Things We Lose in the Timestream

Well, as it turns out, I’m swamped with doing stuff this weekend, so there’s no blog post for you.  Not that you should care anyway, of course.

You know, it occurs to me that occasionally I come along and tell you I’m busy with stuff, but I never actually tell you what the stuff is.  In retrospect, this seems unfair.  You come along (despite repeated warnings to the contrary, even), expecting to see some blather you can kill some time with, and here I am telling you there’s nothing to be read and not even bothering to say why.  Well, fear not, gentle reader: today I shall regale you fully with tales of my goings-on.  And this shall, hopefully, convince you never to wonder again.

So, firstly: often people mention what they’re reading, or listening to, and all that sort of thing.  Right now I am currently working on book 7 of the Dresden Files, and determined to push all the way through to the end.  It’s just getting really good (it was good before, but now it’s really good, if you follow me).  Musically, I recently picked up a digital copy of Extractions by Dif Juz, which is one of the 4AD bands that I somehow missed all this time.  I knew Richie Thomas’ fine saxophone work from Victorialand, of course, but I’d never heard this album before, and it’s quite good.  You should give it a listen if you’re into dream or ambient or that sort of thing.  Visually, I just picked up my Blu-ray of The Avengers, which of course I had seen in the theater, but it was just as good the second time around.  That Joss Whedon really knows what he’s doing behind a camera; I hope he does more of the superhero movies.

Now, of course, all of that is not really keeping me from writing.  There must be other stuff going on around here ...

Well, I do still have a few hours to put in for $work.  I would tell you a bit about my work, but I’ve had to sign so many things at this point saying that I will not ever “disparage” the company that I feel a bit like Stephen Colbert talking about Islam: my company is a great and true company and Blessings and Peace be upon my corporate overlords.  Don’t point, even.  You’ve seen enough of that one.

So, tomorrow I have to do a presentation for my new co-workers (of which there are quite a few), plus I have a meeting about my current project, which I just started, and I’d really like to learn a bit more about it before I have to start explaining it to other people.  But mainly I want to prepare a bit more for the presentation.  I could just wing it, and I’d probably do fairly well, but the more prepared I am, the better I’ll do (most likely), and one does want to make a good impression on people that you’ve just hired.

Let’s see ... what else ... well, there are still some weekend chores left, despite the fact that I generally try to knock those out before Saturday night, or else I find I have no time to myself.  I’ve still got to go to the grocery store, and direct my older children to clean the den so that you can actually walk in there again.  (The youngest is excused from such things, although I’m sure she’d like the floor to be cleared as well, as right now there are a lot of things blocking her from getting to the catfood, which just pisses her off.  Nothing feels quite the same rolling around inside your mouth as a big ol’ handful of catfood.)

In hobby news, the things which are supposed to be my relaxation from other parts of my life occasionally have the power to provide their own sources of stress.  For instance, in my role as a CPAN author, right now I’m about three issues behind in taking care of some issues for the Method::Signatures module I work on, and one of them is for a guy who’s fairly well-known in the Perl world (and, even if you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, the fact that the guy has his own Wikipedia page should give you a clue).  And, in my work to keep my favorite game going, we’ve been working hard to address a number of issues with one of our recent releases.

So, there’s lots to do, and (as always), little time to get it all done.  It seems that, the older I get, the less likely I am to have one big excuse for not doing what I should.  I mean, remember, back in college, when the reason you didn’t finish your essay for class was because of a party (or the resulting hangover), or one of your friends broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend and you were up all night with them, or you were helping someone move?  But nowadays it’s never one big thing; it’s a million little things, that peck away at your time jot by jot, frittering away your ability to focus in dribs and drabs.  It’s death by a thousand cuts.  But such is the way of life.  The older you get, the more you take on, I suppose, and the more people you meet, the more that end up depending you for one thing or another, in large ways or in small.

