"Όπως θα ξέρεις, το σιμπούμι αφορά την ιδιαίτερη φινέτσα που κρύβεται κάτω από το κοινότοπο και το τετριμμένο. Είναι μια αλήθεια τόσο ισχυρή που δεν χρειάζεται να διατυπωθεί με έντονο τρόπο, τόσο συγκινητική που δεν χρειάζεται να είναι όμορφη, τόσο αληθινή που δεν χρειάζεται να είναι πραγματική . Σιμπούμι σημαίνει να καταλαβαίνεις, όχι να γνωρίζεις. Είναι μια κατάσταση εύγλωττης σιωπής. Στην συμπεριφορά ενός ανθρώπου μπορούμε να το διακρίνουμε ως μετριοφροσύνη δίχως το στοιχείο της σεμνοτυφίας. Στην τέχνη, όπου το πνεύμα του σιμπούμι παίρνει τη μορφή του σάμπι, σημαίνει κομψή απλότητα • κάτι που είναι διατυπωμένο σύντομα και με απόλυτη σαφήνεια. Στη φιλοσοφία, όπου το σιμπούμι εμφανίζεται ως γουάμπι, εκφράζει μια πνευματική γαλήνη η οποία, όμως, δεν είναι παθητική • σημαίνει να είσαι χωρίς το άγχος να γίνεις. Και στην προσωπικότητα ενός ανθρώπου, είναι…. πώς να το πω; Κύρος χωρίς δεσποτικότητα; Κάτι τέτοιο." (Σελ.126)
Δυστυχώς το Σιμπούμι δεν έχει την ατμόσφαιρα της "Λεωφόρου", ούτε οι ήρωες του είναι κάτι που μπορείς να αισθανθείς οικείο, παρόλα αυτά τους συμπαθείς και τους νοιάζεσαι. Είναι ένα πυκνογραμμένο μυθιστόρημα, αρκετά αργόσυρτο χωρίς ιδιαίτερη πλοκή. Η γραφή όμως του Τρεβανιάν σε κάνει να το διαβάζεις ευχάριστα.

Intense and intelligent and incendiary--if you're fool enough to take offense at a book that dishes out offense at everybody. Consider these select specimens:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

İlginç bir karakterdi Nicholai Hel. Tanıştığıma memnunum ama.

A novel I was introduced to when I was a kid, by my father. This novel was a great thriller about an assassin Nicholai Hel who is also into culture, languages, mathematics and sexual competition with his female lovers. It had some great social commentary. Trevanian shits on American cities like New York where he says people are full of fear and fury. He also castigates Arab males for hiding the females in burqas. There is a long passage which just goes on and on where Nicholai Hel and his sidekick Le Cabot do some cave climbing. I remember it irritated the hell out of me. The main villain is a CIA agent who goes by the name of Diamond. I remember the book had a lot of sex. I liked reading those. It is set across many continents. My father is a big fan of this novel. I remember he owned multiple copies of this novel. He would lend to people whom he met and they would never return it.

I might have given it 5-stars (or 4.5) if I was absolutely sure all of it was satire. My favorite parts were the conversations on GO, his time in prison, spelunking, and the various Basque characters. It was fun more than it was important. Other reasons I didn't give it 5-stars?* 1) The weird fixation on sex that seems today to really date the novel. 2) The reliance on ethnic stereotypes.

Again, this all really pivots on whether or not Trevanian was coming at this as a farce or playing it straight. if this really was more of a Tropic Thunder satire, I get it. But I'm afraid a lot of those who love it view it more in the James Bond (which I think also sinks into a satire soup) model.

* Not that stars are some cosmically important or useful measure.

Şibumi; sıradan, olağan görünümlerin altında yatan gizli üstünlükler, azımsanan alçakgönüllü güzellik..
Felsefesi çok etkileyici.

Kitabın tamamen bu felsefeyi derinlemesine anlatan bir hikayesi olduğunu düşünerek okumaya başladım. Gördüm ki, petrolün ekonomik/politik olarak nasıl bir güç olduğu, kendimi hep bir piyon/etkisiz eleman gibi hissetmeme neden olan ülkelerüstü güçlerin pis oyunları, bazen bir kişinin kişisel meselelerinin bile nasıl bir kaosa neden olup onlarca/yüzlerce hatta binlerce kişinin hayatına mal olabileceği, görünenin çoğu zaman gerçek olmadığı, insan hayatının ne kadar ucuz olduğuna dair bir hikaye de akıp gidiyor. Bazen fazla james bond vari akıyor..

