Κριτική στο Smassing Culture

Μια αλληγορική διαμάχη μεταξύ Ανατολής και Δύσης

Όπως αναφέρθηκε στο κείμενο για τη Λεωφόρο (εκδόσεις Πόλις, 2018), ο Trevanian υπήρξε μια ιδιαίτερη συγγραφική προσωπικότητα, κρατώντας κρυφή την πραγματική του ταυτότητα για πολλά χρόνια, δημιουργώντας έτσι έναν μύθο γύρω από το όνομά του, με τα έργα να πουλάνε πολλά αντίτυπα ανά τις δεκαετίες, με το Σιμπούμι να αποτελεί κατά γενική ομολογία το magnum opus του. Το Σιμπούμι δημοσιεύθηκε αρχικά το 1979 και το 1981 κυκλοφορεί για πρώτη φορά στην ελληνική γλώσσα από τις εκδόσεις Πάντερ σε μορφή βιβλίου τσέπης. Μετά από πολλά χρόνια κυκλοφόρησε εκ νέου στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Πόλις τον Ιούνιο του 2019 σε μετάφραση Αποστόλη Πρίτσα.

Τι είναι το Σιμπούμι όμως; Δεν υπάρχει ακριβής ορισμός για το τι είναι το Σιμπούμι, αν και κατά λέξη στα ιαπωνικά σημαίνει ανεπιτήδευτη τελειότητα. Ο ορισμός που δίνει η Wikipedia είναι: Shibumi (渋 み) είναι ιαπωνικό ουσιαστικό που αναφέρεται σε μια ιδιαίτερη αισθητική απλής, λεπτή και διακριτικής ομορφιάς. Όπως και άλλοι ιαπωνικοί αισθητικοί όροι, όπως iki και wabi-sabi, το shibumi μπορεί να εφαρμοστεί σε μια ευρεία ποικιλία θεμάτων, όχι μόνο την τέχνη ή τη μόδα. Όπως γίνεται εύκολα αντιληπτό είναι ένας αρκετά γενικός όρος που στο έργο του Trevanian χρησιμοποιείται περισσότερο ως φιλοσοφικός όρος και ως τρόπος ζωής.

Πρωταγωνιστής και κύριος εκφραστής του ενός πόλου του βιβλίου, είναι ο Νικολάι «Νίκκο» Χέλ, με την ειδικότητα του πληρωμένου δολοφόνου. Γεννημένος από Γερμανό πατέρα και Ρωσίδα μητέρα, χωρίς όμως να λάβει ποτέ επίσημη υπηκοότητα, μεγάλωσε στην Σαγκάη, μέχρι την κατάληψή της από την Ιαπωνική Αυτοκρατορία και ύστερα στην Ιαπωνία ως προστατευόμενος ενός στρατηγού του Ιαπωνικού Στρατού και ενός φίλου του, δασκάλου του πνευματικού παιχνιδιού Γκο (Gô). Ο Χελ μεγάλωσε με την ανατολίτικη κουλτούρα και φιλοσοφία -κυρίως αυτήν της Ιαπωνίας- ζώντας όλη του τη ζωή ουσιαστικά ως ανατολίτης με δυτικά σωματικά χαρακτηριστικά, μετακομίζοντας ύστερα από χρόνια σε ένα απομακρυσμένο χωριό της Χώρας των Βάσκων.

Έτερος πόλος είναι η επονομαζόμενη Μητρική Εταιρεία η οποία ελέγχει την CIA και κατά συνέπεια σε μεγάλο βαθμό την Αμερικάνικη Κυβέρνηση. Σαφής υπαινιγμός για το ξεπούλημα των κυβερνήσεων προς όφελος των ιδιωτικών επιχειρήσεων, τις περισσότερος φορές εις βάρος των πολιτών. Ο Νικολάι Χελ χρόνιος πολέμιος της δυτικής κουλτούρας (δεν είναι λίγες οι φορές που κρίνει αρκετά σκληρά τη δύση και εκφράζει την απογοήτευση του για την δυτικοποίηση της ιαπωνικής κουλτούρας μετά τον Β’ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο) θα βρεθεί αντιμέτωπος με την Μητρική Εταιρεία και κυρίως με το υψηλόβαθμο στέλεχός της, τον Ντάιαμοντ, ύστερα από ένα τρομοκρατικό χτύπημα στο αεροδρόμιο της Ρώμης μεταξύ Ισραηλινών και Παλαιστινιακών οργανώσεων.

Ο Trevanian με το Σιμπούμι συνθέτει ένα πολυσέλιδο μυθιστόρημα, χρησιμοποιώντας μια φαινομενικά απλή υπόθεση ώστε να δημιουργήσει ένα βαθιά φιλοσοφικό πρωτίστως αλλά και ιστορικό δευτερευόντως έργο. Οι πνευματικές αναζητήσεις έχουν την μερίδα του λέοντος συγκριτικά με τη δράση, χωρίς ωστόσο να χάνεται ο χαρακτήρας του βιβλίου. Το Σιμπούμι είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα το οποίο έχοντας έντονα ψήγματα κατασκοπευτικής και αστυνομικής λογοτεχνίας παραμένει βαθιά noir στην αισθητική του, ξεπερνώντας όμως τα στενά όρια (αν θεωρήσουμε ότι μπορεί να υπάρχουν τέτοια) των εν λόγω ειδών λογοτεχνίας.
Πλάνο από την ταινία John Wick (2014)

Η διαχρονικότητα του Σιμπούμι ως έργο μπορεί να φανεί στις αναφορές και στα cameo του σε άλλα είδη τεχνών όπως η μεγάλη οθόνη, με την παρουσία του μεταξύ άλλων στο John Wick (2014) και το The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) του Wes Anderson.

Εν κατακλείδι, όπως και με τη Λεωφόρο έτσι και με το Σιμπούμι ο Trevanian παρουσίασε ένα μυθιστόρημα όπου το βάθος των χαρακτήρων κερδίζει την άτυπη μάχη με τη δράση. Οι φιλοσοφικές και πνευματικές αναζητήσεις παρέα με το χιούμορ και τη συγκίνηση που προσφέρονται άπλετα, καθιστούν το Σιμπούμι ένα από τα σημαντικότερα έργα της noir αισθητικής στην αστυνομική, κατασκοπευτική αλλά και στη γενικότερη λογοτεχνία.

If you've ever wanted to know what it takes to become the world's hottest lover and most kick-ass ninja-style assassin, then Shibumi lets you in on the secret. First, you need to learn to play Go well; then you have to become fluent in Basque.

Real Go players tell me I'm about second Dan strength, but unfortunately I don't know any Basque at all. One out of two ain't bad, I guess. Anyway, you've probably figured out why I adore this engagingly crazy book.
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I thought of Shibumi last week when I was in Japan, and wondered whether I should add something here about the plot. I don't really think it's necessary. Basically, it's just your standard boy meets girl, boy becomes champion Go player, girl gets killed in nuclear attack, boy switches profession and becomes ninja-style assassin, boy learns Basque, boy meets second girl, boy and second girl play a lot of advanced sex games, boy meets third girl, third girl gets killed by shadowy Arab/American multinational company, boy swears revenge, boy...

Oh, well. I admit it. It's not completely standard. But, you know, just minor variations on the usual theme.
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If you've never bothered to look at the Wikipedia article on Trevanian, it's worth reading. This was my favorite bit:

It was rumored that Trevanian was Robert Ludlum writing under a pen name. Trevanian rejected that idea stating, "I don't even know who he is. I read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century.

When are they going to make a movie about him?

“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.”

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

Lo siento porque es una LC.
Pero estando en el 55% miro mi librería y decido que es momento de darle carpetazo; que me llaman muchos libros como para seguir intentando que me atrape este.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5! Senses Working Overtime!

