Free The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson by Barry Forshaw Page A

who makes an appearance in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest , was obliged to undertake on his own something he customarily shared with Larsson – Baksi was to hold a meeting to commemorate Kristalnacht, the night of anti-Semitic violence in Nazi Germany. Larsson describes Baksi as being ‘like a little brother’ to him, and speculates that he’ll find it amusing that Baksi has a part in his novel.
    Larsson, with a journalist’s thoroughness, was exercised over such issues as how many printed pages corresponded to a million letters, and wondered if there was a formula or a limit for the thickness of a book. He discussed with Eva Gedin the details of the shape of the final book, demonstrating a willingness to readily submit to the editorial process, and – to those who felt the books needed more rigorous editing – that he would have been more than flexible concerning such issues. He told Eva Gedin that he would be delivering a manuscript in which the story would be complete, the dialogue would not be polished or individual details sorted out. Pointing out that he would need more time for this, Larsson remarked (poignantly, in the light of his brief mortality): ‘We’ve got enough time before the book is due to be printed.’ But he was happy for Eva Gedin to intervene with her red pencil at this stage, and said he would revise the whole thing after having received her comments.
    Larsson’s commercial canniness, which might surprise those who see him as primarily an ideological campaigner, extended as far as the promotion of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo : he mentioned an idea he’d been entertaining for a year about creating a website focusing on Millennium , and asked some pertinent questions – a marketing idea such as this for an internet-based sequence is, of course, appropriate.
    In reply to both of these points, Eva Gedin reassured Larsson that she wouldn’t yet make any changes with a red pencil – but talked about meeting up to discuss the more substantial corrections that may have been needed to be made in book one. She praised the construction of the books, but counselled interventions to be made on the level of line editing – and approved the notion of a website.
    All of this, of course, is proof of the careful and fastidious editing process that Larsson would have been able to avail himself of had he lived.

CHAPTER 5
    WHAT I WANT TO SAY
    O n 30 April 2004, an e-mail from Larsson to his editor Eva Gedin offered an unusual insight into the journalist’s life as a manager at the Expo offices. He notes that he has just discovered that it is Walpurgis Day and that his colleagues in the editorial office are complaining and are keen to go home – or to vacate the offices for a few beers. He says he has promised to let them go after 9 o’clock that evening – a reminder of the managerial status of a man we perhaps think of as a lone investigative journo. Arranging holidays, time off, dealing with staff sicknesses – these everyday problems do not sit easily with the romantic image that people may nurture of the solitary reporter, but they are the quotidian reality for those who run magazines – as Stieg Larsson did. In fact, it’s one of the elements that the three Swedish films of the Millennium Trilogy succeed in transferring very persuasively from page to film; Millennium looks like a real, functioning magazine, with all its attendant problems.
    Larsson mentions that the editorial secretary has been obliged to sleep in the offices of Expo for the last two weeks – and that his colleagues are even starting to talk about a trade union (amusing, given the left-wing sympathies of everyone on the magazine!). Revealingly, Larsson communicates his own lack of faith in his abilities as a writer, and acknowledges that his articles improve markedly after an editor has got to work on them – an insight with a possible bearing on the posthumous disagreement over his skills in this area. He is used