The Millennium Trilogy: a tribute and more gossips

Well, I was not planning to devote another blog post to these three books but there seems to be a lot of interest in them.  This trilogy is kind of the Harry Porter for grown ups and apparently Lisbeth Salander has become a media/culture figure first in Europe and now in the US.  I am guilty of feeding the frenzy here.

PK kindly pointed me to a piece by Nora Ephron (director of “You’ve got mail”) in the New Yorker titled “The Girl Who Who Fixed the Umlaut“.  She made fun of the characters and the style of the writing.  It is pretty funny and she has a point.  But the author is dead and cannot defend himself … or it should be considered a tribute.

“Please,” he said. “I must see you. The umlaut on my computer isn’t working.”

He was cradling an iBook in his arms. She looked at him. He looked at her. She looked at him. He looked at her. And then she did what she usually did when she had run out of italic thoughts: she shook her head.

“I can’t really go on without an umlaut,” he said. “We’re in Sweden.”

But where in Sweden were they? There was no way to know, especially if you’d never been to Sweden. A few chapters ago, for example, an unscrupulous agent from Swedish Intelligence had tailed Blomkvist by taking Stora Essingen and Gröndal into Södermalm, and then driving down Hornsgatan and across Bellmansgatan via Brännkyrkagatan, with a final left onto Tavastgatan. Who cared, but there it was, in black-and-white, taking up space. And now Blomkvist was standing in her doorway. Someone might still be following him—but who? There was no real way to be sure even when you found out, because people’s names were so confusingly similar—Gullberg, Sandberg, and Holmberg; Nieminen and Niedermann; and, worst of all, Jonasson, Mårtensson, Torkelsson, Fredriksson, Svensson, Johansson, Svantesson, Fransson, and Paulsson.

“I need my umlaut,” Blomkvist said. “What if I want to go to Svavelsjö? Or Strängnäs? Or Södertälje? What if I want to write to Wadensjö? Or Ekström or Nyström?”

It was a compelling argument.

Click the link above and read the rest.

While I was browsing, I also discovered that the trilogy is being remade just as I speculated, by David Fincher who directed Alien3, Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  I think it is a good match given the atmosphere of the books and Fincher’s directorial style.  IMDB is reporting that Daniel Craig (James Bond) will play the male lead (Mikael Blomkvist) but I am surprised that Brad Pitt is not given his involvement with Fincher’s movies.  Carey Mulligan (who ?) is rumored to be the Girl but I think Keira Knightley (“Pirates of the Carribean”) will do nicely.

While at a NYC airport, I picked up Entertainment Weekly’s 20th anniversary issue .  It has been in the bathroom for a few weeks, and one of its feature is a list of 100 greatest characters of the last 20 years.  I just read that Lisbeth Salander is No. 98 ! Narrowly beating Beatrix Kidoo at No. 99, in case you forgot, that is the Bride in Quentin Taratino’s Kill Bill who was played by Uma Thurman.

Finally, the New York Times Magazine of May 17, 2010 published a well-researched article on the trilogy, the author, and its future – “The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson“.

Enough.