“Stieg Larsson: The
Author Who Played with Fire”
Hitchens’ review of The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Hitchens spends the essay fairly evenly
split between trashing Larsson as a writer, tying Larsson’s themes back to his communist
leanings and debunking the idea that Larsson’s death (at the age of 50)
involved foul play.
Pretty sure Hitchens is steering us away fro the series with
comments like, “But if he [Larsson] now dwells in that Valhalla of the hack
writer who posthumously beat all the odds, it’s surely because of his elf
[Lisbeth Salander].”
However, when he sums up the main character, she actually
sounds very cool,“Miss Salander is so well accoutred with special features that
she’s almost over-equipped. She is awarded a photographic memory, a chess mind
to rival Bobby Fischer’s, a mathematical capacity that toys with Fermat’s last
theorem as a cat bats a mouse, and the ability to “hack”— I apologize for the
repetition of that word— into the deep intestinal computers of all banks and
police departments. At the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire, she is for
good measure granted the ability to return from the grave.”
The essay was written before the US version of the first
novel was cast. Hitchens sees Winona Ryder and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the
lead roles…ended up being Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig…not even close CH.
Another great international crime novel is from Japan. Comes highly recommend by Juno Diaz:
Title of The Guardian review in the UK was "Murder Sushi Wrote"
New Learning: “According to Larsson’s father, the sympathy
with which “the girl” is evoked is derived partly from the author’s own beloved
niece, Therese, who is tattooed and has suffered from anorexia and dyslexia but
can fix your computer problems.
“
“
New Word: Schwedenkrimi = Swedish Crime Writing
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