Which is all a very roundabout way of saying to you, my oh so persistent blog connoisseur: no cookie for you!  Not this week, in any event.

A Fable

Once upon a time there was a baby tiger.  He lived in a jungle with his Mama Tiger and his Papa Tiger.  He was, for the most part, a good tiger, although he did have a tendency to be rather engergetic.  By which I mean, he was always going somewhere.

One night, after dinner, the baby tiger said to Mama Tiger, “Mother, may I be excused?”  The baby tiger was ever so polite.

“Yes, baby tiger, you may be excused,” replied Mama.  “Where are you going now?”

The baby tiger thought for a moment.  “I’m going to France.”

Mama Tiger smiled.  “Well, just be home before bedtime.”  (The baby tiger did not have to be home before dark, because tigers have excellent night vision.)

So the baby tiger set off.  And he walked and he walked.

Presently, he came upon a baby wolf.  “Hello,” said the baby tiger.

“Hello,” said the baby wolf.

“I’m going to France,” said the baby tiger.

“Sounds like a plan,” replied the baby wolf.  And they walked and they walked.

Presently, they came upon a baby dragon.  “Hello,” said the baby tiger.

“Hello,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“We’re going to France,” said the baby tiger.

“You can come if you want to,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“Very well then,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.  And they walked and they walked, with the baby dragon fluttering along behind them.

Presently they came upon a large horse, standing in a field.  The horse snorted a bit and looked down at them.  He blinked his long lashes.

“If it would not be too much trouble, good Mr. Horse,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “could you tell us, if you know, have we reached France yet?”

“Nay,” said the horse.

“Ah.  Well, then, thank you so much.”  The horse shook his head.  So they walked on.

“Horses are very helpful creatures,” confided the baby tiger to the baby wolf.

“Indeed,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon a great horned owl, sitting on a branch.  The owl chuffed a bit and looked down at them.  He ruffled his fluffy feathers.

“If I may be so bold as to inquire, good Sir Owl,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “have you heard of a such a thing as France?”

“Who?” asked the owl.

“Well, it’s not so much a ‘who’ as it is a ‘where,’” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.  The owl showed them the back of his head.  So they walked on.

“The owl did not seem to be geographically inclined,” said the baby tiger to the baby wolf.

“Hunh,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon a pigeon, preening on a statue.  The pigeon gurgled a bit and looked down at them.  He bobbed his plump breast.

“If it would not be a great imposition, good Citizen Pigeon,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “we are endeavoring to find our way to France ...”

“Coo’,” said the pigeon.

“Well, yes, I suppose it is, as you say, ‘cool,’” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “but I was more wondering if you might be able to point us in the proper direction.”  The pigeon tilted his head.  So they walked on.

“We must be close,” said the baby tiger to the baby wolf.  “We seem to have gotten as far as East London, at any rate.”

“Coo’,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon the Eiffel Tower, arcing over the Champ de Mars.  The tower rattled a bit and looked down at them.  It flashed its metal sides.

“By jove, we seem to have arrived.  Surely this must be France,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.

“Could be Vegas,” shrugged the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“She sure is happy,” the baby tiger observed.

“Sunny disposition,” agreed the baby wolf.

The baby dragon shot out a great gout of flame which melted the Eiffel Tower into a puddle of iron lattice.  The baby tiger and the baby wolf had to back up to keep their paws from getting irony.  The metal fumes burned their eyes a bit.  The baby dragon giggled again and burped up a few plumes of acrid smoke.

“It’s getting dark,” said the baby wolf.

“Tigers have excellent night vision,” said the baby tiger.

“As do wolves,” pointed out the baby wolf.

They looked at the baby dragon.

She giggled and snorted fire, lighting up the dusky air.

“Good point,” said the baby tiger.

“Indeed,” said the baby wolf.

“Shall we off?” asked the baby tiger, ever so politely.

“Yes, let’s,” replied the baby wolf.

