Thursday, January 20, 2011
THE BUZZ ISN'T THERE
This is about the Stieg Larsson books about the girl and the investigative journalist and the tattoo and the bees and the really boring, difficult read that they are.
It is unaccountable to me why these books have been successful.
They are banal, incomplete, boring. Situations dangle.
Mini-plots seem concocted and inserted for sheer effect, neither story telling or advancing the plot that is at the core of the books. The dialog is wooden. Even the sex scenes are sexless.
Of course, in a culture where over half of the best sellers are sausage ground from the same old meat, Danielle Steele and so on, the quality issue is at a par. What I don't get is that the two principals are so unattractive and unlikable and, indeed, foolish and the girl nearly insane, that they would not be the kind of heroes that make for a good read in the first place. They are lousy characters.
When I read the first one I nearly doubled over with boredom at the interlacing financial network of the family that, well, never mind. It turns out that the story is really about sadistic murders and a missing person. None of the huge financial corporate superstructure is important. It is not even a red herring. It is filler.
Filler and anecdotal episodes of traditional thriller tropes.
The second book wasn't much better and by the time I was through with it and had seen the trimmed down story in the first Swedish film, I was done with it.
The film was pretty good actually. They threw out huge chunks and made the characters at least intelligent and only neurotic enough to be interesting.
So. I am going to see the second Swedish film and, when it comes out on DVD, the third and that is it.
My rule of not seeing a film on a book I read or reading a book about a film I saw has already been sullied.
The mystery remains.
Why have these been so popular.
I do love this kind of fiction when it is done well. We read every Robert Crais and Lee Child book published. But even these only stay on the Best Seller list for a few weeks.
I have found that others share my puzzlement. At last, a critical essay appears in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella,
Another interesting thing is that even the provenance and the editing of these books is shrouded in mystery. Larssen died 7 months after he wrote the books and did not really work hard on editing at all. The ownership of the copyright is all screwed up,
Time will tell, I suppose. There are going to be American films. They will have to edit the stories and, of course, Hollywoodize them. I will not see them. I will not buy the possible next volume that is said to be in Larssen's computer that he left.
I will not participate.
It is bullshit. Group buzz. The good part is that so many people are reading. But if they are reading trash then what happens next? I can't even go there.
