To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the few works that I read more than twice, watched more than twice, read the book first and then watched the movie and still didn’t get disappointed. Harper Lee’s novel is also my default gift, the way some gift the Bible when they can’t think of anything else.

The novel is dearer to me than all the other child-protagonist novels that I’ve read, including those by Mark Twain and JK Rowling. Even though Scout, Jem and Dill all together have hardly an adventure that can compete with those of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Harry Potter’s. Even though their thriller isn’t as thrilling as the others’. Even though their presence to the world is seemingly inconsequential. Perhaps for those very reasons.

What Scout narrates about that summer creates in me the most intense nostalgia of a childhood that I seldom dwell in. I find it effortless to imagine walking beside those three with our hands on each other’s shoulders, to pull Scout’s hair, to grab Jem’s collar, to kick Dill’s shins, to grow up along with them. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Harry Potter are great fun, but I didn’t belong to their circle as a child.

When I think of the narration, I can hear Kim Stanley whispering in my ears. It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices, right there beside Joan Fontaine’s Rebecca. The movie opens with the most creative title sequence I can remember. And Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch. Not getting tired of superlatives, am I?

When I read somewhere that Pauline Kael described Atticus as “virtuously dull”, I had to agree and to face the question of why he was still one of my favorite characters. “There just didn’t seem to be anyone or anything Atticus couldn’t explain.” That’s why. Atticus is seen through the eyes of Scout, his daughter. Most children below ten probably still feel that way about their dads. I hope they do. When I was ten my dad was the calmest, wisest, strongest, noblest and the most loving man there could possibly be in the whole world. He hasn’t changed much, though I have. Harper Lee through her vivid, humorous, and sensitive writing created a magnificent lens to see the world through.

Shush now. I actually wished to type a few lines from the novel on the occasion of its 50th anniversary and this whole post is a tiny thin excuse for it. I may be breaking a law or two here. I consider the following scene the most powerful one I’ve ever read and watched.

———-

“Hey, Atticus?”

I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy. A flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but returned when Dill and Jem wriggled into the light.

There was a smell of stale whisky and pig-pen about, and when I glanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. They were not the people I saw last night. Hot embarrassment shot through me; I had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I had never seen before.

Atticus got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an old man. He put the newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creases with lingering fingers. They were trembling a little.

“Go home, Jem,” he said. “Take Scout and Dill home.”

We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful acquiescence to Atticus’s instructions, but from the way he stood Jem was not thinking of budging.

“Go home, I said.”

Jem shook his head. As Atticus’s fists went to his hips, so did Jem’s, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblance between them: Jem’s soft brown hair and eyes, his oval face and snug-fitting ears were our mother’s, contrasting oddly with Atticus’s greying black hair and square-cut features, but they were somehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike.

“Son, I said go home.”

Jem shook his head.

“I’ll send him home,” a burly man said, and grabbed Jem roughly by the collar. He yanked Jem nearly off his feet.

“Don’t you touch him!” I kicked the man swiftly. Bare-footed, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high.

“That’ll do, Scout.” Atticus put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t kick folks. No –” he said, as I was pleading justification.

“Ain’t nobody gonna do Jem that way,” I said.

“All right, Mr Finch, get ‘em outa here,” someone growled. “You got fifteen seconds to get ‘em outa here.”

In the midst of this strange assmebly, Atticus stood trying to make Jem mind him. “I ain’t going,” was his steady answer to Atticus’s threats, requests, and finally, “Please Jem, take them home.”

I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Jem had his own reasons for doing as he did, in view of his prospects once Atticus did get home. I looked around the crowd. It was a summer’s night, but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls and denim shirts buttoned up the collars. I thought they must be cold-natured, as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. I sought once more for a familiar face, and at the centre of the semi-circle I found one.

“Hey, Mr Cunningham.”

The man did not hear me, it seemed.

“Hey, Mr Cunningham. How’s your entailment gettin’ along?”

Mr Walter Cunningham’s legal affairs were well known to me; Atticus had once described them at length. The big man blinked and hooked his thumbs in his overall straps. He seemed uncomfortable; he cleared his throat and looked away. My friendly overture had fallen falt.

Mr Cunningham wore no hat, and the top half of his forehead was white in contrast to his sun-scorched face, which led me to believe that he wore one most days. He shifted his feel, clad in heavy worn shoes.

“Don’t you remember me, Mr Cunningham?” I’m Jean Jouise Finch. You bought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.

