Tattoos and Shadows

Last week I wrote about my attempts to settle into L.A., and it seems a bit redundant to talk about job search woes again this week, though that is what I think about most of the time. What to do for a topic, then? I've been watching a little TV, but I'm circumspect about giving too much space to what I see there. How about a book review? I may have mentioned that I have a visitor's card to a local library that will let me check out one book at a time, but if I didn't, it's true--and for some reason I settled on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last week.

Someone recommended the book to me years ago, and I had seen the previews for the film that was made of it, but I never got around to reading it. The characters looked interesting, but I don't read a lot of suspense thrillers, which is what I suppose you would call this book. Having finished it, I have to say that I don't think I agree with the casting of the film: Daniel Craig seems too hardened and cynical for the main character, Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who runs afoul of a criminal and ends up on a kind of sabbatical, writing a family history for a wealthy industrialist. In the book, the Blomkvist character, while no Pollyanna, is painted in somewhat softer tones as a nice guy who does his best but ends up in a compromised position anyway.

The most unforgettable character in the book, is, of course, Lisbeth Salander, crack investigator, computer hacker, and social misfit who ends up helping Blomkvist solve a decades-old mystery and reopen his investigation of the criminal mastermind. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo came out in Sweden twelve years ago and has probably been read already by almost everyone except me. The only thing I can add to what everyone else has said is that I was struck by what a Hecate-like character Salander is. Hecate is probably a much less familiar figure to most people than the other Greek goddesses, shrouded as she is in mystery, darkness, and associations with magic. Salander, with her tattoos, piercings, and unconventional (not to mention off-putting) attire, personality, and habits, is an almost pure embodiment of that seldom seen goddess most associated with the black arts.

If you've ever read Greek mythology, you may have noticed a certain lack of what I would call morality in many of the gods' dealings with mortals. It's often hard to say whether the gods are "good" or "bad" because their actions often seem arbitrary--they seem to just do what they want to do, though they can sometimes be prevailed upon to assist mortals and arbitrate disagreements. They're a law unto themselves.

Hecate has an even darker profile than most of them, but is she "bad"? My sense is that because of the nature of what she does, which is to operate in darkness and concern herself with magic, with things just outside the ken of everyday concerns, most people would rather not think about her too much--until they need her. She might be the one they turn to for a potion or for matters requiring secrecy, guile, and a certain amount of ruthlessness, situations in which playing by ordinary rules won't get the job done. When this happens, most people would rather not talk about it.

That's the very definition of Salander, who operates by her own code and her own conventions; she isn't "bad" but she is certainly dangerous. She isn't motivated by petty concerns or greed, but once you make an enemy of her, she's implacable. Blomkvist is unable to figure out how she is able to find out some of the things she knows and do some of the things she does: firewalls, locks, laws, ethical conventions, and other people's opinions have no meaning for her. So, is she "bad"? A lot of people consider her so, and they certainly find her scary, but she isn't exactly amoral. She will go to great lengths to right a wrong (and when she considers something to be wrong, it usually is). She doesn't even have to be the target of the wrong but will act on someone else's behalf, without their even knowing anything about it.

The problem (or the advantage, depending on how you look at it) is that her solutions tend to be drastic as well as unlawful, but that's the Hecate coming out. She often operates in areas in which wrongs would go unpunished or even unnoticed if not for her intervention, situations in which ordinary remedies aren't available. Her actions can often be justified even as they veer into vigilantism. You sympathize with Salander and may even like her, but you're never really comfortable with her. She's just too devastatingly effective at operating in the shadows and outside the conventions that restrain most people. She's both unpredictable and uncanny.

Salander is also misunderstood by most of the people who know her, which is largely what has made her such an outlier, but the point is . . . a little bit of Hecate goes a long way. For a while, I had a plaque with Hecate's likeness on it in my bathroom, and even though I had several Buddhas and Shivas and the like scattered around because of my interest in mythology, I was never altogether comfortable with Hecate. For me, it was more a reminder that there are various forces at work in the world, whether we like them or not. I didn't bring her with me when I moved, as I decided that I'd had enough of a reminder. I'm not sure if I'll read any more of Stieg Larsson's books, either, but I'm certain I'll never forget the gothic and intransigent Lisbeth Salander. I think she has something to say to each of us.