Literary detour. Eric van Lustbader keeps doing it for Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character. Now David Lagercrantz has done it for Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander aka the girl with the dragon tattoo. After the deaths of their wildly successful creators, these writers obtained permission from the estates to pen further novels about their colleagues' famous characters. It's first a stylistic challenge—the reader shouldn't notice a different writer—and then one of fluid seemingly inescapable character development whereby, spinning out from seeds left dormant or plots unfinished, one learns more of these beloved protagonists. Deeper layers of their psyche peel back. Outward exploits continue. Earlier gaps not recognized as such are filled to retroactively serve completion, deeper meaning and new connections.


Having over Christmas read Lagercrantz's first contribution to the Millenium Series, I marveled at just how seamlessly he steps into Stieg Larsson's world down to syntax, structure and secondary characters. This spotted a connection to our subject. The first author is the recorded signal, the original creator. The new writer is our system as the co-creator. This hits upon the divide between two camps on what hifi should be. One is the "open window on the recording", an oxymoron at best since nobody but the recording engineers know what the recording is. The rest of us guess through the distorted lens of our systems. The second view not only admits to the lens effect but asks whether a carefully assembled hifi cannot be more than a flawed Xerox copy machine. Such people view themselves as playback's co-creators. By implication, it makes their hardware part of the co-creative process. The recorded world and its chief protagonists are recognizable in full detail down to their tattoo on the back. Beyond that, one also should—or at least could—expect or hope to see things in a new light.