“I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?”

Mr Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.

“He’s in my grade,” I said, “and he does right well. He’s a good boy,” I added, “a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you?”

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. Mr Cunningham dispalyed no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a last-ditch effort to make him feel at home.

“Entailments are bad,” I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation. The men were all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they were standing together beside Dill. Their attention amounted to fascination. Atticus’ month, even, was half-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our eyes me and he shut it.

“Atticus, I was just sayin’ to Mr Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes … that you all’d ride it out together …” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for living-room talk.

I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quite still.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders.

“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.

Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. “Let’s clear out,” he called. “Let’s get going, boys.”

The last book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is not unpredictable. From the outset it is clear that the book will be about the final trial, which we know that Salander and her “Knights of the Idiotic Table” will win, despite the several new difficulties and dangers that the supporting cast face and survive from time to time. We do not even learn anything new about superhero Lisbeth Salander. But I never felt the need to complain, except whenever I had to put the book down for reasons beyond my control.

The entire trilogy is very old-fashioned, with its well fleshed out but stereotypical characters and the plainness of its themes. The reason it captivated me is because of the pain-staking research and thorough factual approach that Larsson takes. I haven’t read any of his journalistic reports in the Expo magazine, but I suspect that he was an investigative journalist very much like Mikael “Kalle” Blomkvist, in dogged pursuit of facts for the establishment of what he had reason to believe to be truth.

“Who will clean up Bhopal mess?” “Dow not liable for Bhopal?” “Could it have been averted?” “Two arrest warrants, last ignored by CBI?” “Is Digvijaya Singh targeting his own party?” “Did Arjun Singh arrange Anderson’s exit?” These are a few separate headlines and news stories about the Bhopal gas tragedy from the past few days. Recently I’ve noticed that many Indian news channels have graduated from conducting SMS polls (like “Are reporters morons?”) to posting questions as headlines (mostly rhetorical, I hope). I have been of the opinion that facts about unknowns cannot be established from opinions of a million sheep, but I confess that I am not up to date with the latest research in the applications of stochastic models on social journalism involving sheep. I may have missed the forward about the evolutionary manner of establishing facts, which probably proves that if a Twitter follower is moved enough to reply or a serious citizen to call a news desk then he or she must be knowing and telling the truth with an accurately calculable probability.

Unlike them the reporters and other investigators throughout the Millennium trilogy weren’t taught in the new methods of journalism. They start with their beliefs and gut feelings, with what they feel must be the truth, but they don’t thrum the world with persuasive reports about their perceptions of truth being true based on a long list of opinions, on historic observations, on psychological studies, nor on the ever-so-dependable instincts and intuitions. They ask questions and sieve through provable facts. In an explicit lesson Erika Berger tells a young promising journalist, “Think like a reporter. Investigate who’s spreading the story, why it’s being spread, and ask yourself whose interests it might serve.” In another lesson she rules that under her reign news reports have to deal with provable facts and that editorials (not by every person with an asshole) are the only place for opinions. Blomkvist shows them in his actions. Even though the trilogy is a work of fiction I hold it as a text-book example of old school investigation, and Millennium as a magazine of very high standards unswervingly clinging to the elements of journalism.

Another rarity is the vast number of women characters throughout the trilogy. In this last installment Larsson couldn’t have been more explicit with the numerous annotations about (sometimes mythical) women warriors like Dahomey Amazons, Libyan Amazons, Shammuramat, Semiramis, and Boudica. Were it not for those footnotes I probably would have not paid enough attention to the women in the book: Lisbeth Salander, Erika Berger, Advokat Annika Giannini, Inspector Monica Figuerola, Inspector Sonja Modig, Susanne Linder, Malin Eriksson, Ragnhild Gustavsson, and even the award-winning reporter at She of TV4. (Harriet Vanger and Mirriam Wu were strong too, but they are barely mentioned in this book.)

All these characters have a role to play, all of them are what Larsson likes to call “resourceful” in some way, all of them hold on their own and dominate male characters at sometime. Equally noteworthy is the fact that there are no women on the wrong side, no women who finally lose, no women who show cruelty towards other women (or men without justification). In one clear breach of the fourth wall Larsson through Blomkvist 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.” He is very clear here that it is not about violence and injustice in general, but about that perpetrated by men against women. It is as if he is apologizing on men’s behalf, making sure that they all win. Yet in another dialogue he (again through Blomkvist) mentions that he does not believe in collective guilt, as if conscious about what appears to be so.

