducing aspects of the whole incident.

  Baksi and Larsson met in 1992. They shared an interest in socialist politics, and both were engaged in journalistic editorial duties; Baksi (working on the magazine Black and White, which, as the name suggests, dealt with racial issues) has said that he was involved in helping Larsson put together the latter’s magazine Expo. These magazines later became one, and the two men worked together, enjoying – according to Baksi – an unconditional friendship. As for the Millennium Trilogy’s Blomkvist being a surrogate for the author himself, Baksi has another view – he regards Blomkvist, with his impressive list of sexual conquests, as very much a wish-fulfilment figure for his creator; he points out that Larsson was, in fact, more like Salander, sharing her taste for junk food and a deep suspicion of the police. The other element shared between Larsson and his heroine, according to Baksi, was a strong reluctance to discuss the past. Unlike Lisbeth, however, Larsson was not a naturally gifted organiser, and his financial improvidence had the effect of nearly bankrupting Expo. Baksi was of the opinion that Larsson had hoped that the future sales of his books would help to fund the magazine. Perhaps most significantly, Baksi reports that the late author had told him that he had ‘ten books in his head’ – more proof that death stilled what could have been a very productive authorial voice.

  At a mere 140 or so pages, Baksi’s memoir, Stieg Larsson, My Friend, is nothing if not concise, but it throws some illumination on aspects of the author’s life not otherwise available to readers. Baksi was the first person to view Larsson’s body in hospital after his death, and he briskly dismisses the idea that anything other than the author’s lack of attention to his health was the cause of his death. He described how beautiful Larsson looked in his best clothes, and wearing a smile. ‘He looked so young,’ said Baksi wistfully.

  Beginning with the painful process of acknowledging that Larsson had passed out of his life, Baksi decides to investigate – in the manner of a detective story writer – the answer to a question: who was Stieg? Discovering that the late writer had worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant, he looked further into his career, deciding that it was not hard to imagine Larsson as an infantryman (the latter had, in fact, completed two years of national service), not to mention the even more unlikely profession of manager at a pulp mill. After a relatively brief run-through of the facts of Larsson’s early life, Baksi moves on to their first conversation – by phone – in 1992, when he had been working on the 21 February Committee in the Kungsholmen district of Stockholm, a political group that had called a strike after the shooting of 11 people by a man described by newspapers as ‘The Laser Man’, a disturbed individual who had been wandering the city aiming a rifle at non-white immigrants.

  Baksi, recalling how Stockholm had felt like a city under siege, noted how his mysterious caller (he did not know it was Larsson) had asked why only immigrants (Baksi is a Kurd) were allowed to take part in the strike – suggesting that others, such as the caller himself, might like to have taken part. The caller pointed out – in no uncertain terms – that racism was not just an immigrant problem, but a problem for the country as a whole. And as he began to suggest new initiatives, Baksi became aware that he was talking to Stieg Larsson, a man he remembered encountering at various left-wing demonstrations and rallies, as well as being the author of a groundbreaking book on anti-democratic movements.

  It was nearly a year before the two like-minded individuals were to meet, and in Stieg Larsson, My Friend, Baksi paints an intriguing picture of a passionately committed figure prepared to put his life on the line for his beliefs while barely looking after his own well-being. We are given a picture – now familiar to Larsson enthusiasts – of the uninspiring food that was the late author’s staple diet. There are revealing insiders’ views of life at the struggling magazine Expo, always on the brink of bankruptcy but powered by the commitment of its staff. And we encounter, in situ, Baksi’s controversial critical remarks about Larsson’s journalistic standards, so widely reported before the UK publication of the former’s book.

  Baksi reminds us that life was not safe for those working in left-wing journalism and taking on extremists, mentioning that a group of neo-Nazis had obtained photographs and current addresses of Larsson, Eva Gabrielsson and Baksi himself – deeply worrying for all three. Despite these potential threats to his life, Larsson continued to discuss such issues as the possibility of infiltrating extremist groups before being warned off by a nervous Baksi. With a certain pride, Baksi relates how he was name-checked and featured as a character in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, but remembers that in this memoir his principal duty is to supply personal information about Larsson. He mentions several writers numbered among Larsson’s favourites, including such female crime writers as Minette Walters and Sara Paretsky, as well as talking about an interview Larsson conducted with a favourite science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison. The book ends with a discussion of health – ironically, not Larsson’s but Baksi’s own. He had told Larsson that he felt his own health was deteriorating because of overwork, and that he was spending more time in hospital than in the office – in fact, Baksi’s doctors said that he was showing the symptoms of burnout. According to Baksi, he told the sympathetic Larsson that both men were not 20-year-olds any more, and that they should start thinking about their health – advice that Larsson signally did not take. The book ends with a talk that Baksi gives at a seminar, packed – to his dismay – with neo-Nazis, and a subsequent trip to the offices of Expo where he learns of the death of his friend. His own book, as he points out, was not intended as a blind tribute to Larsson – and it was certainly not received that way. It is a portrait of Larsson, Cromwell-style: warts and all.