Üzerine düşünecek, hayatımıza katsak huzuru bulacağımız etkilendiğim çok şey var; “bilgilerden geçip basitliğe varmak gerek”
Tam da bu ara hayatımda üzerinde çalıştığım şey! Hayat standardı ile yaşam kalitesinin iki farklı şey olduğu ve aslolanın yaşam kalitesi olduğu! Minimalizm diyordum, şibumi de benzer şeyi söylüyor. Kitaptaki karakterlerden Le Cagot nasıl yapılacağını basitçe anlatıyor; “insanı en mutlu eden şey ihtiyaçlarıyla varlıkları aradında bir denge bulunmasıdır. Bütün sorun, bu dengenin nasıl sağlanacağı. İnsan bunu belki varlıklarını yükseltip ihtiyaçlarının düzeyine çıkararak yapabilir. Ama bu budalalık olur. Bunu yapmak, arada bir sürü doğa dılı şeyler yapmayı gerektirir. Pazarlık etmek gibi, çalışmak gibi çabalamak gibi. Öyleyse? Öyleyse akıllı bir adam dengeyi, ihtiyaçlarını azaltarak, yani onları varlıkları düzeyine indirerek sağlar. Bunu yapmanın en iyi yolu, bedava olan şeylerin değerini bilmektir. Dağların, kahkahanın, şiirin, bir dostun verdiği şarabın...” sf281

Yaktın beni rukiş ateşlere attın.
Kızlarla buddy-reads'imizin rukiş tarafından şubat ayı için seçilen kitabı. İlk kitabımız...

DEDİM herkese benden çay dediler yok, herkese kahve dediler yok...
Naptım ne ettimse caydıramadım.

DEDİM bağışlayın dediler yok :(

Mistik olayları çok cool gerçekten(!) ya da go oyunu falan. Ana sevgisi görmeyen çok ulus ve savaş içinde yaşayan bir bebenin manyaklığı olamaz mı ben de mistiğim o zaman. Anlatılabilen bişi değilmişmiş mistisizm fln, salaklar kimyasallarla buna varmaya çalışırmışmış falan fişman geçicen o işleri koçum, hesse'nin sidartası ve komple teorilerinin copy of copyisi olan tek amacı usa avrupa ve kürselliği aşağılayıp ne yazık ki bu yüzden asyayı-japonyayı - arada onlara da laf vursa da- yücelten biri ve bunun farkında değil. Bebe yani Nikolai böyle eşsiz fln nedense fiziksel olarak fln ahahah

Hacı ben çok komple teorisi, abartı dünyayı yöneten gizli örgüt senaryoları okudum, o yüzden yavan geliyor. Ha, 1979'da yayınlanmış bir kitap olarak dolgun olabilir, ama NWO (new world order) yeni bişi değil kökü Fransız devriminden önceye dayanıyor. Milyonlarca şey okuyabilirsiniz basılı kitapları da geçtim ben. Bu aralar dünya askeri örgütlerinin facebookla kitle kontrol ettiği popüler, adam geleceği mi görmüş acaba dicem, ben böyle şeylerde ya bilim kurgu ya zaten biliyordu ararım.

Ayrıca yazar kendi gibi amerikan düşmanı bir karakter yaratmış. Ülke - milletten bağımsız bir yolculuk olabilirdi nikolai'in yaşadığı çünkü kendisi de hem genleri hem doğduğu yaşadığı yer hem bildiği diller açısından kırma biri. Zorlama geldi bana. Kurban olayım bi takım sosyo-felsefik şeyler anlatacaksanız bağımsız yapın ideoloji, teoloji, etnoloji karıştırmayın şayet kendiniz yeni bir sav atmıyorsanız ortaya.

Birazını yutuptan hızlıya alarak dinledim ablanın biri sağ olsun yarısını okumuş dlflfpdşf kalan kısmını atlaya atlaya bit ulan artık diye diye okudum.

Aklıma sürekli şu geldi: naber Nikolai sağa gomak ne golay LOL (rebep ivedik fanclub)
xoxoxo
iko

I must really be missing something. A quick internet search locates many favourable reviews of both this book, and of its author, Rodney William Whitaker (aka Trevanian), who apparently positioned himself as someone who read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century. Consider this statement from Wikipedia: Shibumi is elaborately written, using a very extended vocabulary, based on a sound knowledge in history and geopolitics, switching easily from pessimism to wry humor, Shibumi is more than a mere thriller, and may be compared to other works such as Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four and Fahrenheit 451. And there’s much more of the same in other reviews. However, I have seldom read or listened to a more inept, poorly-written thriller, and the comparison to the three great works referred to is ludicrous. The characters in Shibumi are absurd stereotypes, the writing-style is awkward (clearly if the author indeed read Proust extensively, he absorbed little), and the plot-line is as weak as cheap coffee.

classic spy novel--learned that airports had inferior screening policies in the '70s from reading this book, also that Go is a Japanese game which holds all the secrets of life.

this book is must read. put down your bibles and read Shibumi.

This book is for people who like James Bond, Jason Bourne, and all those other super-ninja Gary Stu action heroes fueled by atomic testosterone. Except if you pay attention, Trevanian is laughing at you. Shibumi shamelessly exploits every single cliche in the genre and then sneers at them. Trevanian's mockery of American culture is acidly funny and not particularly affectionate. Sometimes the self-aware satire and the angry derision seem to blend together.

“It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.”

So what to make of a book where the main character is named Nicholai Hel? His mother was a Russian aristocrat, he was born in Shanghai, he was raised by a Japanese go master, and in the aftermath of World War II, he becomes the most ninjaest ninja ever. He learns Basque while spending three years in solitary confinement and so he moves to Spain to hang out in Basque country with his Afro-Euroasian concubine who is lovingly described as a collection of all the best body parts from the sum of her ethnicities.

