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

Less a novel than Trevanian's expansive personal shitlist of people he hates in novel-form. A partial list of said people includes: Arabs, Americans, young people, some Jews, women who aren't concubines, feminists, Texans, Russians, Prussians, merchants, Andy Warhol, modern Japanese, Arabs (seriously,) Italians, French, Brits, some Basques, Cowboys, War Criminals (Japanese ones excluded,) Christians, chess players, wine snobs, Clint Eastwood, bankers, airport security, gays (this despite his seeming-penchant for the rippling thighs of young Basque lads,) salespeople, Stage 1 lovers, and Arabs. He really, really hates Arabs. He sure seems to be down with assholes, though. Ahh, Shibumi: you're exquisite trash. Don't ever change.

Hoş ve boş

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.

“Miss Goodbody was nonplussed.” Pass the Nurofen. 350 pages of seen-it-all-before character work with occasional flashes of action but heavily, heavily, compromised by the pseudonymous international man of mystery “Trevanian” who can’t get out of his own way, raging on and on about every aspect of the twentieth century that rubs him up the wrong way to oppressive, buzz-killing, effect. Schoolboys will lap up the faux-adult cynicism and the unrelenting sexualisation of every single woman in play. Anybody else (apart from Don Winslow) will come away from this thanking their lucky stars they never got stuck in a lift with “Trevanian”. This was “Hai Karate: The Novel” and it was a slog to finish.

The moment I took against protagonist Nicholai Hel (a “professional exterminator of international terrorists” although he spends more time exterminating greenfly in his back yard) was when he behaved like a Jeremy Clarkson-level arsehole to the young girl Hana who flees to Hel’s “physical and emotional fortress against the twentieth century” with obvious PTSD asking for his help. Hel is disinclined to tear himself away from his very 1970s sex games (“The Delight of the Razor culminates in quick oral lovemaking”) with his trafficked concubine – who, colour me bemused, is also called Hannah – and when he does deign to talk to Hana he is outrageously rude, dismissive and thinks only of the impact on himself. Bored, he creepily sexualises the girl and – get this – “punishes” her by making love to her so epically it ruins all other men for her. She then gets shot. See what I mean about schoolboys loving this? Novels with pricks for protagonists can be great fun (certainly more so than novels with pricks for authors) but unfortunately for us “Trevanian” palpably isn’t buying any of this genre stuff (he “read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century”). Oh no. He’s far too high-minded to actually engage in any of this juvenile, mass market, “Dr No” rubbish and instead would much prefer to spam any of the swineherd who might have picked it up at the airport with his private opinions. So if you decide Nicholai Hel is multi-lingual, Go-playing, proximity-sensing tosser what you’re left with is a lot of so-so story-telling, scads of bogus spirituality and empty intellectualism and an author who is writing like he’s been kicked off Twitter.

What are “Trevanian”’s “strong opinions”? Challenging and thought-provoking? Hopelessly parochial, that’s what. We have  discourses on everything from the evils of capitalism (“Trevanian” biting the hand that paid for his house in the Basque countryside), the received pronunciation of BBC reporters (“the effect of an uncomfortable suppository”), the “vapid” Clint Eastwood adaptation of “Trevanian”’s own “The Eiger Sanction”, Volvos, French versus British drivers, anybody into boring vanilla sex, cowboys (“uneducated, boorish”), Warhol and the provenance of Pop Art, grub and booze (Hel and his squeeze munch salads and rice but intimidate the Americans with fine dining) and so on. No opportunity is missed to throw some snark. Certainly in the hands of, frankly, a better writer this may well have been a hoot. From “Trevanian” it’s eventually boorish and it’s not like he's got much in the story-telling tank to otherwise distract you.

