

Why people love Stieg Larsson's Novels - wow_sig
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/10/110110crat_atlarge_acocella

======
Tichy
While I didn't care so much for the violence, I thoroughly enjoyed the novels.
I thought they had a comparatively unusual plot and unusual characters. They
are definitely much better written than, say, Dan Brown novels.

Funny to see the the NYT complain about 12 page long boring descriptions.
Surely any regular reader of the NYT should have no problems to cope with
those.

Also that article just quotes things out of context to make them sound silly.

~~~
mzl
Funny, I place Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown in the same section: writers who
are good at constructing a compelling story, but not so good in actually
writing it down.

With Stieg Larsson, I got really annoyed with the amount of boring
expositions, pseudo-cliffhangers at the end of every other chapter, overuse of
clichés ("and then they talked for X hours"), etc.. It reads like a very rough
draft of a book, not as an edited text ready for publication.

That said, I've read both authors and enjoyed the books. I just feel that they
could have been so much better with some serious rewrites (as apparently the
English translation of Stieg Larsson had, I have to check that one out).

~~~
dagw
_It reads like a very rough draft of a book_

Given that Larsson died before the final edits where completed, that is
probably a quite accurate description.

~~~
mzl
I suspect the same. I've considered reading the one of the books in English
also just to see if they are improved. I found Dan Brown to be slightly less
annoying in Swedish than in English, since some parts had been cleaned up.

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cstuder
Single page link:
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/10/110...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/10/110110crat_atlarge_acocella?currentPage=all)

------
Muzza
> (And that welfare state may soon be disabled by the recently elected
> conservative government.)

Uhuh. They've been in power since 2006 and the welfare state has not been
"disabled".

~~~
kmfrk
The Swedish economy is basically the envy of most countries in Europe at the
moment.

~~~
loewenskind
You're probably wasting your time. The US has its own Steve Jobs-esque
distortion field when it comes to politics. I'm not sure the majority of them
could ever be educated what "left" and "right" actually mean and you'll
_certainly_ never convince them that both their main political parties are
actually center right and far right.

~~~
chc
This "distortion field" sounds suspiciously like relativity. Are you sure you
aren't just declaring your political sphere the center of the universe and
labeling anyone who uses a different reference point as a heretic?

~~~
loewenskind
Wait, what? I'm declaring _the rest of the world_ the "center of the universe"
and labeling _the one_ (first world) _place_ that uses a drastically different
reference point as wrong.

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berntb
The "funniest" part is that there really was a a scandal recently in Sweden
about an upper class guy using his position for e.g. raping and abusing women.

He was a police chief which, despite police union criticism, got reinstated by
the social democrat minister - because he was so politically correct...

Quite fun, considering the political leanings of Larsson.

~~~
hristov
Hmm source? I assume you mean Goran Lindberg, but there is nothing out there
about him being reinstated to anything after being convicted. In fact
wikipedia says he is in prison right now. How has he been reinstated?

I don't know what this has to do with Larsson at all.

~~~
berntb
Sorry for the late answer, I was busy today and didn't check hn until now,
long after it went from the front page.

Lindberg was going to be fired because of complaints from the employees -- but
he got reinstated, by Bodström himself! That was a few years before the big
scandal.

That is well known and has been in the major media. Google gave me this link.
IIRC, I originally read it in DN or SvD.

[http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/1.1862998/lindberg-
raddades-...](http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/1.1862998/lindberg-raddades-
kvar-av-bodstrom)

>>I december 2002 skickade polisfacket i Uppsala ett brev direkt till
justitieminister Thomas Bodström där de krävde att Lindberg skulle avgå.

>>– Från justitieministern fick vi inget svar över huvud taget, säger Gunnar
Elrud, som då var ordförande för polisfacket.

(And being at -3 in the original comment for posting well known facts, while
that simple questioning got +11, is really funny...)

~~~
hristov
You may be right, I do not speak Swedish, so I cannot read your references. It
really depends on how believable the complaints were.

But nevertheless your post was misleading because you made it sound like he
was reinstated after the scandal. Also, again I do not really see the
connection with the writer Larrson. Just because he is a leftie, he is not
responsible for every remotely left wing politician out there.

~~~
berntb
Try translate.google.com

Ah, you mean it can be read as being reinstated after the crime last year?
Sorry for being unclear, I was on the way into meetings.

The connection is that there _really_ was a conspiracy where someone was
misusing power and influence -- but it was _political_ influence with a left
wing government, because the psychopath claimed to be so politically
correct...

Considering that Larsson was too left wing for the normal communist party,
that was quite funny.

Edit: To back my claim about Larsson's politics, consider that Larsson was
active with Eritrean guerrilla fighters. That regime he supported is much,
much worse than even that rapist psychopath of a police chief...

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/15/stieg-girls-
with...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/15/stieg-girls-with-grenade-
launchers)

