Why The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo misses its mark

Didja think it was strange that Harrriet's body had never turned up? Didja think it might have been a clue that someone was sending pressed flowers every year to Henrik, and the latest was an Australian specimen? Maybe, unlike Blomkvist, you didn't exactly choke on your coffee when you learned that Harriet was alive? Okay, enough said about the structural and conceptual weaknesses of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." I finished. After a denouement that stumbles on for a hundred pages after the true climax of the, after another interminable conversation in the plot just pours out like pages from a printer - told, rather than shown - I finished. I'm sure this book will be filmed, but the screenwriters face a big challenge, as this book, for all its events, has very few actual scenes. And yet, and yet - I honestly do feel that Stieg Larsson was probably a great guy, and I feel like a heel criticizing him so bluntly (take heart, the world of readers have spoken and I'm in a minority), but I wonder whether the book he's written actually belies his noble intentions. He apparently wanted to write a book of social justice, revealing through fiction the violence so many women endure in secret. Yet what he's done, I think, is to make it seem that the "men who hate women" (the title in the original Swedish) are totally deranged lunatic crackpots - neoNazis, incest-crazed, keepers of torture chambers and intimate diaries and photo journals, horrible predators against the weak and helpless. It's too easy to say that those are the aberrants so far out on the scale. In fact most of the violence is date violence, violence in couples, drinking-drug related, far more common, garden-variety. Dragon Tattoo, by making the violence so gothic and extreme, actually diminishes the scope of the issue. Serial killers, face it, are rare - and usually caught. I'm totally with the eponymous Salander on this one, by the way: Martin is a total shit for his lifetime of violence, and the fact that is was sexually abused is no excuse for him and no reason to feel sorry; Harriet, the lost child who returns to save the family fortunes, is also a shit for remaining silent for 38 years while the violence (she supposedly didn't know about it?!) continued. For all my critiques, Salander's could be a pretty interesting character, an unconventional detective (as in Motherless Brooklyn), and I suspect she plays a bigger role in the final two books in the series.

How (not) to portray a serial killer: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Despite its higher ambitions, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," by the end of the 3rd (of 4) sections, has become a search for a sadistic serial killer. Setting aside all my qualms about even the remote likelihood that a madman as Stieg Larsson describes him could get away with a series of such gruesome crimes undetected, there is nothing remotely interesting about this aspect of the novel. Works about serial killers (my references are mostly to films because I don't often read this kind of fiction) can be totally engrossing and fascinating so long as we learn something about how their minds work and how or why they became so deranged (Silence of the Lambs, It, Psycho, Sweeney Todd, to cite 4 very different examples). Or, for an alternative approach, this story line can work if we follow the complex process through which smart cops or detectives unravel the mystery of the killer, often putting themselves in danger during the process. In Dragon Tattoo, neither happens. The killer of course has to be a member of the Vanger family, one of the family members living on the island of Hedeby, where Blomkvist and Salander are investigating a murder or disappearance from 38 years back. When we learn that the killer is Martin Vanger, are we surprised? Do we care? No, that only works if we've gotten to know and see Martin - but he's a character we barely know at all. If a serial killer is to be a minor player in the novel until his secret is revealed, the writer has to present him (or her, for that matter) as either just slightly strange and deranged so we always feel creepy around him or as seemingly very normal - but we gradually learn more unsettling things about them. Either we can know much more than the protagonist (cop or detective) or we see the pieces come slowly into place through the protagonist's POV (which is how Larsson plays it). But what payoff do we get by learning that Martin is a killer? We know it has to be someone on the island, and frankly it might as well be anyone. (Larsson populates the island with unreconstructed Nazi sympathizers, but that's more or less a red herring - they're hateful in other ways). There is no shock of recognition or surprise when Martin is revealed and imprisons Blomkvist in his - ready? - torture chamber that nobody had ever seen or suspected on this tiny island! Though Dragon Tattoo has a veneer of social significance - references to violence against women, to neo-Nazis (which Larsson apparently bravely pursued during his own heroic life cut too short), the story itself is more about random, crackpot violence and, to be frank, authorial manipulation.

Gothic melodrama of the lowest order? Or social commentary?