But…is this all ironic? Is all the ludicrousness the point? Wikipedia describes “Shibumi” as “a meta-spy novel” and since I’m a bear of very little brain I’m suddenly wondering if fiendish literary mastermind “Trevanian” is pissing himself laughing at me from beyond the grave. To that, I say “Shibollocks”. I don’t buy this novel as a literary exercise for one moment, that would suggest a level of wit which is not apparent anywhere in the text. “Shibumi” needed to be a lot more heightened – and, crucially, a lot more humorous – for any satire to land and positioning it as an intellectual exercise is just another distancing device, like barricading yourself behind a pretentious pseudonym and refusing to be interviewed. Read “Shibumi” by all means – particularly if you’re 14 and male – but, like Nicholai Hel himself, keep it simple: this is a piece of so-so mass market fiction written by a crank. Pro tip: imagine Peter Wyngarde or Mike Myers is playing Nicholai Hel, particularly whenever there’s a woman in the scene. That’s the tone this sort of thing needed. “Who must do the harsh things? He who can.”

This may be the longest book commentary/review I’ve ever written, as priceless quotes abound throughout the book and I plan to include many. All are from the 2011 paperback copy. I’m including numerous info links. Use them after your first read of the review or as you go. You choose.
Trevanian's SHIBUMI. Originally published in 1979. Trevanian is one of the pen names of Rodney William Whitaker (1931-2005). He notably wrote The Eiger Sanction. ”In the process of converting this novel into a vapid film, a fine young climber was killed.” (Author’s footnote pg. 167.) His estate authorized the writing of the prequel to this book, SATORI by Don Winslow. (My Satori comments.)

“…shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances.”

“Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, …it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, …is spiritual tranquility that is not passive, it is being without the angst of becoming.”

“One does not achieve it, one …discovers it.”

“…one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity.”

(All from pg. 77.) (Pudency.)

The book SHIBUMI is the proverbial “…riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…”. (Winston Churchill.) (Proverbial, proverb, epigram, maxim.)

I read SATORI (prequel by another author, links above) and my curiosity was significantly aroused to pursue the story in SHIBUMI.

In my opinion the cover endorsements on the paperback edition get it wrong about the book.

“The only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe, and Chaucer.” –New York Times. Airport paperbacks?!?! Sounds like a barely polite euphemism for pulp fiction. Writers of all genres (including pulp fiction) should be offended to be categorized as being merely worthy of filling airport shelves with illiterate works for passing travelers. But what do you expect from the New York Times and their singular evaluation of their own self-importance. :)

Then there is “It’s hard to imagine a more nearly perfect spy story.” –Milwaukee Journal. What are they smoking, but not reading, up there in Wisconsin? SHIBUMI is barely a spy story at all. I admit after reading SATORI I “expected” a combination espionage/assassin thriller but the actual ‘spy story’, as excellent as it is, probably consumes only 25% or so of the novel. The rest is back (front, and side) story, equally excellent in its own right, but not spy story per se.

Herein lies the riddle, mystery, and enigma. I think the book is the author’s philosophical commentary on life and contemporary humanity, much more than just the brief moralizing you may get in many works of fiction. The caricature shell of a spy story is his method of presenting it. In that respect it reminds me slightly of ISLAND by Aldous Huxley, though it doesn’t wax nearly as philosophical as that thin tome.

A fictional novel about the game Go is a brief part of the story in Shibumi. ”The book was an elaborate joke in the form of a report and commentary on a fictional master’s game played at the turn of the century.” “…The book was in, in fact, a subtle and eloquent parody of the intellectual parasitism of the critic, and much of the delight lay in the knowledge that both the errors of play and the articulate nonsense of the commentary were so arcane that most readers would nod along in grave agreement.” (Pg 130-131.)

Perhaps that is an allusion to SHIBUMI itself. The lead character is a fictional master assassin. There is more intellectual, philosophical critique than I have ever seen in a spy thriller or ‘airport paperback’. I can only speculate what the author’s motives were.

The outright philosophical fiction of Ayn Rand not withstanding (Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, et al), I have never highlighted so many passages in what I thought was going to be light, pure entertainment, reading. (Ayn Rand on the other hand is neither light nor pure entertainment reading.)

Let me present a few passages for you to contemplate, if you will:

“America, after all, was populated by the lees and failures of Europe. Recognizing this, we must see them as innocent. As innocent as the adder, as innocent as the jackal. Dangerous and treacherous, but not sinful. You spoke of them as a despicable race. They are not a race. They are not even a culture. They are a cultural stew of the orts and leavings of the European feast. At best, they are a mannered technology. In place of ethics, they have rules. Size functions for them as quality functions for us. What for us is honor and dishonor, for them is winning and losing.” (Pg 103.)

