Today marks the publication of Eva Gabrielsson’s “‘There Are Things I Want You to Know’ About Stieg Larsson and Me,” a memoir of life with the Millennium-trilogy author by the person who knew him best: his live-in companion of 32 years.
I would like to thank Gabrielsson for confirming my widely derided theory that Larsson was an extreme coffee drinker even by Swedish standards.
Some background: Last year, I reviewed the final book of the trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” for the Book Review. I used my write-up as an occasion to note how “pathological” Larsson’s characters are in their almost nonstop coffee drinking. And I speculated that Larsson — who had clearly based Mikael Blomkvist, the trilogy’s heroic and relentlessly coffee-swilling male protagonist, on himself — might have “overcaffeinated himself to death.”
This caused quite a kerfuffle among Times readers. Swedes, Swedish-Americans and residents of Swedish-American neighborhoods wrote in to say that round-the-clock coffee consumption was utterly normal in Sweden and in Swedish enclaves, nothing “pathological” about it. I countered by saying that was all well and good, but “Larsson’s coffee fetish transcended even the Scandinavian norm.”
I eagerly awaited the publication of Gabrielsson’s book to see if she would weigh in on the subject. And indeed she does on the very first page! “If I had to single out just one thing in common between Stieg Larsson and Mikael Blomkvist,” she writes, “it would surely be their impressive daily quota of coffee. Stieg and I shared this addiction, which dates from our childhood. … In the course of our 32 years together, I think we were largely responsible for the Swedish coffee industry’s handsome profits!”
I don’t think proof gets any more unequivocal than that. Coffee was to Larsson what alcohol was to Charles Bukowski: a muse, a fuel, an intrinsic part of his authorial landscape.
I would like to thank Gabrielsson for confirming my widely derided theory that Larsson was an extreme coffee drinker even by Swedish standards.
Some background: Last year, I reviewed the final book of the trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” for the Book Review. I used my write-up as an occasion to note how “pathological” Larsson’s characters are in their almost nonstop coffee drinking. And I speculated that Larsson — who had clearly based Mikael Blomkvist, the trilogy’s heroic and relentlessly coffee-swilling male protagonist, on himself — might have “overcaffeinated himself to death.”
This caused quite a kerfuffle among Times readers. Swedes, Swedish-Americans and residents of Swedish-American neighborhoods wrote in to say that round-the-clock coffee consumption was utterly normal in Sweden and in Swedish enclaves, nothing “pathological” about it. I countered by saying that was all well and good, but “Larsson’s coffee fetish transcended even the Scandinavian norm.”
I eagerly awaited the publication of Gabrielsson’s book to see if she would weigh in on the subject. And indeed she does on the very first page! “If I had to single out just one thing in common between Stieg Larsson and Mikael Blomkvist,” she writes, “it would surely be their impressive daily quota of coffee. Stieg and I shared this addiction, which dates from our childhood. … In the course of our 32 years together, I think we were largely responsible for the Swedish coffee industry’s handsome profits!”
I don’t think proof gets any more unequivocal than that. Coffee was to Larsson what alcohol was to Charles Bukowski: a muse, a fuel, an intrinsic part of his authorial landscape.
