Shibumi: Trevanian

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Nicholai's adoptive Japanese father ultimately is drawn into the war and sends the boy to Japan to study the Japanese game of Go with Otake-san, a Dan seven legend. Otake-san teaches the boy many things, not the least of which about the knowledge of older people: "never resent the advantage of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coins of life and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled." (p. 117). It is interesting to note that most of Hel's make companions from then on are his age or older. I also appreciated this twist on a common maxim: "Many Japanese seemed not to realize that the propaganda of the victor becomes the history of the vanquished." (p. 141). The protagonist is the deadly Nicholai Hel, assassin of terrorists and aspirer to the Japanese state of perfect consciousness, or shibumi. We learn of his birth to a Russian/Aryan/German mother and unknown German father in pre-war Shanghai, the effect of the Japanese invasion on China, his surrogate Japanese father...in fact the book covers a lot of ground between Chinese, Japanese, and Basque culture and history.

Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.”

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The protagonist of Shibumi, Nikolai Hel, is best described as an amalgam of James Bond, Bruce Lee, Robert Mitchum and Jesus Christ. He is the least plausible, most ridiculous character in all of western fiction. He can kill any opponent, bed any woman, and presumably bed any opponent...but only if it was a girl opponent. Hel is a master of an unnamed (and undescribed) martial art referred to as "Naked/Kill" which allows him to use household objects as deadly weapons, and much as made of the fact that it is completely impossible to defend yourself against him. Riiiiiight.

Shibumi definitely earned a spot on my list of favorites, which means I’ll gladly mention it to friends and likely re-read it again someday.

Kitabın E Yayınları ile çıkan basımında ufak tefek de olsa imla hataları var. Okumanızı etkilemiyor. The first part of the novel is really good, but I really liked the second part because we get to meet Hei's friends. We find Nicholai living in a chateau in the Basque region of France. And that's the rub for me, Hel is so elitist it just gets frustrating. Hearing about his life his adventures, all very good an interesting, but when his voice is heard, it's annoying. Plus he's hypocritical as well since it clearly takes a lot of materialism to become anti-materialist or do mansions and hectares of land in Wyoming just fall in everyone's laps by being good little anti-consumers? 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.

Whitaker earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Washington. While there he wrote and directed his own three-act play Eve of the Bursting. Whitaker went on to earn a doctorate in communications and film at Northwestern University. 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:A:I hope there are many Americans who can remain flexible through the fog of prejudice and fear about this issue. 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. Yine Trevanian’ın bir başka kitabında anlatılan müzeden tablo çalma yöntemi, kitap İtalyanca’ya çevrildikten sonra Milano Müzesi’nden üç tablonun çalınmasında kullanılmış. edebiyat, felsefe, mantik adina kitapta hicbir sey yok, ki kitabin basligi olan sibumi sadelikteki guzelligi, dinginlikteki dogruyu bulma anlamina geliyor. Film tadinda bir kitap okumak isterseniz okuyabilirsiniz bu kitabi ama o film berbat bir hollywood aksiyon filmi bunu da bilin Ayrıca kitaptaki dipnotta belirtildiğine göre; Trevanian’ın diğer bazı kitaplarında detaylı şekilde anlatılan tehlikeli bir dağa tırmanma yöntemi, tecrübeli bir dağcı tarafından denenmiş ve o dağcı hayatını yitirmiş.