So they walked and they walked, with the baby dragon fluttering along behind them, occasionally giggling and snorting fire against the falling darkness.

And the baby dragon got home before bedtime, and she giggled at them happily as Mama Dragon and Papa Dragon waved goodbye.  And the baby wolf got home before bedtime, and he howled happily as Mama Wolf and Papa Wolf waved goodbye.  And the baby tiger got home just before bedtime, and Papa Tiger kissed his head, and Mama Tiger asked him where he’d gone that fine evening.

“Why, to France, of course,” answered the baby tiger, ever so politely.  “Thank you ever so much for asking.”  And then the baby tiger curled up, and went to sleep.

fin

[Yeah, I don’t what the hell I was going for there either.  But it sounded cool, so I just ran with it.  Maybe your kids will like it too.]

The Great Red Dragon

Sometimes I get a wild hair to reread something I’ve read before.  Generally I take myself up on this proposition.  A few nights ago, as I was going to bed, I had a sudden desire to reread Hannibal.  Dunno why; something about the way Harris describes the inner workings of Lecter’s brain is just cool.

But of course if I want to reread Hannibal, first I need to reread Silence of the Lambs.  And, if I want to reread Silence of the Lambs, I need to reread Red Dragon.

I never read Red Dragon until after I’d read Silence of the Lambs, and I never read Silence of the Lambs until after I’d watched Jonathan Demme’s excellent adaptation of it.  Typically, I find movie versions of full-length novels to be inadequate (unless the novel is crap, in which case the movie can be superior), but both movie and book in this case are top notch.  The acting in the movies is one of the high points: the ever-dependable Sir Anthony Hopkins is the quintessential Lecter, of course, and I don’t even mind the change in casting for Starling.  I just think of Jodie Foster as the young, hopeful Clarice, and Julianne Moore as the older, jaded Clarice.  Works out well.

Of course, Red Dragon is a bit lesser known (both the book and the movie), but there’s a lot to be said for both.  On the cinematic side, Ed Norton is certainly always dependable, and Harvey Keitel makes a smidge better Crawford than Scott Glenn.  But honestly, it’s the supporting cast that makes the movie for me: I can’t read about Freddy Lounds without seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman in my head, and Reba will always be Emily Watson to me.  (Interestingly, there is a much earlier take on Red Dragon called Manhunter, but it doesn’t work nearly as well, despite the fun of watching a pre-CSI William Petersen as Will Graham.  I mean, I like Brian Cox, but Hannibal Lecter, he ain’t.)

On the literary side, Will Graham is an interesting character.  He’s perhaps not as enduring as Clarice Starling, which is probably why he was replaced in the later books, but there’s a fascinating aspect to figuring out how his brain works.  There’s less Lecter, and more Crawford, than we would see later, but I’m okay with that.  Introducing Lecter as almost a background character just whets the appetite for Silence (where he’s still not the primary killer), and finally Hannibal, which is the ultimate goal.  And Crawford is an interesting character is his own right who’s fun to read; this is required background to understanding him in Silence, I’d say.  The plot is strong, the starring killer is both terrifying and strangely sympathetic, and the tension is worked up very well, which Harris would only perfect in his later works.

So I’m rereading Red Dragon.  I’m almost done with it, in fact (all Harris’ novels are quick reads).  You know what’s striking me most particularly this time around?  How really utterly old the book is.  Makes me feel old.  But mainly what I’m getting is a contrast with how much the genre has evolved since then, quite possibly because of Harris’ early efforts.

Simple example: nowhere is the phrase “serial killer” used in the book.  When Harris needs something to call Lecter, he uses “mass murderer.”  Today, we’d only use that for someone who kills multiple people at one time, or one after another on a spree.  Although the phrase was supposedly invented in the 70s, apparently it wasn’t common parlance when Red Dragon was written in 1981.