[I have sometimes contemplated, in the abysmal abyss of my mind, the lack of tangible heritage many of us WASPs derive from. I admire Jews and American Indians for theirs. As an Indian guide once noted on a tour I did of pueblo ruins, "You have no roots". No grounding, no foundation, no guideposts. Advantage, or disadvantage? Still contemplating.]

“You can gain experience, if you are careful to avoid empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience–twenty times. And never resent the advantge of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coin of life, and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled.” (Pg 109.)

“(He) arrived at a kind of emotional truce with the Americans among whom he worked. This is not to say that he came to like them, or to trust them; but he came to realize that they were not the amoral, depraved people their political and military behavior suggest they were. True, they were culturally immature, brash, and clumsy, materialistic and historically myopic, loud, bold, and endlessly tiresome in social encounters; but at the bottom they were good-hearted and hospitable; willing to share–indeed insistent upon sharing–their wealth and ideology with all the world.
Above all, he came to recognize that all Americans were merchants, that the core of the American Genius, of the Yankee Spirit, was buying and selling. They vended their democratic ideology like hucksters, supported by the great protection racket of armaments deals and economic pressures. Their wars were monumental exercises in production and supply. Their government was a series of social contracts. Their education was sold as so much per unit hour. There marriages were emotional deals, the contracts easily broken if one party failed in his debt-servicing. Honor for them consisted in fair trading. And they were not, as they thought, a classless society; they were a one-class society–the mercantile.” (Pg 126-127.)

“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.” (Pg 137.)

“We would all be happier if the Palestinian issue (and the Palestinians with it) would simply disappear. They’re a nasty, ill-disciplined, vicious lot who history happened to put in the position of a symbol of Arab unity.” (Pg 228.)

“…and the concept of fair play is totally alien to the mentality of the French, a people who have produced generations of aristocrats, but not a single gentleman; a culture in which the legal substitutes for the fair; a language in which the only word for fair play is the borrowed English.” (Pg 266.)

“It’s not Americans I find annoying; it’s Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called ‘American’ only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady… …Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant ifforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experience.” (Pg 306.)

“It is revealing of the American culture that its prototypic hero is the cowboy: an uneducated, boorish, Victorian migrant agricultural worker.” (Pg 341.)

…to cite a few.

This American-born author certainly has his opinions of his fellow countrymen! All of them are still applicable to todays mores. The role and opinions of “big oil” in the book are equally apropos. (Recall the book was published in 1979, 32 years ago.)

In retrospect I’ve revealed practically nothing about the story and will leave it that way. Having a lot of time on my hands at the moment, I inhaled the book in a matter of a few days, which is fast for me. It IS an espionage/assassin thriller, and a very good one, but it does not consume itself with that solely. Don’t expect it to be a Ludlum, Silva, Baldacci, Flynn non-stop action book, though the shell story will not disappoint. The front, back, and side stories (just a little off the top please) are immensely entertaining, and the social/philosophical commentary is priceless.

Airport paperbacks. Give.. me.. a.. break..

Tsuru no Sugomori.

28 November 2018:
I just read this book for the 2nd time. I will add a few comments and then re-read my own first review of 7 1/2 years ago. This is a crafted book. No, not crafty, though it is that, but crafted. Hand-crafted even. Carefully built and constructed. Like the paperback cover says: "The only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe, and Chaucer." --New York Times.

The book held my interest and intrigue as much or more as the first time. I had earmarked numerous passages on the first read, something I don't do for 'regular' fiction very often, and I re-emphasized or added new earmarks. The philosophical insights into various cultures, including my own superficial, American one, are superb.

The book starts with ACTION, as one would expect of what will presumably a spy/assassin thriller. It then segues into a long, calmer middle section, including an extensive part on caving/spelunking. All the loose ends are tidily cleaned up by the end, even though you don't think there will be enough pages left to do so.