Despite many apparent shortcomings — stereotypes, unsubtleness, even clichédness if you will — Larsson with his matter-of-fact reporting style, by mixing fiction with non-fiction (real places, real scandals, real characters), and most importantly with his idealism makes the trilogy fascinating and memorable.

Image Source: Amazon

Amazon Ads:

I have never been the voracious reader that I present myself as. I began reading very late in life and I remain a slow reader. In the best months I may read four books, but in most months I manage one. I am not in the numbers game. I simply wish to read more than I do. There are so many great books that I have not read and will never be able to read. Those books which I have always wanted to read, which I sincerely promise myself to read some day, and which I postpone knowing well their exalted position in the history of literature and in my own wishlist, I collect and keep them aside as classics. Today I am brimming with new hope. I made one of my best discoveries of the new year — audiobooks.

I have never been very particular about preserving the sanctity of a book in its traditional form. It is reassuring that they continue to exist, whether as hardcovers or paperbacks or e-books or audiobooks or multimedia or future superformats. The forms and formats will come and go based on their ergonomic and economic viability. I hope for not much more than to find them agreeable.

I have largely survived on paperbacks and e-books while ignoring audiobooks until last year citing numerous excuses that I can instantly cook. Exactly a year ago I got my hands on a pre-release of the audio version of the recent Who is Mark Twain? It sat there in one of the folders of my PC ignoring me with greater snobbery than I am capable of. The atmosphere changed this year. I have already listened to Who is Mark Twain?, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, and Walden. I am now listening to James Joyce’ Dubliners. There are many more in the pipeline.

Listening isn’t the same as reading. Nothing comes close to the pleasure of sitting on a toilet and leafing through a splendid story in the dead of the night. Perhaps due to my inexperience, when listening to audiobooks I can’t very well see the words dancing on a page nor observe the linguistic experiments. Still, I prefer that to not reading at all. And while commuting they are better than reading itself. Reading is strenuous when traveling by train, and is not enough to escape from the inanities waiting in adjacent berths. Listening to audiobooks, on the other hand, presents a pretty picture of voluntary deafness and youthful snobbishness.

I may unintentionally be violating copyrights, as I haven’t yet figured out how to verify copyright status of books, especially audiobooks, inside India. I mostly download the audiobooks from LibriVox. It is a beautiful sister site of the ambitious Internet Archive. If you are its user, consider dropping some change in their jar.

If you’ve never tried an audiobook, do.

Amazon Ads:

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire starts with a confidence, maybe certainty, that the readers of his previous book will hold on no matter what. Lisbeth Salander gets a lot of pages. This is her book. She travels the world; reads Principia Mathematica; tries proving Little Fermat’s theorem; and gets her breasts enlarged, which is possibly as gratifying as it could get in her life.

Although Salander occasionally thinks aloud about “All The Evil” and we eventually find out everything worth knowing about her past, for more than the first quarter of the novel, nothing more sinister than the vignettes in a dull crime beat section of a newspaper takes place. I felt the writing even getting sloppier in a few corners. Nevertheless, old readers will have stayed, are duly rewarded, and will in all likelihood like this more than the first book once they reach the end.

A double murder and another seemingly unconnected murder in which Salander becomes the prime suspect, a manhunt (more like a modern witch hunt), and three parallel investigations suddenly swallow the reader in a storm much like Matilda in the Caribbean. Larsson does something brilliant at this point: he hides Salander for more than another quarter of the book, essentially conveying the exasperation of Mikael Blomkvist (whom Salander has ignored for more than a year now) and of the Swedish Police to the reader.

Although Larsson made it look convincing, I could not help noticing the incompetence of the Police during their investigation. It is understandable for them to chase in the direction shown by the most apparent circumstantial evidence, but their negligence in following up some crucial matters like the works of the dead “conscientious couple” and the interrogation of Salander’s previous guardian Palmgren made them “lose face” once again. Perhaps I was expecting more from Inspector Bubble and his team – which I can’t be blamed for – but they mostly failed me.