  But what about current thinking on Stieg Larsson in Sweden? Sitting in a room on the fifteenth floor of a hotel and talking to the journalist Dan Lucas, correspondent for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter in Britain, among other countries, is a pleasurable experience for me – not just because of the lively, informed conversation, but also because Lucas is a direct link to Stieg Larsson, and to be cherished as such; the journalist did agency work with the author between 1989 and 2000.

  ‘I remember him doing work as a researcher and designer of graphs,’ said Lucas. ‘He was an extremely private person. Certainly, I would have to say that he was not someone that you really got close to. However, I learnt to both respect and like him for his encyclopaedic knowledge in certain areas – areas that are also of interest to me: mainly modern history and European politics… especially, I have to say, of the more unsavoury kind.’

  As Lucas gazes out on the cityscape below, I ask what his dealings were with Larsson. ‘I was a Stockholm-based EU correspondent during the 1990s,’ he replies, ‘and saw the steady rise of right-wing populism in several countries. Stieg was a great help in dissecting and analysing these movements.

  ‘For me, the relationship with him was exclusively professional. I did not consider myself his friend, but his colleague. I would go to his “office” (frankly, it was a bit of a dump!) and we would talk about and examine different aspects of politics as well as European history. Now and then, I’d ask him to fix a diagram for a story I was working on.’

  Lucas is bemused by the amazing response to Larsson in Britain – and as he (Lucas) is someone who straddles both countries – personally and professionally – I ask why he thinks Larsson has enjoyed this unprecedented success, even more than such other popular Scandinavian writers as Henning Mankell.

  ‘I wish I knew!’ is Lucas’s rueful answer. ‘I think perhaps it’s because Lisbeth Salander is so… how shall I put it? … alien, different from any character we’ve ever come across in any thrill
er. And, let’s face it, one can’t deny the immense skill of the storytelling. But you also find that skill in Henning Mankell; and as for the latter’s success, I can’t help thinking that showing both the Swedish and the [Kenneth Branagh] UK versions of the Wallander series on TV helps a lot. But with Stieg, I think it’s similar to the Björn Borg effect in Sweden… When he triumphed several times at Wimbledon, tennis players flourished all over the country. The same syndrome is now happening with crime writers.’

  Time for a tricky question: where does Lucas stand in the contentious debate about whether Larsson was a good or a bad journalist? His answer is uncompromising. He said about Larsson, ‘I didn’t see a good journalist in action while I worked at the agency. However, I think he was quite different when he was working at Expo. That magazine was, after all, the unarguable love of his professional life. I think Stieg saw the agency as his bread-and-butter job, and I sensed he wasn’t all that interested in it. He saved his real passion for Expo.’

  Regarding the current Swedish attitude to the acrimonious struggle between Larsson’s partner and his family, Lucas said that the general response was that they were all worthy of some criticism. ‘There is absolutely no question what the tabloids think,’ he said. ‘The attitude among Swedes in general is probably more along the lines of: why don’t you people get your act together? Surely there’s enough money to go round?’

  I ask Lucas whether or not, as a journalist, he considers that Larsson’s sometimes negative picture of Sweden (massive governmental corruption, etc) has made the foreign view of the country more jaundiced. ‘Perhaps. If those views that non-Swedes used to hold were naive, seeing Sweden as being something of a role model with clean politics and a decent, caring business community, then perhaps the Larsson novels can help readers to get a more balanced, realistic view of the country. However, in the final analysis, these are, after all, thrillers – they are popular entertainment. I’d be very careful of reading them as a valid social commentary on contemporary Swedish society. After all, Larsson didn’t live to see recent political developments in Sweden [i.e. the much-reported far-Right party successes]. I think – regarding those developments – he’d be both horrified and a little bit thrilled – as any investigative reporter worth his salt should be. If he were still with us, Stieg would have been right up there exposing the foibles of the far-Right members of parliament.