SEE the assassin in his youth! see him as a child in war-torn Shanghai, as a young Go-Master in Japan, as a dutiful son and as a tortured prisoner, as an expert caver in Basque Spain, as an equally expert Stage IV Lovemaker! see him enact the "Delight of the Razor" upon his lovely and loving concubine! see him destroy his enemies in an equally subtle fashion!

HEAR the clock ticking! an assassin does not live forever! shall he go to his grave as a disposable pawn to the malevolent Mother Company? or shall he go to his grave in a state of meditative bliss? shall he go to his grave at all? listen to the sound of your heartbeat as you await his decision! he hears you, hiding in that cave, blind and foolish and terminally Western in your inability to truly listen. die, deaf Westerner, die!

SMELL the sour tang of fear, the smell of sweat flowing from under your arms to soak your expensive business suit as you contemplate who exactly you have crossed! you have crossed a Master of the "Naked/Kill" technique! smell yourself, businessman! you smell like a fool. die, fool, die!

TASTE the sumptuous flavors served to you in an assassin's lair! do they remind you of the unctuous flavors of french cuisine or the brassy flavors of american bbq? you are being served the flavors of the two nations our assassin despises the most! notice the meals of the assassin and his concubine: simple brown rice and sauteed vegetables. enjoy your fatty decadence, Westerner! will it be your last?

FEEL the calm and warming presence of the sublime meadow that is the assassin's mystical meditative psychic retreat. and what shall come to those blundering dolts who dare encroach upon this special Happy Place? you have one guess! it is a word that starts with D, foolish Company Man!

you think this is a tale of a deadly assassin forced into battle with evil corporate interests; forces that are set upon his destruction in order to further their evil corporate goals of fascist world domination. YOU ARE WRONG. this is a story that is about n  stylen. style over substance. style that equals substance. style that is superior to the whinging, entitled, utterly deluded and very Western sense of "substance" - substance that actually equals grandiose self-absorption. style that equals form and form that equals meaning. if you are looking for a book that will give you a fast-paced tale of devious dark deeds and sweet revenge and justice righteously served... look elsewhere, dum-dum! but if you are looking for a novel that takes you to a place of contemplation, a place of understanding that the things we do may not amount to much but the way we do things - the meaning that is implicit in how we actually move about in the world and how that represents what is truly important - that that is what is important, that that is what is genuinely meaningful... well, this is the book for you.

n  "...To be truthful, I hadn't expected such good form from you. Most people of your age and class are so wrapped up in themselves - so concerned with what they're 'into' - that they fail to realize that style and form are everything, and substance a passing myth." He opened his eyes and smiled as he made a pallid effort to imitate the American accent: "It ain't what you do, it's how you do it."n

plus, a special bonus Sixth Sense included free of charge!

PROXIMITY AWARENESS

foolish Westerners like to imagine that the sixth sense is telepathy - or perhaps seeing dead people. ha! what use is that exactly? why waste time hearing the despairing dead in their various depressing doldrums? and what is the use of reading the tedious and predictable thoughts of your tedious and predictable fellow humans? i for one am happy to be spared the monotony of those "insights". instead, Shibumi offers a delightful and very useful sixth sense: Proximity Awareness! i would much prefer to be aware of when someone is approaching, or thinking about me, or contemplating using a camera or gun on me. all the better to avoid such monotonous interactions!

Nicholai Hel is such a stud duck bad-ass that even if James Bond, Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne and the Dos Equis’s Most Interesting Man in the World banded together to try and take him down, he’d just kill them all with a drinking straw while lecturing them on the evils of their materialism. Then he’d have mind blowing sex with their girlfriends.

Hel was born to a exiled Russian countess in Shanghai in the ’20s and a Japanese general thinks the young man has such an exceptional talent for the game Go that he sends him to Japan to train. Hel spends years before and during World War II learning the game and immersing himself in Japanese culture. After the war, he gets on the bad side of the occupation forces and spends years in prison. Once released, he becomes an international assassin.