Larsson created even more characters than he did for his previous book, and these are livelier, possibly because these are mostly alive. The underlying debate between blaming the society and blaming the individual for a misdeed is fiercer, and it is clear where Larsson’s own feelings lie. He highlights the failure of social welfare systems through their appalling treatment of Salander herself. Continuing pointing at the atrocities against women, this time he chooses human trafficking as the background, ironically calling it From Russia With Love, and suggests the government’s apathy for underage illegal immigrants. I was amused by Larsson’s caricature of the Swedish media, which to some extent provides good company to the Indian media. Homophobia is an additional theme, and having occasionally heard and read about the Swedish comfort with sexuality and having watched Fucking Åmål, I was surprised.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire Salander arouses more pity than before, especially during her grief about Mirriam Wu towards the end (she cries!), and of course in the devastating final scene, while Larsson has fun by getting explicit about Salander being based on the legendary Pippi Longstocking. While reading this book I was suddenly reminded of my math teacher in school, who was similarly diminutive and quick.

At the end it is clear that Berger may be sidetracked, advokat Annika (Blomkvist’s sister) will play a major role, and Salander will spend more of her time in you-will-know-where in the next book. I could stomach that, I am preparing for the worst, but I am completely unprepared for the unavailability of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest in Indian bookstores.

P.S. I discovered that I don’t like “Jesus Christ” being used exclamatorily more than once in a book.

Image Source: Euro Crime

Amazon Ads:

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens with the one last wish of a very old birthday boy Henrik Vanger, a retired industrialist. Every year he receives a new exotic flower as a birthday gift and it is a constant reminder of the decades old unsolved disappearance of his brother’s daughter that continues to haunt him. As a final attempt he hires famous journalist Mikael Blomkvist who has just been sentenced for libel against a large corporation. Larsson appears to have based Blomkvist on himself – the crusading journalist with leftist views struggling to keep a financially threatened magazine. Despite the now famous Lisbeth Salander, the first novel of the Millennium trilogy is primarily Blomkvist’s adventure and Salander is still the strong supporting character.

For a person who seems barely capable of human interaction, Salander, the diminutive gothic apathetic genius is rightly more famous. Not because of her super-hacker stature, nor because of her occasional psychopathic behavior that would make Hannibal Lecter proud, but because she is at the core a broken girl whose wounds could never completely heal. Whenever she appears on the book she magically absorbs all attention and concern from the readers. Even though we get to know very little about her in the first book.

Larsson has a wonderful, sometimes cruel, sense of interlacing the stories of Blomkvist and Lisbeth and I hope to get (without trying) a grip on it by the time I finish the trilogy. A glaring evidence I can immediately recall: two lovemaking scenes of Blomkvist are both followed by sexual assaults involving Salander.

Blomkvist and Lisbeth don’t meet until half the novel. In the scene of their first meeting, Blomkvist visits Salander’s apartment and takes her by shock. Until then no one had ever visited her apartment without her knowledge. I took great pleasure in Salander’s obedience to Blomkvist’s assertiveness. It is my favorite scene in the book and I hope that it is not a shallow reflection on a repressed preference for male dominance.

What begins as an unofficial lukewarm investigation of a cold case turns into a threat to the lives of the protagonists followed by a manhunt spanning continents. Did I mention a helpful genealogical tree which I looked at a hundred times? The last hundred pages during which the focus shifts to the corporation which won the libel case against Blomkvist, however, slightly disappointed me. In a way that part didn’t belong to the novel, though as a trilogy weaved around the Millennium magazine its presence is very much justified.

Being a fat book it gets ample space to flesh out the story’s large set of characters, has a fairly paced very unpredictable plot, and touches on numerous themes from Nazism in Sweden to Christianity to the stock market sentiment to the (universal) failure of government authorities in helping its people. Underlying all themes runs Larsson’s favorite theme of oppression of women that is today still very present though it may be more secretive than it used to be.

Throughout, Larsson’s experience as a journalist shows in his balanced narration the only goal of which is to tell a story. The narration is simple, straight-forward, and vivid. As someone who prefers the first person and frowns at omniscient narratives, I found this book eye-opening. For large epic-scale works where the author’s duty is beyond conveyance of the story or the innermost thoughts of the main characters, where the author’s duty is towards building a more complete picture of the world, omniscient narrative is possibly the most appropriate.

This is the first Swedish novel that I read. This may also be the least Swedish novel I will ever read, in terms of popular contexts like the Nobels or Bergman or ABBA that an outsider attributes with everything Swedish,  notwithstanding Larsson’s predilection towards using original places and old stories (including a mention of Bofors). That is because Larsson was himself slightly unswedish, devouring American and British crime novels and living on junk food and rock’n'roll. I am not complaining. I just wish they had used the title Men who hate women (English for the original title Män som hatar kvinnor).

Image Source: Wikipedia

Amazon Ads: