MEGLIO SE LE GRU NON RITORNANO



Sono capitato su questo libro solo perché ho voglia di leggere ‘Satori’ di Don Winslow e ho scoperto che sono collegati: credendolo un sequel, ho voluto leggere prima ‘Shibumi’.
Poi, ho capito che ‘Satori’ è il prequel di ‘Shibumi’ e quindi questa inutile lettura potevo evitarmela. Sigh. Ma anche doppio sigh: perché, oltre che inutile, è proprio brutto.



Tante pagine per raccontare una storia molto datata che avrebbe bisogno di molte meno pagine.
Ma soprattutto avrebbe bisogno di una mano di scrittore meno banale, meno mediocre.
Più volte (in realtà, quasi sempre) mi è sembrato di essere in una di quelle barzellette da dopoguerra: c’era una volta un americano, un italiano, un inglese, un francese, un tedesco…
Per Trevanian, c’è un americano, un cinese, un francese, un basco… e via avanti con insulsaggini del genere.


Nel primo “John Wick” si vede un vigilante leggere questo romanzo.

Chissà perché ‘Shibumi’ è tenuto in così alta considerazione dai critici e dai colleghi di Trevanian.
I lettori, invece, sembrano meno entusiasti.


”The Eiger Sanction – Assassinio sull’Eiger” di e con Clint Eastwood (1975), tratto da un romanzo di Trevanian (che non leggerò).

Qualche chicca:
- L’amministratore in seconda della CIA è il Secondo Ufficiale di Collegamento Internazionale Operativo, meglio noto come SUdiCIO.
- Il calcolatore (presumo si riferisca a un elaboratore elettronico, comunemente denominato computer) collegato col sistema centrale della Casa Madre si chiama Ciccione. Un nome che viene usato a ripetizione.
- L’organizzazione da eliminare si chiama i Cinque di Monaco.
- Materiale di ricerca importante è denominato telefoto.
- Il protagonista è un semidio.
- Le donne sono oggetti, a volte appetitosi, a volte inutili.
Eccetera…

2001 Odissea nello Spazio ha 50 anni e rimane un capolavoro.
Questo libro ha 39 anni, ne dimostra cento, e non è mai stato un capolavoro.


Shibuni

He once killed a man while in a small room with 4 guards only paces away.

His mother was Russian, his father was German and he was raised by a Japanese Army general.

He can speak more than six languages including Basque.

He prefers caving to mountain climbing because it is more manly.

He is not only the world’s most deadly assassin but also the world’s most accomplished lover.

He is a genius and a mystic, a warrior and a gardener.

He is Nicholai Hel, the world’s most interesting man.

Very enjoyable book. First of all, this is really two stories: the surface story of a cool elitist professional assassin; and the second is the narrated story, told by Trevanian, with humor, wit and satire. Honestly the second story, the gem of a storyteller tale was the better. Sometimes it was high adventure and sometimes it was laugh out loud funny, as Trevanian, with a wry wink and nod, reminded the reader that this was a tall tale, have some fun with it. One footnote really was the author, making a left field comment about some of his earlier books.

I was intrigued to learn that the John Wick stories were heavily influenced by this book and in the first film, when Wick is driving onto the airstrip, the guard is reading Shibumi.

Shibumi is a demonstration of a lost art form: the armchair remembrance, the bawdy but hypnotic memoir. We’ve all known someone who could tell about a trip to the post office to buy stamps and make it fun, and Trevanian may be the world’s greatest such someone.

trevanian ile tanıştığım için inanılmaz derecede mutluyum.

bir müze, yazarın kitaplarından birinde müze soygununu detaylıca anlattıktan sonra aynı şekilde soyulmuş. bu yüzden o bölüm kitaptan çıkarılmış. yine başka kitaplarında ve şibumi'de bahsedilen ileri düzey cinsel teknikler ve hoda korosu yani "the art of improvised weaponry" tekniği ile alakalı da sansürlemeye gidilmiş. hoda "çıplak" anlamına geliyor, korosu da "öldürmek". etraftaki basit nesnelerle bir insanın hayati organlarına saldırmak üzerine kurulu bir teknik. joker'in sihirbazlık yaparak kalemi kaybettiği sahneyi hatırlattı bana.

"Bildiğin gibi Şibumi, sıradan, olağan görünümlerin altında yatan gizli üstünlükleri anlatır." ya da "Şibumi için bilgilerden geçip basitliğe varmak gerek." ibareleri şibumi felsefesinin o alçak gönüllülüğünün, mütevaziliğinin yanı sıra görünmeyen heybetini de anlatıyor.

kitapta bahsedilen go oyununu hiç merak etmedim bu arada. satranç tadında oyunlara pek kafam basmadığından muhtemelen. fakat ana karakterimiz nicholai hel'in mistik oluşu beni mistisizmi araştırmaya sevketti. ekstaz, trans ve bilumum üst bilinç durumlarıyla alakalı şeyleri okudukça he-man'in abisi çetindeki kaplan gibi zevkleniyorum..

10/10

Kitabı defalarca okuduktan sonra düşündüklerimi 2010'da böyle dillendirmişim:

Rahmetli Trevanian, Amerika'nın içi boş süper kahraman mitini eleştiriyor bu kitapta.

Nicholai'ın değme süper kahramandan daha yetenekli olduğu ortadadır; lakin bu üstün özelliklerin hiç biri Amerikan süper kahramanları gibi teknolojik aletlerle ya da bilimsel bir kaza sonucu elde edilmemiştir; her biri yoğun eğitimler veya başa çıkılması zor acılar sonucu kazanılmıştır. Nicholai'ı Nicholai yapan her özelliğin bedeli ağır bir şekilde ödenmiştir. Kazandığı üstün özelliklerin her birinin mantıklı bir sebebi vardır. Onu farklı kılan, bu yetenekleri kazanmasına yardımcı olacak olayları ardı ardına, romanlara yakışır bir sırayla yaşamış olmasıdır.

Batının değerlerine inat tamamen doğu değerleriyle eğitilen Nicholai, batının şaşalı görünümünden de uzaktır; ona dışarıdan bakıldığında sahip olduğu özelliklerin çoğu fark edilmez; çünkü o sadeliğin ve olgunluğun peşindedir, tüm yaşamını “şibumi” kavramına adar. Onun bedeni, davranışları ve sesi özündeki üstün özelliklerin sade bir yansımasıdır; Amerika’da yaratılan süper kahramanlar gibi rengarenk elbiseler ve havalı hareketlerin adamı değildir Nicholai Hel.

Felsefeye, sanata, doğaya, onura, saygıya ve daha birçok insani değere yoğun bir saygı besler. Şovenist değildir, kadınlara güç gösterisinde bulunmaz, onlara saygısızlık etmez. Çok akıllı ve kurnazdır, birçok meseleyi doğru bağlantıları ve insanları kullanarak kas ve silah gücü kullanmadan halleder.

O özel bir insandır, çoğu insanda bulunmayan üstün özelliklere sahiptir ama onu herhangi bir üstün özellikli roman kahramanıyla karşılaştırmamak gerekir; o tüm varlığıyla Amerikan kültürü eleştirisidir.

A nice read. It is one of those good books that you have to read at least once.

English: https://elifthereader.com/books/shibu...
Türkçe: https://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/s...

Fuck. I have to retract two stars and my rave review. I mean, clearly it was a rave. I'd say this book loses the plot about half way through, but to be fair, there isn't really a plot. Once the book leaves Japan and finds its home in Basque land, it rapidly becomes close to unbearable. I am afraid that whilst I savoured the first half, the second I ended up just skimming. I have way too many good books on the shelf to be spending precious time on this one.

I am leaving my half-cocked first discussion of this as it, testimony to my idiocy. It follows.


I’m only half way through, but my opinion will not change. This is a clear-as-day 5-star book and that’s from a fussy star attributor.

After having to read – or start, at least – popular best sellers of late which are so badly written: Harry P., the third volume (and the others?) of Northern Lights, the Dragon Tattoo trilogy – it is a vast relief to be reminded that a book can be both finely written and unputdownable fun, thrilling and thoughtful. It can even be propagandist, if it is done the right way.

Now that I think of it, is this a pattern: HP, NL, DT are all volumes produced ad infinitum. Shibumi could easily be like that, dragged out for ever, but instead it is one, standalone book. And boy, does it stand alone. Class of its own.

This, quoted from Trevanian’s own site:

Q: Americans are reading lots of books, but at least anecdotally it appears they are reading blockbusters and that smaller, literary titles are being pushed to the margins. Do you see a similar trend in Europe, and what impact will this have?

A: Alas, yes, it’s coming to Europe as well and it’s a great pity. A lot of excellent new writers will never get read. This is hardest on the story-tellers of America, because writers of attractively-packaged fact and history are still doing fairly well, although even these readerships are dwindling, captured by the internet and by the electronic games that consume so much of the time of the kinds of kids who used to read history and science.

The shadow of ‘literary globalization’ is falling across all of western Europe, and will hit the English-writing countries first, as English is the language of commerce, and therefore it’s the foreign language of preference for the teeming populations whose five hundred word vocabularies limit them to language on a comic book level. Hence Barbara Cartland is still the most popular English language writer in India. And I’ve heard there is a similar dumbing-down impulse at home, where a series of children’s books by a very canny English writer is the most popular read on American campuses.

Does this mean that HP, NL and DT had to be badly written? That although Shibumi was a best seller in its day, late seventies, now it would not survive, it is too intelligent and well written? The point is not that they are reading blockbusters, but that once upon a time these blockbusters were well crafted things, at least if this book is any guide. In fact, Shibumi has been an eye-opener for me. I have been sticking up for some of these books lately when clearly I should not have been. But if Manny is correct in suggesting, as Trevanian is also observing, that English is going through a period of simplification and that this is the consequence, badly written tripe being lapped up by the reading public, what a tragedy. I can’t imagine a world in which we have lost the capacity to say interesting things, because we have had the linguistic skills necessary to do so taken away by generations of illiterate facebookers and smsers.

I expect there will be more to come here after I have finished the book, but for now, I thought it was interesting to read what the author had to say later about his opinion on Israel and its neighbours:

Q:Since I first read Shibumi and then reread it twenty years later, my opinion of the Israeli-Palestinian situation has changed entirely, as a result of becoming much better informed...Has your opinion in this regard at all changed since Shibumi has been published?

A:I hope there are many Americans who can remain flexible through the fog of prejudice and fear about this issue.

Things have changed almost entirely in Israel/Palestine over the nearly thirty years since I wrote Shibumi: the underdogs have become the bullies, and intractable fundamentalists call the shots in Israel; what in Shibumi we called the Mother Company (the Petro-chemical Mafia) have inserted their creature into the White House; and the greatest potential for ecological disaster is no longer man's lazy thirst for oil, but rather his soaring over-population.

Nicholas Hel would not have lent his support to the current leaders of Israel. He would have wished the current rational leaders of Palestine all good fortune in negotiating towards peace with justice, now that Arafat is no longer in the way. (Footnote: Arafat's end has all the marks of an inside job, almost surely with the assistance of the second bureau. Israel, of course, knew what was going on, and it's likely that they informed the United States, but that's not sure. It's hard to put limits on the incompetence of American intelligence services. Each time we find a lower value, they prove they can fail even that; so Israel might not have informed us early enough for us to get our clumsy hands into things and mess them up.)

What should America do now? Using such tatters of even-handedness as we still possess, we should guide (drag, if necessary) the Israelis into as fair and honest a sharing of land and water as is possible. Then we must open our hands and carefully step back, out of Middle East affairs, turning them over to the United Nations.

I wonder when this was written, it shows an unlikely trust in the United Nations, which in my opinion, is shamefully bereft of moral purpose.

Oh, and this: I must take issue with all my friends who have reviewed this. It is not just a fun book, or a thriller. It is a very strongly felt position about how we are living and how we should live. This book manages to hammer and hammer and hammer this message home, whilst making you feel like you are 'just reading a best seller'. That he has managed to write something so entirely enjoyable whilst doing this is such a feat, I am completely in awe of it.

Kayıtsız güzelliğin solgun imajı.

I'll have to create a new bookshelf for this one called “guilty pleasures.” I read Shibumi in English many, many years ago and picked it up in Spanish recently from the bargain bin of a great bookstore here in Valencia called Paris-Valencia. I can justify reading absolutely anything in Spanish so I don't feel like an inculte for reading this half-assed spy novel. Anything to improve my Spanish. For some reason the dust jacket has a picture of an ante-bellum southern mansion on the front cover—talk about random. They could have put a photo of just about anything you could imagine and it would have made the same amount of sense (or complete lack of it).

The actual plot is pretty weak and the author's constant racist, sexist, and bigoted commentary about the lesser races—whatever the fuck those are—is annoying, but I appreciate what he tries to say with his central character, the assassin Nicholai Hel. For as outrageously silly as the book is at times, he does get the message across that human beings are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for if we only apply ourselves. Most people are just too lazy or too content with their own mediocrity. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to think that just any old homo sapiens is destined for any sort of greatness as his character is “the result of thousands of years of breeding.” Huh? All I have ever seen royalty produce are inbred goofs like Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, and Princess Di.