Another indication is the way in which Graham is treated.  Remember: Graham is not a psychiatrist or psychologist ... he has no formal training at all, because there are no profilers, no concept of profiling as a way to approach criminals.  The only time “profiling” is mentioned in the book, in fact, is in reference to profiling the victims.¹  The type of behavior we’re used to seeing on shows like Criminal Minds was still something strange and fascinating: the way people look at Graham, the way they stare at him, or fidget uncomfortably in his presence, reveals that what Graham is doing is completely outside their experience.  Even Crawford seems in awe of him, and perhaps a little unnerved by him.

It’s also interesting to me that this is the earliest book I can think of where we find out who the killer is very early.  Most crime novels that I’m familiar with from the 70s and before are classic whodunits— the point is to figure out who committed the crime.  But Red Dragon follows what is now almost more commonplace these days: we know who the killer is from the beginning (or very early on at least), and the tension in the novel comes from flashing back and forth between killer and detective, as they circle ever closer to each other.  I suppose this would be what Wikipedia calls an “inverted detective story”, and it claims numerous instances before 1981, but it seems to me these were the exceptions: Agatha Christie’s novels were all whodunits, and even going back to Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s Dupin, the audience didn’t know the killer before the end.  And some of the examples that Wikipedia cites (such as Dial M for Murder) are vastly different from the style of Harris’ novels.  Can we credit (or blame) Red Dragon (and, ultimately, Silence of the Lambs) for the invention of the profiler-vs-serial-killer story that we’ve now seen again and again: Copycat and Se7en and The Bone Collector, Criminal Minds and Touching Evil and Dexter, Kiss the Girls and The Blue Nowhere and The Alienist.  And those are just the ones I actually liked ... according to Serial Murderers and their Victims, films depicting serial killers jumped from 23 in the 80s to over 150 in the 90s, and over 270 in the 00s.  And that’s not even considering what I’m sure is a similar rise in books and TV series.  Was Red Dragon an early model for this new subgenre?

There are some other fun anachronisms that I don’t remember standing out so starkly the last time I read it.  There’s a reference to attendence being up at drive-ins.²  A character refers to Hispanics as “chicanos.”³  Firemen wear asbestos suits.⁴  And I can only assume that the term “guest star” wasn’t in as common use as it is today, because Dolarhyde’s reference to guest stars reads as rather disorienting now.⁵  But that’s going to be tough to avoid with any contemporary setting.  The march of technology inevitably makes many plot devices irrelevant (see, e.g., TV Tropes’ discussion on cell phones).  But these are pretty minor; overall, Red Dragon holds up remarkably well for being written in the cusp between 70s and 80s.

This has been an enjoyable reread, and I’m looking forward to moving on to the next two books in Harris’ trilogy.⁶  The curious feeling of dislocation I get when reading it reminds me that there was a time when serial killers were fresh and interesting subjects for novelization, unlike nowadays when it’s old hat.  Of course, as I mentioned above, I actually like all those particular serial killers books and movies, despite the plot device being hackneyed at this point.  I think we owe Harris a debt for opening up a new sandbox for authors and filmmakers to play in.  I look forward to seeing what new fictional serial killers will be spawned from Hannibal Lecter’s fascinating mold.


[Update: I just finished the book this morning.  I noted there was a significant difference in the endings between the book and movie that I hadn’t remembered.  Obviously I can’t discuss this without revealing spoilers, but I would encourage anyone both reading (or rereading) and watching (or rewatching) to think carefully about those differences and what they respectively mean for the character of Graham.  I think the differences in impact are pretty big.]

__________

1 Chapter 34.

2 Chapter 32.

3 Chapter 31.

4 Chapter 50.

5 Chapter 20.

6 The prequel, Hannibal Rising, is also good, but I probably won’t reread that one this time around.

Proscription Drugs

I believe that we, as human beings, like to simplify things.

The truth is, we live in a complex world.  The laws of physics that we know about are far beyond what most of us can comprehend, and most physicists agree that we don’t know all of them yet.  The intricacies of the human body are no less baffling to all but the most learned biochemists and neurologists and geneticists, and, there again, there are still mysteries which counfound even them.  History is full of factual ambiguity; philosophy is full of moral ambiguity; literature is full of contextual ambiguity ... is it any wonder that we need to find a way to reduce things, simply to cope with living in the universe we find ourselves in?

Of course, the danger when simplifying is that we may oversimplify.  I’ve discussed before how we “know” that there is no black and white in the world, and yet stubbornly persist on perceiving most things in absolute terms such as “true” and “false.”  (In fact, you might even go far as to say our view of balance is itself a paradox.  But that’s straying too far afield from my point.)  Let’s take a field at random ... oh, let’s say ... English grammar.

How many of you out there know that it is wrong to split an infinitive?  Go on, raise your hands proudly and be counted.  You know the rules of grammar, right?  You were taught this stuff in school.  Splitting infinitives is just one of those things which is downwright wrong.

Of course, “right” and “wrong” would be just like “black” and “white” ... right?  And we know there’s no black and white in the world ... right?

Now let me ask you this: for those of you who didn’t raise your hand about the split infinitive being wrong, why not?  Did you trot out that chestnut about the English language contantly evolving?  Don’t get me wrong, that’s true, but what it implies is that splitting infinitives used to be wrong, but now it’s okay.  And I’m not sure I agree with that.

Wikipedia, of course, is pleased to present us with a history of the issue, and the executive precis is that not only is there no rule against splitting infinitives today, there never has been.  Some folks came along and said they didn’t like it, and gave some great examples of instances where it really is quite awful to do.  But somehow we took “here’s a technique which is often abused and needs to be carefully examined” and turned it into “never do this!”  We oversimplified.

What brought this to my mind today was reading an online post from someone (whom I greatly respect) who dismissed a suggested wording change because it used the passive voice.  And we all know that passive voice is wrong, don’t we?  After all, Microsoft Word marks it as a grammar error, so it must be wrong.  Except it’s not.  Passive voice isn’t wrong.  It can be used very poorly, I’ll grant you that ... but isn’t that true of practically any grammatical construction?

This one in particular dates to the classic Strunk & White.  They gave us all sorts of great advice on how to write more clearly.  Except that most of it was pretty bad advice, unfortunately.  And, if you’re not the sort of person who’s so inclined to click on perfectly good links that I drop into my blog posts, let me quote you the most important sentence of the article, at least as regards the proscription on passive voice: “Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses.”  That’s right folks: in the section of Strunk & White that tells you why you shouldn’t be using the passive voice, only 25% of their “bad examples” are even passive themselves.  And this is a book that many people regard as definitive, in terms of grammatical correctness!

But, regardless of the correctness of the examples, the point is that even Strunk & White don’t say “passive voice is wrong.”  They say “it should be avoided, wherever possible.”  If you want my opinion, even that’s too strong a statement, but let’s overlook that for now.  How did we get to the point where, in a discussion about what the best wording for something might be, the very thought of using a passive voice construction is dismissed with such casual prejudice?  Not even worthy of consideration?

In another discussion (same web site, different interlocutor, far less respect), someone chastised me for ending a sentence with a preposition.  I cheerfully responded with the quote, commonly attributed to Winston Churchill (although most likely apocryphally), that that was “nonsense up with which I would not put.”  The response, given in some distress, was that Churchill was known to suffer from “mental illness” (which is utterly irrelevant, of course, whether true or not), followed by a plea to “save the language.”

Seriously?

Ending a sentence with a preposition is not only incontrovertibly wrong, but so utterly wrong as to spell the doom of the English language as a whole?

No, unfortunately, it’s not even wrong at all.  This “rule” stems from a fellow named Robert Lowth, author of A Short Introduction to English Grammar, and, once again, even he doesn’t say “never do it.”  He says, in fact: “This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style.”  See?  Not “wrong.”  Just “sounds better the other way.”  In his opinion.  As a clergyman.  Who wrote “an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to” in a sentence about not ending things with prepositions.

