Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Steig Larsson

Steig Larsson

I think that everybody who writes thinks their stuff is good…not that it couldn’t bear some improvement but that at the core it’s good. I know that I like my material and lately in the morning I look at my Summary Statistics for yesterday and pick one of the selections that someone chose to read and reread it myself. A flood of recollection comes over me and I remember my state of mind as I wrote it. Now I know that everybody doesn’t think my work is particularly suited to their tastes and that there is what appears to be a darkness to what I write and there is a recurring theme of mild bondage that perhaps some find disturbing. However, what I write is mild compared to what is out there and I find myself disturbed reading the series Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The author, Steig Larsson died at a young age…I believe in his 50’s and there is a big court battle in Sweden over his estate. He lived with a woman for over twenty years in a common law marriage and when he died suddenly all his estate went to his family… (According to Swedish Law) The girlfriend got nothing except for one thing….a manuscript for a 4th book which she has threatened to burn.

This leads me to suspect that his family is in ways as dysfunctional as some of those he writes about. This opens the door to the basement, or the Understory that in Steig’s mind must have undergirded his writing of the trilogy that I am about halfway through. I am not in any sense suggesting that Mr. Larsson is any more than a writer who had an aptitude for writing about dark things. There is some really dark shit out there that goes on and for most, myself included, readers are totally unaware of at a visceral level. It takes reading Larsson’s series to jerk the reader awake in the night to the realization there is more to this iceberg than what the pages reveal. It is a sordid dark world that exists out there, a world that many victims have the unfortunate situation of living in.

What is worse is that this world is not something that exists far away on some back alley city street but a world that exists in the minds of most intelligent people who are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I suspect there is a thread of the darkness in all of us and I hope my readers find it as unnerving as I do. Our sexuality has a dark side and while most of us don’t take that too seriously, there is enough to provide evidence that taken to the nth power… that the terror that lurks in the world at large has roots that go to the very core of our humanity.

The statistics of abuse that he uses for Sweden are probably similar to what happens on the domestic scene on a recurring basis in the United States. Growing up I got in fights and while my school experiences don’t come anywhere close to what Elizabeth experienced I got the shit knocked out of me more times that I care to remember out on the school ground. I fought back and like ‘Lisbeth” people left me alone. What it showed me was how close to home the darkness lurks and how painful it can be to confront. However, this is not autobiographical. My childhood was not bad all the time, and I have some pleasant memories mixed in with all the rest. My father never hit my mother, even though she often pushed him to edge and beyond, Linda’s parents never hit one another, although there was emotional violence…but shucks…who hasn’t experienced that? We both had experiences with relatives who had a bit of a sordid agenda. Still I had friends who were beaten severely and regularly and came to class with bruises to show for it. That to me is a whole lot worse that getting fondled even though that kind of unwanted attention still sends a shiver through me. It might have been worse and I sort of think we both got through our childhoods relatively unscathed.

So what Steig is talking about is closer to home that many might acknowledge and that first thing we need to do is make damn sure we keep an eye in that dark thread that weaves and wends its way through all of us. I guess that is my point. You can’t legislate away something that a part of everyone. Sure we can lock up the offenders that go well beyond the behaviors of human decency to the extent that society can no longer ignore or suffer them to exist… but we really need to start with ourselves. I see the evidence all around me, in the way children are disciplined, In those bruises and lifeless eyes… Steig’s book isn’t just another crime thriller… It certainly makes a sensation out of a murder mystery however the characters are right out of real life and if they don’t send a chill though you I don’t know what will.