So now able investigator Salander has assembled a list of horrifying unsolved murders over about a 20-year span, each one an attack on a woman in particularly gruesome manner. Each is somehow linked to a passage in Leviticus that proscribes a Biblical punishment for such things as wizardry, sex with animals. How many ways does this strain credibility beyond even the ludicrous, to the point where I just want to throw up my hands? That no one in Sweden would see a connection between these cases? That any one person could get away with these serial murders undetected? That any tortured mind would even pursue this course? That any one person acting alone could solve the crime in a couple of hours with a few Google searches? All of this is just evidence of a really creaky plot that has a veneer of contemporary realism but in fact is a gothic melodrama of the lowest order. What bothers me more is the implication that "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is a book that examines violence against women. Does it? Or does it exploit violence against women for cheap plot points? The serial killer as Stieg Larsson presents him is so far out on the lunatic fringe as to not be representative of anything except a thriller-writer's imagination. The "advocat" who attacks Salander may in some ways be more typical - the upstanding citizen who gets away with it, even thinks that women like his sadistic bullying. That's a theme worth looking at - but does Larsson do so? Not really - he makes the advocat into a cartoon of evil, has Salander learn everything about him with a few quick searches and downloads, and exact her own gruesome revenge very expeditiously. In other words, he throws in these scenes for some excitement, or worse, but he's not interested in looking at the mind of an abuser. Look, this book is a tremendous success, so it must resonate with many people, and who am I to criticize that? And Larsson was probably a great guy, and I feel bad that he did not live to enjoy his success. But let's not make of this book any more than it is, a cheap thriller.

Is Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really about violence against women?

Well by the middle third of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" some action begins, as two of the three strands get into motion. Lisbeth Salander is raped by her legal guardian, and she goes after him with a vengeance on her 3rd visit. And Mikael Blomkvist gathers a lot of info about the Vanger family and the unexplained death of disappearance 38 years ago of niece Harriet. Okay. Why is this all so dissatisfying? Because neither of these plots move along because of any great skill, insight, or accomplishment on the part of either protagonist. Though Larsson notes that Salander considered many different strategies for revenge against her guardian, ultimately, what does she do? Hidden-camera surveillance of his attack on her (conveniently, she's a detective with access to lots of equipment), then on 3rd visit nails him with a Taser and chains him to the bed (as he did to her). Yes, he's hateful to a surreal degree - but can't the plot be interesting? Can't there be some tension or ambiguity? Can't we worry for Salander a bit (we never do)? And if that plot is two-dimensional at best, what to make of Blomkvist and his investigations? He gets his big break when he examines supposedly the last photo of Harriet, taken at a festival in town, notices she's staring off camera at something that he assumes scares her; he goes to a newspaper office, finds dozens of photos from this same photo shoot (40 years ago!), sees a couple taking a snapshot in one of the pix, reads a sticker on their car, tracks them down (40 years later!) in a small town... Oh, please! This is just authorial noodling. Character has to drive plot, and plot has to include action, scenes, settings - not just material, events, facts. How can this book be so popular? Perhaps the patina of social consciousness, these interpolated section headings that note how many Swedish women are victims of violence. Yes, I believe that - but simply noting a social problem does not make a novel into an examination of one. Why does this occur? Who are the victims? the perpetrators? How do we stop this? Larssen depicts violence against women in one scene (so far) and he references (but does not describe it) in several others, but nothing in this book helps me understand violence against women. I have seldom, maybe never, read a book so full of incident and so far from the interior life of its characters.