I could even point you to several other lists of mythical grammatical rules such as these, as well as many others (don’t start a sentence with a conjunction, never use double negatives, etc), but the point is that, even when the proscription doesn’t reach the level of “rule,” we still can’t resist stating it as an absolute.

Let’s take the case of adverbs.  Mark Twain says “I am dead to adverbs ... they mean absolutely nothing to me.”  Graham Greene called them “beastly” and said they were “far more damaging to a writer than an adjective.”  Elmore Leonard has started a “War on Adverbs” and says “to use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin”; Stephen King apparently concurs when he notes that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and that by the time “you see them for the weeds they really are” it’s too late.  Because of these types of opinions, any number of web sites will tell you that you should never use adverbs or that you should ruthlessly expunge all of them from your prose.

Of course “never” is an adverb, as is “ruthlessly.”

For that matter, all four of the authors I quoted above, railing against adverbs, use adverbs themselves ... in fact, there are adverbs in all four quotes.  As with the proscription against the passive voice, the first problem with advising people to get rid of all their adverbs is that most people can’t identify them.  “Very” is an adverb, as is “always,” or “far,” or “sometimes,” or even “not.”  Imagine trying to write a piece of prose of any appreciable length without using the word “not.”  No doubt you could do it, as an exercise, but it would be painful, and your piece would most likely sound tortured in at least a couple of places.

Getting rid of all adverbs is such a patently ridiculous idea that some of the smarter know-it-alls have scaled back their advice.  “Not all the adverbs,” they hasten to clarify.  “Just the -ly ones.”  So, you know, just get rid of all those ”-ly” words.  Like, you know: friendly, silly, lovely, beastly, deathly.  Those sorts.

Except those are all adjectives.

Yes, that’s right: when J.K. Rowling was criticized for an overuse of adverbs, for the sin of putting one right there in the title of her final Harry Potter book, it was a bit of an embarrasment to realize that “Deathly” was actually an adjective, modifying the noun “Hallows.”  At least I hope that author had the good grace to be embarrassed over the faux pas.

In some cases the advice gets watered down to the point where people tell you to get rid of all your adverbs that end in -ly unless they make the sentence better.  But, at that point, the advice has little to do with adverbs, and should instead apply to every word in your prose.

Personally, I love adverbs.  Sure, overuse of them is bad.  Overuse of anything is bad: that’s built into the definition of “overuse.”  Blanket statements about expunging them (ruthlessly or not) are just moronic (even if they do come from one of my most treasured literary idols).

But, as always, it is our human nature to want to simplify the “rule” to make it easier to remember.  What’s simpler? “don’t overuse adverbs, or use them in cases where a stronger verb would serve the purpose equally well, or use them redundantly, or attach them too often to ‘he said’ tags”? or “don’t use adverbs”?  What’s easier to teach: “don’t split an infinitive when the number or quality of the words between the ‘to’ and the verb cause the infinitive itself to be weakened,” or “never split an infinitive”?  What’s the cleaner aphorism: “don’t use the passive voice when the agent is known and the active voice is stronger, unless you specifically want to de-emphasize the agent, but not merely as a means to avoid responsibility for the agent or to pretend that there is no agent at all” or “don’t use passive voice because MS Word underlines it in green”?

And so we take a complex but useful piece of advice and turn it into something simple and profoundly useless.  We take a reasoned approach that glories in balance (and occasionally even paradox) and make it black and white: do this, don’t do that.

It makes it much easier to be able to correct other people with all our mistaken impressions.

What's in a Title?

or, Feminist Manifestos in Swedish Crime Thrillers

I just finished reading the Millenium trilogy for the second time.  When you read things for the first time, you have to put a lot of energy into just understanding what’s going on.  But when you reread, you get to look beyond the basics of the plot, the character development, the setting exploration, and so forth.  That’s when you really get to think about the themes.

