Needless to say there are other reasons why Kurt Wallander has attracted so many readers. But I think the fact that he is always changing is crucial. There is a major but simple reason for this: I can only write books that I would want to read myself. And a book in which I either know all there is to know about the main character after just one page, or realize that nothing is going to change him or her in any way for the next thousand pages, is not a book I would have the patience to read.
You attract a lot of friends in the world of art. Sherlock Holmes still receives letters written to him in Baker Street, London. I get letters, e-mails and telephone calls from many countries. I am stopped in the streets of Gothenburg just as often as in Hamburg. The questions people ask me are friendly, and I try to answer them as best I can.
Most of the people who contact me are women who hope to cure Wallander’s loneliness. I seldom answer those letters. Nor do I think that the writers expect an answer. People are sensible, despite everything. You can’t live with literary characters no matter how much you might like to. You can have them as imaginary friends that you can call up when you need them. One of the tasks of art is to provide people with companions. I have seen people in paintings who I hope to meet in the street one of these days. There are characters in books and films who become so alive that we turn a corner and expect to see them standing there. Wallander is one of those characters who hides behind corners. But he never emerges and shows himself. Not to me, at least.
I was once almost lost for words. It was 1994. There was to be a referendum in Sweden about whether or not we should join the EU. I was walking along Vasagatan in Stockholm when an elderly man stopped by my side. He was very friendly and well mannered, and asked if I was who he thought I was. I said yes. He then asked the following question:
“I wonder if Kurt Wallander will vote for or against the EU?”
His question was serious. I had no reason to doubt that. His curiosity was genuine. But how should I answer? I had never thought about it, of course. I tried desperately to think whether or not I knew if the Swedish police force as a whole was in favor of membership or not. In the end I said: “I think his vote will be the opposite of mine.” And I walked away before the friendly man had an opportunity to ask a follow-up question.
On that occasion I voted against membership. And so I am convinced that Wallander voted in favor.
A question I am often asked is what books Wallander reads.
It is a good question, because it is difficult to answer. I sometimes think he reads the books I write. But I’m not entirely convinced.
Unfortunately I don’t think Wallander is much of a reader—and what he does read is unlikely to be poetry. But I imagine that he likes reading about history, both factual books and historical novels. And I think he has always been fascinated by books about Sherlock Holmes.
Some people think that what I am about to say is completely untrue. But it is true. It is not a myth. It really did happen.
About fifteen years ago I started writing a book that would have Wallander as the main character. I wrote about a hundred pages, which is the point at which I start to believe seriously that what I am writing is destined to be a book.
But it didn’t turn out that way. After a few more pages I gave up and burned—literally—every page that had been printed out. I also erased the computer file, and when I bought a new computer shortly afterward I destroyed the old hard disc. I think I can say with confidence that there are no ones and zeros left that could be used to re-create those hundred pages.
I didn’t finish writing the book because I was uncomfortable with it. I didn’t have the strength. It was about the abuse of children. Now, of course, I realize that I ought to have written it. Child abuse is one of the most unpleasant crimes in the world nowadays. And Sweden is no exception. But that is precisely why I became so uncomfortable with it. I simply couldn’t cope.
I understand that people query the truth of what I have just maintained. I have described a lot of things in my books that could certainly be considered horrendous. And I have no hesitation in saying that I found it extremely difficult to put a lot of pages down on paper. But of course I am aware that what happens in everyday life is always much worse than what I describe in my books. My imagination can never exceed reality. And so, sometimes, I must also write about disgusting things so as not to become divorced from credibility.
After The White Lioness, I realized that the Wallander phenomenon was something I could exploit to make the most of what I had to say. At the same time I also realized that I needed to be afraid of the character I had created. From now on there would always be a danger of my forgetting to write my novels to be performed by a full orchestra, and instead to concentrate on his horn solos. What I always needed to bear in mind was: the story is the most important thing. Always. And then to ask myself if Wallander would be a suitable solo instrument to enhance this particular story, or not.
Over and over again I would tell myself: now I’m going to do something different. I wrote texts in which he didn’t appear—novels that were not about crimes, plays for the theater. Then I could return to him, drop him, write something different, then return to him again.
All the time I could hear a voice deep down inside me saying: “You must make sure that you drop him at the right moment.” I was well aware that one day I might pick up Wallander, stare hard at him and ask myself: “What can I think of for him to do now?” A point when he rather than the story was the most important ingredient. That would be the time to drop him. I think I can say in all honesty that Wallander has never been more important than the actual story.
Wallander never became a burden.
But there was also another warning alarm ticking away inside me. I must avoid starting to write as a sort of routine. If I did that, I would have been caught in a dangerous trap. It would be showing insufficient respect for both my readers and myself. If that happened, readers would pay good money for a book and soon discover that the author had grown tired and was simply going through the motions. As far as I was concerned, my writing would have been transformed into something to which I was no longer fully committed.
And so I stopped while it was still fun. The decision to write my last book about Wallander crept up on me slowly. It was a few years before I was ready to write the final full stop.
It was actually my wife Eva who wrote that final full stop. I had written the last word, and I asked her to press the “full stop” key. She did so, and the story was finished.
And what now, afterward? When I am working on totally different books? I am often asked if I miss Wallander. I answer truthfully. “I’m not the one who will miss him. It’s the reader.”
I never think about Wallander. For me he is somebody who exists in my head. The three actors who have played him on the television and in films have portrayed their own highly individual versions in brilliant fashion. It has been a great joy for me.
But I don’t miss him. And I didn’t repeat the mistake made by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who halfheartedly killed off Mr. Holmes. That last Sherlock Holmes story is one of the least successful. Presumably because deep down, Doyle was doing something that he knew he would regret.
I am occasionally stopped in the street and asked if I’m not going to write another one, despite everything. And what will happen to his daughter Linda who also became a police officer? Didn’t I once say she was going to play the leading role? Didn’t I write the first book about her, Before the Frost, ten years ago?
I don’t want to exclude the possibility that there might be one or possibly even several books in which Linda Wallander plays the leading role, but I am not sure. At my age, the limits of what I can do have narrowed. As always, time is short—but more scarce now than it has ever been. I have to make increasingly definite decisions about what I shall not do. That is the only way to use the time I have—and nobody knows how long that is—to do what I want to do most of all.
But I
don’t regret a single line of the thousands of lines I wrote about Wallander. I think the books live on because in many ways they are a reflection of what happened in Sweden and in Europe in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. They are novels of Swedish unrest, as I used to call the series of books about Wallander. How long the texts will continue to live on depends on quite different factors. On what happens in the world, and what happens to reading habits.
The passage of time is in many ways bewildering. I wrote at least half of the first Wallander book on an old Halda typewriter. Nowadays I can hardly remember what tapping the keys of a typewriter was like.
The book world is changing dramatically. It always has done, but one should bear in mind that it is the distribution of books that is changing, not the books themselves. The basic idea of reading a book is holding in your hands two covers containing pages. To be sure, more and more people are going to bed with their e-readers, but traditional books with paper pages will never disappear. Without being reactionary in any way, I am convinced that more and more people will go back to reading traditional books.
Whether or not I am right, only time will tell.
In any case, my story about Kurt Wallander has now come to an end. Wallander will soon retire and cease to be a police officer. He will wander around in his twilight land with his black dog Jussi. How much longer he will remain in the land of the living, I have no idea. That is presumably something he will decide for himself.
Henning Mankell
Spring 2013
Henning Mankell, An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery
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