How an author learns so much about disparate subjects such as language, cultures, and caving, is beyond me. Alas, this author has passed away. Wikipedia enlightens a little bit, but only a little. I still very highly recommend this book.

En sevdiğim romanlardan biridir.

This book is brilliant. It is a work of genius. It works on so many levels. Most of all, though, the entire book is a brilliant joke. I see from some of the reviews here that many readers are on the receiving end of that joke.

A little research on the author will reveal some of his character. "Trevanian" is not only a pen name but a character by a writer (Rod Whitaker) who took on the personas of his pseudonyms like a method actor. The satire is happening on several levels and we're not always sure if Trevanian is executing the satire upon the reader or if Rod Whitaker is executing it upon Trevanian.

If that sounds a little egghead then don't worry about it - just read and enjoy! If you get it, you'll get it. If not, you're probably just, through no fault of your own, an American *evil grin*.

For all that, this book is a very easy and enjoyable read. The exotic foreign locales and situations are beautifully described and the characters are colourful and exciting.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the protagonist, super assassin Nicholai Hel, is ridiculously fun to read about, regardless of any satire attached. He's so suave and sophisticated he makes James Bond look like... well, Daniel Craig.

This was definitely one of the most fun books I have read in a long time. I could never have expected a single book to fulfill the escapist spy fantasy while at the same time having so much depth.

I cannot, for the life of me, resume what SHIBUMI is about. If you think it's a spy thriller, you're a fool. If you think this is a spoof, you're slightly more enlightened but you're still narrow minded. It's the masterpiece, the time-defying work of an enlightened soul with democratic intentions. Trevanian is a literary writer, yet he sturctures his stories in a way for most people to feel intelligent and enlightened. Most important, it's a vehicle for his opinions and passions.

To keep it simple, it's structured around the principle of the Japanese game of GO,which has been known to be a framework of thoughts of the great warlords. What happens to Nicholai Hel in this movie is filtered through his state of mind and separated like the movements of a Go game. Enlightening, stimulating read for the curious mind. Very impressive character study. In fact, it might be the most impressive I have ever read. A stunning work.

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...

a hit by the Goodreads rec algorithm, which told me to read Fire on the Deep (yes), Old Man's War (no), and then this (definitely yes). Trevanian is a snob and obsessively masochistically anti-American and pro-Japanese, but his clever "meta-novel" as the wikipedia description goes, "deconstructs" the spy novel. but that might be a little strong...

anyway brilliant description, a keen eye for what goes on in cross-cultural meetings (absolute brilliance: three basque peasants chit-chat about an american tourist girl, concluding she must be a sex worker, and then when the conversation begins in french, it's all bon jour and peaches and pie hahahah).<-- this is brilliant because that's exactly how it works, so to speak, between small linguistic groups and 'the West'<-- i have eavesdropped on tourists and natives in a number of countries, and can report that something similar often happens (!)

only a third of the way through and already confident about the five stars... alas that the book is a full $12 online T.T wahhhhh

11 January 2012-- continuing

okay finished! my first GR review that I wrote in two parts. maybe I should have waited, in order to open the review brilliantly. i could have made this clever and unified but instead.. here goes:

post reading:

'Shibumi' is an instant classic, a thriller and a "deconstruction" of a thriller, a mixup of Crichton (who comes later) and Le Carre and Ian Fleming and Ludlum and maybe a little Grisham (again, a later author). it's an "airport novel" but also a nested story and breakdown of cultural interactions. well-informed about Japanese values and with breathable Japanese characters yet avoiding total fan-boy anime convention cartoonization of the country. exciting scene-by-scene development fairly-tight mixed with commentary on terrorist motivations and caving the sport.

Trevanian's only failure was to understand himself. he attacks the US, but Nicholas Hel (his authorial standin/fantasy other-self) is clearly American in outlook!

Formidable! Opinions arrêtées et critiques. Cynique et irrévérencieux. Philosophique et quantique. La convergence de la puissance de la méditation, de la politique internationale, du « page turner » et de l’érudition au confluent de l’originalité et de l’imprévisible.