Now, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with “themes” in fiction, which perhaps I’ll explore in a future post.  For now, let’s just just say that, when I’m a writer, I don’t bother trying to put themes in everything I write.  But, when I’m a reader, I can’t resist looking for those themes, even if I’m reading my own work where I know damn well there oughtn’t be any themes, ’cause I didn’t bother putting any in.  This is sort of like how, when you’re driving, you curse those ignorant pedestrians who just blithely step out in front of you, and then, once you get out of the car and start walking, you curse all the moronic motorists who don’t have the good sense to stop when you step off the curb.

So when I read I look for themes, even though as a writer I don’t really believe in them.  And I usually find them.  In the Millenium trilogy, the themes aren’t exactly subtle, but I was struck by how much the original title of the first book would have been more appropos: Men Who Hate Women.

For those who haven’t read these books, I’ll try to keep my comments spoiler-free, since spoilers aren’t necessary for the point I want to make anyway.  (Of course, if you go around clicking links in this post, then you’re on your own.)  Basically, the trilogy consists of three books: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.  Well, those are the English titles anyway.  It turns out that the original titles in Swedish would translate into something like Men Who Hate Women, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Aircastle that Was Blown Up.  Now, that last one is a bit clumsy (when translated), granted.  It’s apparently because we don’t have a great approximation of the Swedish concept of “aircastle,” although the English expression “building castles in the air” gives us a hint of what it means.  Some Wikipedia editor has suggested that a good translation might be “The Pipe Dream that Blew Up.” Still a bit clumsy, in my opinion.  All in all, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” isn’t a bad choice at all.

But how about “Men Who Hate Women”?  What’s wrong with that one?  Couldn’t be more clear, it seems.  And it has two major advantages over “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.”

The first (and less important) is that, if you were to go along with “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” the titles would then somewhat mirror the structure of the trilogy.  Your typical trilogy is really one big story arc that’s just been stretched out across three books.  But the Millenium trilogy is a bit different.  The characters and setting are very consistent across all three books, but, in terms of plot, the first book is really a self-contained story, while the second two books are one big story.  In fact, coming to the end of the second book is somewhat like those cliffhanger season enders of your favorite TV shows.  If you’re prepared enough to have purchased the third book ahead of time, there’s just no way you can put down The Girl Who Played with Fire and not immediately pick up the next installment.  It’s a pretty clever structure, actually.  It means that the first book of the trilogy allows you a gentle introduction to the characters and the world they inhabit, while not having to bother with setting up the important plot points (that’s relegated to the first third of the second book, which is actually somewhat slow going; once that part is over, the remaining book and two-thirds takes off like a shot).  But you wouldn’t want to have a book that does nothing but introduce characters and setting, right?  So Stieg Larsson creates a whole separate plot to keep you engaged.  The first book in the Millenium trilogy reminds me of the old Bill Cosby line: “Now, I told you that story so I could tell you this one.” So, a set of trilogy titles where the last two of the three follow a pattern, making them similar, but the first one doesn’t, making it stand out somewhat, would be very appropriate, all in all.