I can't figure out why everyone raves about this book

Three plots of strands of plots going on in Steig Larssen's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo": one involving crooked businessman Wesserstrom (?) who defeats central character, Blumkvist, in a libel action, threatening the existence of Blumkvist's magazine, Millennium; aged industrialist Henrik V. who hires Blumkvist to investigate death or disappearance 40 years ago of his grand-niece Harriet and who claims to have incriminating evidence against W. that Blumkvist can use; title character, Salander, a detective who for some reason V hired to investigate W and who is being sexually abused by her legal guardian (she is some sort of ward of the state, though she's in her 20s or so). That's a lot of plot! I'm a third or so into the book and for the life of me can't figure out why it has been such a success. I don't read a lot of crime/thriller fiction, but there must be better out there. For 200 pages it's been almost nothing but clumsy exposition. For example, Blumkvist has to learn about all the members of the V. family, who live on the tiny island of Hedeby, and Larssen manages this by a long walk through the village during which Henrik V tells Blumkvist who lives in each house. There has almost literally been not a single scene in the book so far in which anything remotely interesting happens (the scene of Salander's abuse is a partial exception, something happens but it's not interesting, just repulsive). The detective novels I've read and enjoyed, from the classics like Hammet to Parker and some others, involve lots of locales and encounters and tense situations. This book - I'm +200 pages in, and none of the main characters has been in jeopardy for a moment and for the most part all the protagonist, Blomkvist, has done is listen to others lay out the elaborate mechanisms of this cluttered plot.

The most ham-handed exposition ever: Dragon Tattoo

Everyone says I have to read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Why? Because it's about a journalist (I was a journalist). It's set in Sweden (I lived in Sweden). It's a book about a guy in Sweden (I wrote a book about a guy in Sweden). So at last I started Dragon Girl last night. Okay, first of all, it's not really the kind of book I usually read, but like many readers I think I'm drawn to this one by the locale, the very cool title (totally different from the original Swedish title, which is something like Men Who Hate Women - this one being far more appealing and an effective brand for the 3-book series). What is the strong connection between police procedural/thriller/mysteries and Scandanavia? What are readers so drawn to this connection? There is some way in which the darkness, stillness, austerity of the north, coupled with the Bergmanesque fatalism and spiritual gloom links to the noirish figure of the lone detective. Books (and films) that would in another setting be mere genre pieces gather a patina of literary excellence in the northern light (Smilla's Sense of Snow, books by Ullman [Liv's daughter], that DiNiro movie transposed to Alaska, can't remember title). So what about Dragon? It upsets the stereotype just a little bit by having the detective be a punkish (tattooed) waif - we'll see what becomes of her. But I have to say: I read +100 pages of the most hamhanded exposition I've read in years, maybe ever. Long, long stretches of characters explaining stuff, telling back story, ostensibly to fill in another character but really to us, it was almost comical, unbearable. Perhaps by page 150 the book will get moving - it must! - but so far the story setup, girl disappears on remote island and 48 years later wealthy industrialist hires disgraced writer to find the killer - seems wildly improbable. You just have to throw yourself into it and hope for the best.

Catching Holden Caulfield

Book group discussion last night of "Catcher in the Rye," a rarity, as it's the first time I can recall in years at which we universally liked, even loved, the book. Joan asked the question, opening discussion: What happens next to Holden? Catcher ends with him in the sanatorium, and Joan wondered whether he goes back to school. My own view is that of course he does, he sees himself as a rebel, as the only honest guy in a sea of "phonies," but of course he's a phony himself. Catcher was published in 1951, set a few years earlier I guess, and I can see Holden in 9 years, in 1960, as one of the malcontents in the cast of Mad Men, writing jingles for Lucky Strike, complaining about the phonies, or the bullshitters as he'd probably call them by then, on the agency staff, about the meaninglessness of his work, dreaming of writing a novel (but of course not doing so). We wrestled with the question of why he is so enduringly appealing a character, especially to adolescents of many generations, many background, male and female. I think that of course adolescents are drawn to his sardonic humor and his distrust of the phonies he sees everywhere, while all readers are also deeply touched by his innocence, his generosity, his tender sympathies, especially for his sister, Phoebe. As an older reader, I am moved by Holden's innocence, but we also see his fecklessness. The very metaphor of the title is a perfect trope for his dreamy and ineffective idealism: his expressed aspiration is to rescue children at play and to catch them before they fall off a cliff, fine and noble a thought, but there's not a moment in the novel during which Holden actually has a thought about really doing something to help people. Would he like to be a teacher? a writer? a counselor? an activist? By his age, he should be engaged in some aspect of life rather than mindlessly spending (his father's) money. And yet: we still love him, we feel sorry for him, with his empty family, his absent father, his dead brother, his failure literally to catch the suicidal leap of the bullied friend, his lack of connection for guys his age, his trauma. We wish someone would read out a hand to him (and not to pet his forehead, as his creepy former teacher does), we wish someone would catch Holden.