Then there is the Japanese minimalism which shapes the character of the protagonist. I have never particularly admired Japanese culture or values—not that I know much about them. They seem uptight and constipated to my Western way of thinking. I'd much rather look at a ratty patch of weeds than a tortuously-sculpted Japanese garden, but I can appreciate the beauty and comfort of their brand of minimalism—something the protagonist attempts to perfect in his life of Shibumi.

Shibumi, he explains, is a personal quest for “effortless perfection” in everything you do. The word is Japanese, so everything Japanese is highly superior to the lesser mongrels, like me, who wouldn't understand minimalism if it took a seat on the sofa in my front yard and started playing the banjo. The protagonist is such a damn minimalist that he lives in a remodeled chateau with not even one old sofa or junked car in his yard.

There are a couple of long sections in the book in which the author describes spelunking expeditions—a hard thing to do and keep it interesting. I think he pulled it off rather well. I learned a lot of great vocabulary in Spanish as I read through these portions which may come in handy if I do any mountaineering in Spain.

Sin dudarlo el protagonista es de esa gente con la que no tropezarte nunca jamás.
Excelente novela la recomiendo una y 1000 veces.

This was a sentimental reread. I will tell why in a minute.

Travanian is the pen name of Rodney William Whitaker; a writer more reclusive than J D Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. He wrote six novels under that name though Shibumi is the only one I have read, so far. My husband and I read it in the early 1980s and besides both of us loving it, it improved our sex life!

Shibumi is a Japanese word that connotes complete harmony, tranquility and balance. Nicholai Hel, the book’s hero, was able to achieve this state until his career as an assassin caused a spiritual banishment from what for him was mystical. He also was an accomplished player of the Japanese board game known as Go.

The novel is one of the most exciting I have ever read and is a fast read as well. Nicholai Hel has another special feature he called “proximity sense.” It enabled him to be aware of any movement 360 degrees around him. Of course, that comes in handy for an assassin.

He had a hard and hellacious life as a child and young man in Japan between the World Wars. He overcame it all but when he attracts the attention of the Mother Company, a super group of international espionage, he faces a set of circumstances that could bar him permanently from shibumi.

When I began my reading in publication order of Don Winslow’s books, my husband decided to take the journey with me. Don Winslow, with the permission of Travanian’s daughter, wrote a prequel to Shimumi, called Satori and it all led to our sentimental reread of the Travanian novel and a plan to read the rest of his work.

This might be the reading slump breaking novel of all time!

It was one of the best books I've ever read !!!

Hayatında seni en çok etkileyen kitap(lar)hangisi/hangileri sorusuna vereceğim cevaplardan bir tanesidir.

Si c'est un livre qui se prend au sérieux, c'est une purge. Si c'est un livre qui est une critique satirique du genre du livre d'espionnage, bien ouej.

Pour tout dire ; j'ai bien aimé les personnages, sauf le protagoniste. Un mélange de Chuck Norris, Captain America, Rocco Siefredi, Itachi et Jesus. Avec des Jutsu de niveau 4 d'orgasme par la pensée. Et la capacité à parler le basque. Qui parle le basque, outre un basque ?

L'histoire est beaucoup trop longue à se mettre en place, le héros élevé par des prostituées japonaises, descendant d'un allemand et d'une russe, pupille d'un général japonais, champion de go à 10 ans, maître de pseudo-mysticisme oriental, parangon de la pensée japonaise, hyper-polyglotte (et on apprendra vers la fin que ce n'est pas que pour l'apprentissage des langues), adepte de la fameuse école d'arts martiaux de Tuer avec un trombone, spéléologue averti et grand défendeur de la cause basque. Rien que ça. Puis, parfois, quand il s'ennuie, il va tuer des gens pour la gloire, la beauté, l'ordre moral et un petit million de dollars.

Vraiment, si c'est une œuvre satirique, elle est incroyable, jusque dans l'ennui éprouvé dans le déballage de son passé, le côté ultra libidineux lorsqu'on le découvre enfin dans l'époque actuelle. La moitié de l'histoire est le passé du personnage, un quart est sa passion pour l'exploration de grottes et le reste se passe entre des descriptions de repas, de ses prouesses sexuelles et d'insultes envers les américains (ou les français, dépend des pages).