“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

For my Christmas novel this year I chose Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I knew little about the story or characters, and little about the author except that he had died in 2004 after completing this novel and two others in a series.  I enjoy reading novels by foreign authors.  Larsson was Swedish and he sets this novel in Stockholm and along the east coast of Sweden.  This was a very different Sweden from Ingmar Bergman’s films.  However, like Bergman, Larsson explores the reaches of the human heart, how it can be hurt, and how it can be healed.

Alfred A. Knopf hardcover; available also in paperback

First of all, I LOVED this novel.  I had problems putting it down to eat, sleep, etc.  I am really looking forward to the two other books in the series that this novel began, i.e. The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.  Larsson’s website is clean, easy to navigate and has information on the novels as well as the movies being made in Sweden of all three.  It is a very sad thing that Larsson died so suddenly of a heart attack and did not see his novels published or the reader response to them. 

Second, Larsson uses, to powerful effect, the technique of allowing other characters to introduce primary characters.  We meet Mikael Blomkvist directly, but then learn more about him through the investigation done by Lisbeth Salander of Milton Security for a lawyer working for the man who will hire Blomkvist based on Salander’s conclusions about him.  Salander’s boss introduces her, then we see Salander in action, reporting her findings to the lawyer.  The first almost 100 pages are all about these characters and what is important to them, what drives them.  Then on page 100 (in the Vintage paperback), we get the purpose that will drive the story.  This set-up is quite long, and so focused on character rather than action that Larsson risks losing the reader, except the characters are so interesting.  Throughout the novel, Blomkvist comments in his mind about other characters, as does Salander, but their thoughts do not align, giving the story an added layer of suspense.

Third, I admire Larsson for taking on a subgenre of the thriller genre, serial killer, and breathing new life into it.  He gives his characters psychological depth without making it obvious.  As Blomkvist and Salander work, we are next to them, following the leads, researching past events, and making conclusions.  I admit that I had figured out who the killer was long before Larsson reveals it, but then he pulls back into the story a thread he’d introduced at the beginning for Blomkvist, connects it to the serial killer plot, and gives it the Salander treatment as Blomkvist works to tie up loose ends.  Absolutely awesome.

Finally, Lisbeth Salander is now one of my all-time favorite characters.  Tough and vulnerable, highly intelligent but not socially adept, an outsider who doesn’t want to be inside society, her mind and behavior illustrate brilliantly the aftereffects of severe trauma on a human.  But Larsson doesn’t make a big deal out of it.  He writes Salander as she is, the bad and the good (and yes, there’s major bad), without sentimentalizing her or her past in any way.  In fact, he withholds what the original trauma was and focuses on who Salander is in the present of the story.

I recommend The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo highly for anyone interested in fine writing, original storytelling and characters so real you may just end up talking back to them as you read…..especially Lisbeth Salander.

Organizing a Society

One night in the hospital, I could not sleep.  I lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the nurses at their station near my room and the even breathing of my sleeping roomate.  I challenged myself to write something in my mind, to play in my mind.  What popped up were references to white coats.  I’d noticed that the doctors making rounds wore white coats of different lengths.  A nurse had explained that the shortest ones, white jackets, were worn by medical students.  A medical student further explained the hierarchy for me in terms of who works the closest to the attending/teaching physician, and that he was at the bottom, essentially there to learn.  But what fascinated me was the hierarchical organization using the lengths of the white coats, the robes of medicine.  Of course, if someone shows up in scrubs, which happens, then it’s difficult to know where that person fits into the hierarchy unless they’d also visited earlier wearing his/her white coat.  And my attending surgeon often showed up in street clothes without his white coat.

Why does this society, that of doctors and students in a teaching hospital, need a hierarchal organization?  Could it function organized in a non-hierarchical way?  Why does this society need a hierarchy? 

As a writer, I’ve found it important to think carefully about the society or community of people in which my characters exist.  In Perceval, the society, actually societies, required far more work than I’d initially thought.  The reason?  I’d chosen to create a world in the future, rather than the past or present.  The future, however, has its foundation in the past, so I could use the present day world as a basis or beginning.  Social organization will affect a character’s behavior and thoughts whether the community is a school, neighborhood, city or country.  And I needed to consider America’s social organization in 2048, Europe’s, Austria’s, and various other countries that come into play in Evan Quinn’s life.   And then there’s Evan’s professional society, i.e. a professional musician, and how he fits into how that society is organized. 

Human beings, like other mammals, like to be organized, whether it’s in the nuclear family unit or a neighborhood, by tribe or nationality.  Customs and beliefs tend to evolve within human groups, creating distinct cultures and ways of thinking and communicating.  A smaller group, e.g. a family, will have customs and beliefs consistent with any larger group in which its a member, as well as developing its own unique customs and beliefs.  So, despite the high level of organization, a high level of diversity and originality can exist within it.  In fiction, this information about a character can give him or her depth, breadth and layers of humanity and meaning that a reader can identify and connect with.

Back to the hospital in the middle of my sleepless night, I realized that a hierarchical organization to the doctors and medical students served a purpose more important than simply organization in their society.  The hierarchy is based on level of knowledge and expertise, and the white coats’ lengths identify where each coat wearer is in that hierarchy.  My surgeon’s white coat (when he wore it) was below the knee and his name and department were embroidered over the breast pocket in black, like all the other attending physicians I saw, but not like Residents below a certain level whose coats were unadorned.  These were the professors, the doctors with the highest level of knowledge and expertise.  The hem of the coats rises as we tick down the hierarchy: Fellows and post-doctorals, Residents, Interns and Medical Students.  Outside of their society, for example, when I or a nurse approached them, we would recognize their level of responsibility and decision-making according to their society.

Sleep finally came that night, but only a couple hours before my Residents arrived on their morning rounds….

Well of Creativity

Imagination: the bottomless well of human creativity.  Speculations abound as to what can enhance the imagination, “set it free,” or fuel it.  Possible methods: drinking alcohol to excess, ingesting illegal drugs or plants such as mushrooms, sex, or inducing physical pain.  Other speculation centers on the relationship between mental illness/instability and creativity.  No doubt, highly creative people can gravitate toward extremes in living and experiences and behavior.  They think outside of the box.  But does the imagination really need anything more from us than our attention and willingness to use it?

Recently, I had major surgery.  I enjoyed the mild sedation before we rolled into the surgical theater and I was very focused on my life after I regained consciousness.  The first pain medication they gave post-surgery didn’t work for me and made me ill.  My surgeon changed to morphine.  I’ve experienced morphine before, including hallucinating on it, and it wasn’t pleasant.  But this time, I controlled the administration of the drug completely through a self-doser.  I was happy.  No more pain.

But with the drug’s effectiveness came other things, such as feeling loopy.  My short term memory was shot.  Today, I remember very, very little of those first few post-surgery days when I was on the morphine.  The drug also did nothing for my imagination.  I felt as if my imagination had also been drugged into lethargy and grogginess.  My scientist friend visited one afternoon while I was on the morphine and we watched the movie Up together.  Last week I told her that I didn’t remember the movie at all because of the morphine.  She quite cheerfully responded that I could see it again as if it were the first time.  A rare pleasure.

My experience with morphine this time got me thinking about the importance of memory to imagination and creativity.  Writers, and I believe other creative artists, need memory of their life experiences, their sensual experiences, and stories on which to draw for their characters’ stories.  Memory is a partner in creativity.  For me, nothing about morphine and its effects enhanced my imagination or creativity.  I mourn the loss of my memories while on it.  But it did what it was supposed to do….