Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a man who knew as much about real evil
as the fictional kind, wrote of a realization he had during his
internment in the Soviet gulag: “Gradually it was disclosed to me
that the line separating good and evil passes not through states,
nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but
right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”
This insight made him well fitted for Christianity and
anti-Communism. Stieg Larsson, the late Swedish author of the
blockbuster The Girl Who… mystery novels, on the other
hand, was a lifelong Communist, and so (one assumes) missed that
memo. Communism has always been a Manichean creed, dividing good
and evil along broad, neat lines, a habit that came in handy when
they wished to annihilate people without all the bother of actually
proving legal cases against them.
Having at last finished reading The
Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the final book of the
trilogy (I’d have read it sooner if the greedy capitalist
publishers hadn’t delayed the mass market paperback forever), I
feel qualified to draw some vapid (not to mention envious)
conclusions about them all. Communists like Larsson (one assumes,
or presumes) have been faced with a crisis of faith ever since the
1980s. Larsson himself, judging from textual evidence in these
books, seems to have substituted gender for class theory as a moral
guide. I made a note as I read — “There are no bad females in
this book.” That doesn’t hold true entirely for the series,
I’ll admit. I recall at least one bad female in the first book,
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but she was both rich and
a Nazi, and so probably constitutes a special case.
In general, it appears, if one were to line up all humanity,
women on the left and men on the right, Larsson would have drawn
the line between good and evil somewhere east of center. One of the
characters in this book says, “When it comes down to it, this story
is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it’s
about violence against women, and the men who enable it.” The
Swedish title of the first book of the series actually translates,
“Men Who Hate Women.” (This present book, in case you’re wondering,
goes by something meaning, more or less, “The Castle in the Air
that Exploded” in Sweden.)
The idea of the woman warrior is a constant refrain. Each
section of the book begins with a meditation on various accounts of
women warriors in history (many of them legendary). Lisbeth
Salander, the “Girl” of the titles, although a tiny, waif-like
individual, is an expert at unarmed combat, and kicks serious butt
above her weight class. This time, however, she spends most of the
book confined to a hospital bed, and does her fighting with her
mind (no mean weapon). So in her place Larsson introduces a tall,
athletic, Amazon-like female cop (who predictably falls immediately
into bed with Mikael Blomkvist, the chief male character) to
demonstrate female physical equality. This leads me, in my
wrongheaded way, to ponder the consistent inconsistency of
doctrinaire feminists, whose operating principle seems to be that
women need lots and lots of protections from the state, but that
men had better not presume to protect them.
(I suppose I ought to take a few column inches at some point
here to mention the plot, rather than just detailing my fascinating
insights into it. This book reveals, at last, that the horrors of
Lisbeth’s abusive childhood, of which we learned in the previous
books, were not the fault of the Swedish welfare state which raised
her [I rather liked that idea, but it turns out it’s wrong], but of
a secret conspiracy within the Swedish state security apparatus.
More on that later.)
Stalin is supposed to have said that one death is a tragedy, but
a million deaths is a statistic. Communist writers ever since have
found inspiration in this principle, hiding the millions of victims
of twentieth century Communist violence effectively behind the much
more compelling figures of one or a few selected victims — often
of McCarthyism or the Hollywood Black List — brought up close to
the camera lens. Lisbeth Salander is the Girl Who Hid the Real
Victims in these books.
In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the true
villains (we learn this early on, so it’s not a spoiler) are a
small, invisible group within the security system — a conspiracy
of old Cold Warriors. Anti-Communists are, it goes without saying,
paranoid. This development came as no great surprise, I suppose,
but it was a disappointment. Larsson had done a creditable job of
keeping political balance up to that point. I suppose it was too
much to ask that he go the whole way without striking a blow for
the True Faith.
Don’t take all this to mean that I didn’t enjoy The Girl Who
Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, or the series as a whole. I found it
great entertainment. Larsson excelled at creating vibrant,
fascinating characters, and at building suspense. He had a magical
gift.
And, as with all magicians, it’s important to keep your eye on
what the left hand is doing.
