Might if I frame that and put it on my office door?

Re: Moby Dick. Those who think it too long and digressive are nuts – the descriptions of the whaling life are essential and critical elements of the art. They make it real and vivid. Editors who would cut those elements would want to publish Les Miserables and War and Peace as pamphlets. I, on the other hand, would have published Gravity’s Rainbow as a textbook with humorous and other asides.

Dan Brown is also tapping into one of the oldest successful genres of writing, the divine mystery. A claim that something supernatural might exist, with clues and an absence of a quick resolution attracts attention, and an easy reading level makes works like his available to readers who don’t have access to more prestigious treatments of similar ideas.

Re Moby Dick. If a modern editor had gotten their hands on it before publishing it, it would have been much shorter and a better work of literature. I’m afraid that instead, my copy ended up as a friend’s ballistics experiment. Moby Dick is proof positive that rough drafts should not be published until they are edited. However, given the dearth of early American authors, it is still read today in dramatic proof of the fact that culturally, first in time works can have disproportionate impact.

While that might be true, it is important to point out that there is less misogyny in Sweden than almost anywhere else. Of course, where it is really bad, people who complain about it get killed, so there is a bias here. (One could almost say that criticism is necessary where it is not allowed and vice versa.) Painting a picture of Sweden from detective novels is probably even less of a good idea than painting a picture of the US from television sitcoms. In recent years, attempts to eradicate misogyny and lack of equal rights have in some cases caused the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction.

Mon semblable, mon frere! I forced myself to finish the first of these as a courtesy to the person who gave it to me, but the whole set are now sitting in a charity shop and the later ones are uncracked. And I speak as one who loves trashy crime fiction.

Over and above the unnecessary details of the surrounding hardware, I couldn’t take the unnecessary details of abusive misogyny. I’m aware that Larsen intended the books to stand as a condemnation of the misogyny prevalent in Swedish society, but you can only get away with doing this by writing loving and lingering depictions of rape if you’re an extremely skillful writer. Larsen was not. If your principal characters are Gary Stu and Manic Pixie Dream Girl, you end up writing extremely unpleasant porn, and your intentions count for nothing.

Yeah, it’s basically giving your reader’s ego a blowjob.

I ended up reading The Da Vinci Code while in hospital undergoing chemotherapy, so that might colour my perception somewhat. (At the same time, I read Light, which I just didn’t get at all (I don’t mean the various allusions, but rather the point of the book itself).) While it contains many factual errors (not just the historical woo, but basic stuff which one should get right in a book such as this, even if it is not essential to the plot), as light entertainment (I hope it is not intended as anything else), it is not “bad”, whatever that means.

Of course, popularity and quality are mostly orthogonal. However, there are people who think it is stupid to buy music because it is in the charts but determine whom to hire on the basis of bibliometry.

It is certainly possible (don’t know whether that’s the case here, though) that the original is good and the translation bad. Good translations are expensive: one has to know both languages well and know how to write (and, for technical translations, have an understanding of the subject as well).

Note that the titles of the first and third books are not literal translations. The first should be Men who hate women. The last, Luftslottet som sprängdes, is a bit more difficult to translate. The last word means “was blown up”, i.e. “was destroyed in an explosion”. The first is “castle in the air” which connotes wishful thinking without basis (not sure if it has this connotation in English).

There is a long tradition in Sweden not just of detective stories (in the broadest sense) but also in using them as a means of social commentary.

Of course, the reason for the remake is that most folks in the USA don’t want to see movies which were not made in the USA. Since Larsson’s books are well known, people knew about the Swedish movies (is “film” appropriate if it is done digitally?). However, many other foreign films have US remakes. When I’ve seen both, the remake is usually worse.

Blame Poe, or better yet, blame Conan Doyle. If an essential aspect of drama is that it is a story about the most important event in someone’s life, melodrama and genre negate that completely. Hence, the sequel. Hence, the same central hero, again and again. Genre is a worthy substitute for religion since the hero lives on and on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for genre and genre writers. It’s better, for one’s health and popularity, to be an Umberto Eco or to have been a Henry James than it is to have been a Franz Kafka.

Agreed.

“So what is it that they do have?”

They (not just this story, but all lesser-grade literature) have an appeal for a good many particular reasons, but all of them have this in common: they’re habit-forming. In other words, they are addictive in the same way empty stimulation is continuously sought out, as in a pleasant sensation. Novelty, for no reason other than the sake of shaking up the startle relex, is but one example.

“They are undoubtedly doing something right, and I would like to know what it is.”

There’s the incorrect assumption: that they must therefore be “doing something right”. They are simply providers, and t-yeah, they rake in the bucks alright. But it doesn’t take much sophistication to recognize what people are attracted to and to keep them in good supply as the demand dictates. The error is in thinking that they’ve figured out something profound about human taste which you aren’t aware of. It isn’t aesthetic taste, a cognitive phenomenon generated in large part by the frontal lobes which is being solicited. Its the basist possible appeal to the appetite, the hunger-center, which needs no conscious consideration which the brain-stem or reptilian cortex cannot provide. The error is in thinking that success must indicate the application of an unknown nutritve factor of aesthetic quality, instead of something as banal and unsavoury as, say, that near-rancid and re-used oil used to fry french fries at the local fast-food makes them so irresistable some can’t eat just one. Of course, the demand is insatiable.