Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [41]
It also suited his belligerent instincts to tackle big, complicated plots. He always said he found it relaxing to write prose. In the middle of the night he would sit in his office writing while everybody else was in bed. There, in the middle of the night, is where Stieg Larsson the crime novelist was created.
Stieg Larsson wrote specialized non-fiction books for thirteen years, all of which were well informed and played a major role in contemporary political debate among other things. In addition – not many people know this – Stieg had been mad on science fiction since his teens. No doubt the telescope he was presented with as a twelve-year-old contributed to his enthusiasm. It is possible to trace his fondness for the genre by following links to various Swedish libraries. In his twenties, he and Rune Forsgren were the editors of the S.F. magazine Fijagh, a stencilled publication produced in five issues between 1974 and 1976. Shortly afterwards he became involved in Fanac – Science fiction nyhetstidningen (Fanac – The Science Fiction Newspaper), which he coedited with Eva from 1978 to 1979. For some time in the 1980s he was chairman of the Scandinavian Association for Science Fiction.
If Stieg Larsson were still alive today he would be an international celebrity. Not for his non-fiction books, but for his crime novels. He would have been pestered day after day with questions like “When did you write the books?”, “How much of your own life, your character and your political commitment is in the books?”, “Who were the real-life models for Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist?”
I can’t answer these questions as Stieg would have done. Obviously. But despite my lack of knowledge I might be able to cast a bit of light on some of them. I have no doubt that my friend would have been pleased with my honest attempt to fill in the gaps.
The first question that everybody asked when it became clear that he had written three crime novels, one after the other, intended to be published at one-year intervals, was, “When the hell did he make time to write them?” Everybody who knew Stieg was aware of how hard he worked. Those who weren’t were impressed even so, because the effort required to produce a finished book is so immense – how much more effort must have been involved to produce three doorstep-thick novels like the Millennium trilogy in such a short time?
Stieg himself acknowledged that he wrote quickly. “I write as a way of relaxing,” he would say every time he spoke about his novel-writing. In the summer of 2003 he started talking more about his work on the crime novels, but he never mentioned the fact that he had already sent the manuscripts to a publishing house. I first heard about that shortly before Christmas 2003, when he let slip in passing that he had sent the text of three novels to the publisher Piratförlag. The main reason he had chosen them was because the company was partly owned by Liza Marklund, who had made her name as a successful crime writer and then shown active support for Stieg in the debate on the oppression of women in 2002. It was a very long time before the publisher got round to responding to Stieg, however, and when they finally did so it was with a curt refusal. Stieg’s faith in Liza Marklund was undermined further when he invited her to write a chapter on the oppression of women for Debatten om hedersmord. She didn’t even reply to his invitation.
Stieg’s friend Robert Aschberg, who apart from being an established journalist was also Expo’s publisher, had read his books. He recommended them to Norstedts, whose editors, having read the first two novels at one sitting, promptly issued contracts for all three.
While this was happening, Stieg was turning up regularly at the office as usual. We collaborated on several articles. He didn’t have much to say about the books.
To be perfectly honest, his reticence made me wonder about their quality.