Stieg Larsson was an impressive researcher with a huge knowledge and imagination, but the actual writing was not his forte. The question arises as to who actually wrote the Millenium trilogy.
The question is not as astonishing as it might appear. Stieg Larsson is now the world’s second best-selling author, but numerous acclaimed journalists have been bad writers and masterpieces bearing their names have in fact been re-written by editors. Why should it be any different when it comes to authors?
I worked with Stieg at news agency TT a couple of years during the late seventies and the early eighties. At the time, Stieg was a news graphic designer. I was a night editor and he often asked me to read what he wrote.
Writing a thriller largely based on facts like the Millenium trilogy demands a lot from the author. He or she must have a thorough knowledge of the Swedish society as well as subjects as separate as the structure and the working methods of the police and the know-hows of a computer hacker.
Stieg certainly did. He was the closest thing to a human Wikipedia I have ever seen, with the most remarkable knowledge on the broadest of subjects.
A thriller writer also has to be a good researcher, with the quick ability of finding all the facts he or she is not on top of in the matter. When British thriller giant Frederick Forsyth writes that BA´s Airbus from London lands on runway 34 in Vienna at 17.12, it really does, someone once said. It is the exact details that make the great thriller.
Here too, as far as I have understood, Stieg Larsson was a master. With the Internet’s swarming mix of accuracy and bluffs, today’s demands on researchers are much tougher than in the old days when the available sources in libraries and archives could always be trusted.
But back to the actual writing, which cannot be disregarded. Today, when everyone can be their own publicist, when anyone can write at any time of the day for anyone who wishes to read, it is easy to form the opinion “anyone can write”, whether it be on blogs, chats or any other web forum. For the professional writer, however, a published work is often the result of painful, hard work. Writing you can only learn to a certain extent. Talent is what sets the master apart.
After spending years of nights reading the scripts of Stieg Larsson, I had to conclude that the actual craft was not one of this versatile man’s strengths.
Stieg was a news graphic designer. He made graphs, maps and other illustrations as complements to TT’s telegrams and articles for the newspapers. At the time – late seventies and early eighties – this job was not as highly valued in the news industry as it is today. Stieg felt he was in the doldrums and that he was not a ”real” journalist.
My job as night editor and sole responsible for TT’s publication during the hours of 23.00 to 6.00 was stressful at times but later at night it was often quite still if the world kept its calm. The media landscape was not as advanced as it is now. TT’s main sources for foreign news were a couple of news agencies and nothing more. Stieg and I worked on different floors, he sometimes came down to me and I could come up to him during the late hours.
I worked scheduled hours, but he often volunteered to work nights, with less distractions. He showed me the texts accompanying his graphics and asked me to look it through. ”I’m not that good at these things,” he sometimes said about the writing.
I remarked – and I say this with no intention of putting down this talented man – that write, he could not. The language was weak, the word order was often incorrect, sentence constructions were simple and the syntax was sometimes completely mad. In short, his work had to be re-written to function. I usually had opinions, he gratefully accepted them, and there was no drama in that.
Stieg’s good friend Kurdo Baksi now hints of the same in his newly released book about the author. When he calls Stieg ”a mediocre journalist”, he obviously points to his weaknesses as a writer.
”I refused to read the Millenium trilogy simply because I didn’t think it could be any good. I was a better writer than he was,” Baksi says when I speak to him in between interviews.
“It is still a mystery to me how he could write these books.”
In his book, Baksi also tells of how he would shorten and re-write Stieg’s debate articles before they were sent to the papers.
I ask Kurdo Baksi straight off if he thinks Stieg’s common-law spouse Eva Gabrielsson wrote the books, with Stieg providing the idea, facts, research and story – not the most unusual distribution of work among famous writing couples. Which would further explain the bitter inheritance quarrel between Gabrielsson and Stieg’s father and brother.
Baksi’s answer is surprisingly detailed.
”It’s not a bad theory, it’s definitely exciting. Stieg never told me anything about Eva helping him, but she has implied to me that she contributed somehow.”
I have tried to put these questions forth to Eva Gabrielsson, but she has politely declined to be interviewed.
However, my question on her and Stieg’s possible collaboration on the Milleniumbooks she answers via e-mail: “I am writing about some of this in my own book.”
Translated by Oliver Grassman