The plot is your basic revenge thriller: Hel's ties of duty and obligation bring him into conflict with the Mother Company, which is the umbrella organization representing all the world's energy interests and pretty much controls the Western world. In between snappy dialog in which Hel shows off how he is just so refined and Shibumi and shit with derision leveled at every Western country (the Brits, the French, the Italians, and the Germans all get it in the neck at some point, but no one more than Americans), there are action scenes where Hel proves he can do everything from cave diving to killing people with playing cards, equally over-the-top sex scenes 'cause of course learning to kill and play go also makes Hel totally awesome at the sexing.

What elevated this book above the schlock it is pretending to be is the vicious satire and the clever writing. Trevanian could write some sophisticated literary pulp fiction. He was having fun while poking his readers in the eye. He plays it straight all the way through: Shibumi reads like you are supposed to take it seriously, but you can kind of hear the author's snicker echoing in the main character's dialog. I suspect the racism and sexism was part of the performance. This is a Men's Adventure novel for the cynical hipsters of the 70s, back before appropriating Japanese culture was what all the cool kids did and the idea of structuring a killer thriller around the Oriental game of go (yeah, Shibumi uses words like "Oriental" unironically, and also refers to Arabs as "goat-herds" and portrays all the Arab characters as cowardly gay terrorists) made all the literati who wanted to read something a little more masculine than J.R.R. Tolkien groove on Trevanian's way cool, like, deeep understanding of Oriental culture, man.

Alas, I can't mock Trevanian nearly as wittily as he mocks me.

This was a fun novel, entertaining on multiple levels. It really does have the tone of a literary author slumming in a chanbara cinema.

I picked this up after catching a glimpse of it in the trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Bullet Train. It's clearly a fave of the film's director David Leitch, the book also having made brief appearances in both John Wick and Atomic Blonde.

Not sure what I expected - what I got was a throwback airport thriller with a long middle section entirely devoted to the intricacies of caving.

Written under the pseudonym Trevanian (last names are for barbarian Americans) this feels like such a product of its time, perfectly suited for 12 year old me that was currently riding the era's obsession with ninjas. Our protagonist is born in Shanghai, raised by a Japanese general and infused with the mystic sensibilities of the East. Of course Nicholai Hel is white, with piercing bottle green eyes and is a superior Asian to all the Asians he's surrounding by. Capable of mystic transport and incredibly strategic Go play, Nicholai has dedicated his life to the pursuit of Shibumi or elegant simplicity. At the same time he's a master assassin who can never be photographed due to his "proximity sense", is a master of Naked/Kill - capable of turning everyday objects into deadly weapons, and is a Stage IV lover capable of ruining women for all future partners who would inevitably fail to come close to the ecstatic orgasms he could inflict.

Trevanian is a man before his time! If this was released today you know the author would be a 350lb ginger neckbeard who writes haiku and unironically owns several katanas and a Sailor Moon dakimakura.

I'm not immune to the guilty read, but this felt plodding and anti-climactic. I was hoping for more outlandish daring-do and outrageous exploits, instead I got inscrutable musings about Americans, Arabs, Brits and Australians with some global oil conspiracy theories thrown in for good measure. It just doesn't lean far enough either way to work as thriller or satire and ends up as a mediocre romp.

I recall seeing Shibumi on paperback stands when I was in elementary or middle school, and it seemed like a typical thriller like the Robert Ludlum and Erik Van Lustbader novels I was starting to graduate to after tiring of the Mack Bolan ("The Executioner") action series. I never did pick it up even though it did seem like something I would have read at the time. I'm glad I didn't, because it would have been over my young, callow head. I wouldn't have picked up on the fact that it is a witty, intelligent spy spoof (more the 1962 film version of The Manchurian Candidate or a less arch Dr. Strangelove than Our Man Flint or those Dean Martin "Matt Helm" movies), and the digressions to things philosophical and arcane would have bored me. He's an international assassin, but he hardly ever kills anybody! He just sits around and plays Go, and disparages westerners, and meditates, and occasionally has tantric sex! And then he goes spelunking for a hundred pages! He practices a secret martial art called "naked/kill" that allows the practitioner to kill a man instantly using any object at hand, even a paper drinking straw, but we never hear any details on how he received this training, or how it works? And he has basically what amounts to Spidey-Sense?! Ridiculous!

And it would be, if Trevanian weren't a prose writer practically without fault, with an acid wit that doesn't belay his ability to exhibit deep feeling when called for. For one who is ostensibly a writer of "airport paperbacks," Trevanian takes his time and lets the story build up slowly over the long haul. He avoids cliches and takes narrative turns that the reader won't necessarily suspect, but are nonetheless satisfying. He is also remarkably prescient regarding world politics and finance, and what probably seemed mere fancy to readers in 1979 will strike a chord of plausibility in those of us today who sometimes wonder who's really running things. Plus, he taught me about "Volvo-bashing".