Decades later, Hel has retired to his chateau in the mountains with the Basque where he indulges in his hobby of spelunking. However, when the niece of an old friend gets caught up in an international conspiracy led by an oil corporation, Hel will have to decide if an old debt to that friend extends to protecting the woman against powerful international forces.

I only vaguely knew about Trevanian after reading Incident at Twenty Mile, but since Don Winslow, one of my favorite crime writers, just released an authorized prequel to this book, I had to check it out. What I found is that Trevanian has done a sly parody of the spy novel here with the incredible Hel being a character of pulp superhero style attributes. Not only he is brilliant with a gift for languages, he is also a mystic capable of going into trances where he becomes one with the universe and he has a ‘proximity sense‘ that allows him to sense other people and their moods.. In addition to all that, he’s a martial arts expert and a world class cave explorer. Oh, and he’s the world‘s foremost lover who can literally ruin a woman for other men if he unleashes his full power upon her.

Trevanian’s playing with the format of the spy novel extends to the structure of the book. The first half of the novel consists of the minions of the evil “Mother Company” researching Hel’s origin story after the become worried that he may try to ruin their plans. (The whole idea of the Mother Company being an energy conglomerate that is the real power behind the government to the point where their man Diamond has set up his own office in the CIA and started giving orders to everyone is a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true.)

After half the book is spent discussing what a bad ass Hel is, the next quarter of the book is an account of Hel and his friend exploring a cave. It’s only in the last part of the book that the action picks up, but even then, we barely see Hel actually do anything although he does manage to pile up a respectable body count in the last chapters.

I liked this book and the way that Trevanian was having some fun with the genre by creating such an over the top character but playing it completely straight. However, there was one aspect that kept bugging me. Trevanian was a staunch anti-materialist. Hel shares this attitude and looks down his nose with contempt at the ‘merchants’ of the world. He has claimed the moral high ground by living in his mountain house with few modern comforts.

Yet, even thought Hel is continually portrayed as being the superior person for his way of life, there’s no mention made about how a guy who claims to hate materialism spent years killing people for money, and then spent a fortune on a house in the mountains to live in isolation. So I guess it takes a huge amount of money to truly live a non-materialistic lifestyle. After a while, Hel’s smug and hypocritical attitude about this annoyed the hell out of me because it seemed like the one part of the book Trevanian was serious about.

Yıllar sonra ikinci kez okuduğumda evet dahaa genç halimin ruhu ile değil ama unutulmuş ilham ile yeniden dolarak bitirdim .

Okunacak o kadar kitap varken eski kitaplara dönüş biraz zaman kaybı gibi gözükebilir ama o ben tabiki ben değilim .

Biraz daha olgun bakış açısı ile bakınca bu kitap bana kişisel gelişim kitaplarını anımsattı ve yan karakterlerin de hikayelerinin kıymetli olduğunu bir hero's journey etrafında dönerken onlarında küçük hero 'lar olduğunu gösterdi.Her biri yazarın çocuğu gibiydi resmen .Ve onlaran ayrılırken ki yoğun duygu yükü bir uzun zaman tanıdığım bir dosttan ayrıldığımdaki duygu yükü ile benzer bir noktadaydı .Aynı hisleri Kara Kule serisini okurken hissetmiştim . Uzun yolculuğumuzda ayrılmak zordu .

Gene bir kitabın sonunda hayat kararları almak ve kendi sibumik hayatımı inşa etmek farz oldu .

Gelelim yazarın hoşlanmadığım tavrına . Vurguladığı politik yargılar bir noktadan sonra tamam anladık şeklinde itici bir yöne geçiyor .Bu kadsr donanımlı olduğunu hayal ettiğim kişinin kör görüş alanları olması hayal kırıklığı gibi .Ama ne yapalım üzüm yemeye geldim .

Velhasıl iyi geldi .

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".

I don't even know where to start with this book. There is so much in its covers. VERY highly recommended.

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!