But the larger reason is that this is really what the book—nay, the whole triology—is about: men who hate women.  Wikipedia tells us that Larsson witnessed a gang rape when he was a teenager, and was thereafter haunted by his inability to go to her aid (or reluctance, if you prefer, but I think a 15-year-old kid should generally be forgiven for not jumping on a gang of violent rapists).  This, opines an unknown Wikipedia editor, “inspired the theme of sexual violence against women in his books.” It’s safe to say that there’s a theme of sexual violence against women in the books, and that’s why Men Who Hate Women is such a perfect title.  But I’ll go farther: it’s not just about men who hate womena, it’s about men who marginalize women, men who condescend to women, men who ignore women.  It’s about men who think women are inferior, and the things they do every day, which range from the banal to the sensationalistic, to put them down.  Nearly every female character in the series, from the major to the minor, faces some level of discrimination from male colleagues: Lisbeth Salander, the series’ true hero (Mikael Blomkvist is really just an author stand-in, in classic Mary Sue fashion), takes the brunt of it, certainly, but look at the others.  Monica Figuerola has to put up with derision from her peers because she’s a tall strong woman.  Miriam Wu is accused by the police of being a dangerous deviant because she’s a lesbian.  Sonja Modig is subject to all sorts of ridiculous prejudice.  And others, such as Harriet Vanger, are in nearly as bad a position as Lisbeth herself.  Even Erika Berger has to suffer through a largely unnecessary subplot, seemingly just so we can learn that even the editor in chief of Millenium is not immune to male condescension.

So it seems to me very clear that there is a strong feminist message in the Millenium trilogy.  (If you want a competing viewpoint, you could check out this blog post; I disagree with many of her conclusions, but she has a major advantage over me in that she is an actual woman.)  Thus, it seems that Men Who Hate Women is not just an appropriate title, but a perfect one.  Why was it changed?

Well, a Publisher’s Weekly article gives some insight into the US publishers’ thinking, but note that they were discussing whether to change it back to Men Who Hate Women; the original change to The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo was made for the UK version.  Not much official insight on why that was done, although there are some apparent comments by the English version translator (although certainly that can be considered non-authoritative on several levels).  The common guess that everyone makes is, “marketing.” After all—so goes the reasoning—who would want to buy a book called “Men Who Hate Women”?  Sounds like a self-help book.

In 1997, J. K. Rowling published the first of the Harry Potter books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  If you are American, you may not even realize that that is the proper title of the book; you almost certainly think that the first HP novel is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  But what you don’t realize is that Scholastic, who bought the American publishing rights, decided that no self-respecting American kid would buy a book with “Philosopher” in the title.  What is that, some sort of textbook?  No way dude!  American kids, of course, are too stupid to realize what the philosopher’s stone is, or to have any concept of the history of alchemy.  J. K. Rowling has said that she regrets agreeing to this change.  Had she but known she would soon be the world’s richest author, she could have told ’em to go stick it.

For a sillier example, IMDB tells us that the original title of Zombieland was “Another Day in Zombieland,” but the studio was worried people would think it was a sequel.

If you want to know why marketing is destroying our society, you don’t need to listen to me: go ask Craig Ferguson.  But it does seem a shame that marketing has so low an opinion of our intelligence that they pre-pablumize even our book and movie titles for us.  Here’s an author gone and put out a perfectly lovely book, just for us to read, and put a perfectly lovely title on it, which sums up all its themes and aspirations perfectly, but we have to change all that, so people will realize that they want to buy it.  And I don’t want to lay all the blame on the advertising executives.  I think the lawyers bear some responsibility as well: often titles (and many other things about a book or movie) are changed preemptively to avoid legal hassles.  That is, they are changed not because someone has been sued.  They are changed because someone might be sued.  You know, just in case.  Similar to my theory on how political correctness results in self-censorship, here it seems like we don’t really have to worry about people mucking up our entertainment for us because we’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.

I do think it’s important to know the proper names of things.  Original names are often lost, but they signify something.  Does not semiotics teach us that all a name is is a signifier?  It’s an arbitrary sign that we hang onto a concept in an attempt to clarify it, to communicate it, to assign meaning to it.  The name of something as given it by its creator is surely more meaningful than a name assigned after the fact by someone attempting to sell that concept to as many people as possible.  Although I suppose you could argue that all advertising is communication, really.  Well, sorta communication.  Demented and sad communication, but communication.  Right?

There are good reasons to change titles.  “The Aircastle that Was Blown Up” definitely needed a change.  But “Men Who Hate Women” was pretty spot on.  I’m a bit sad to have lost it.