Shibumi: Trevanian

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One does not achieve it, one . . . discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san.” If I understand you, Major-and frankly I don't much care if I do-you are accusing me of being both a communist and a Nazi, of being both a close friend of General Kishikawa's and his hired assassin of being both a Japanese militarist and a Soviet spy. None of this offends your sense of rational probability?" 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.

The Eiger Sanction – Assassinio sull’Eiger” di e con Clint Eastwood (1975), tratto da un romanzo di Trevanian (che non leggerò). The main character Nicholai Hel speaks several languages due to his heritage and place of birth, and over the course of the book studies two additional languages: Japanese and Basque. These last two feature prominently in the book. Most of the Japanese in the book centers around the game of Go, which Hel formally studies, and which is used as a metaphor in several points throughout the book. The novel itself is broken down into six books, each of which is named from Japanese Go vocabulary. In the table of contents the author provides his own translation of these six terms, as follows: [2] Kitaptaki Nicholai karakterini, Satranç kitabındaki Dr. B'ye çok benzetmiştim. İkisinin de ortak yönleri çoktu, her ikisinin de başına gelenler çok benzerdi , her ikisi de karizmatik karakterlerdi, her iki kitabı da okuyanlar bilir. Hel learns that Kishikawa is being held as a prisoner of war by the Russians and faces an ignominious show trial for war crimes. After visiting the General in captivity, he realises that he has provided the Russians a way to hurt the man he respects so much, having confirmed to the Soviet operative in charge of the prosecution the emotional attachment the General has to Hel. 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.Hel decides that the only way to show his gratitude and love for the man whom he has come to view as his father is to offer the general a way out of his captivity, one that avoids the public indignity of the public trial. Upon his next visit, Hel, speaking in veiled terms, offers to kill the general. After some resistance the general realises the sincerity of the offer and accepts.

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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.”

Shibumi is the noun form of 'shibui' according to Wikipedia, although the book says at one point that the former is greater than the latter. As I understand Trevanian's definition in the book, it is the aesthetic of perfect function in or of something that is done in a simple and unobtrusively beautiful way or form. That is Hel's goal in life, to creating perfection in himself & his surroundings. This implies balance within himself, his relationships, his needs & desires. His best friend is Beñat Le Cagot a self made man, a Basque poet who has an ego larger than Donald Trump only expressed with much more intelligence. He is randy, fun loving, and a spelunking companion for Hei. He likes expressing himself with colorful language such as "By the Two Damp Balls of John the Baptist." He taught at Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, where he was chairman of the communications division. He served in the US Navy during the Korean War, and later was awarded a Fullbright scholarship for study in England. When he wrote his first two novels, he was chairman of the Department of Radio, TV and Film at the University of Texas, Austin, where he continued to teach for many years. shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is . . . how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that.”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? Nicolai (Nikko) Hel is a one of a kind man caught in uncommon circumstances. When he and his mother are trapped in China during the Japanese invasion, they are accepted into the home of a Japanese general of administration who takes a liking to Nikko (known more commonly as Hel). He teaches the boy many languages, including the art of Shibumi, which is more than simply the knowledge of things, but rather the 'understanding' of things.

It's hard to get comfortable when reading this story because you never know which way Trevanian is going to spin things. For example, while the plot is action-oriented, there are a number of spiritual and cultural themes reflected in the story as well. In some ways the story is very light-hearted, with Trevanian clearly poking fun at some of the tropes of his genre. Yet there's also a serious quality to Nicholai; in particular his pursuit of "shibumi" is quite authentic and real. This mix of light-heartedness and seriousness makes for a compelling, interesting, and suspenseful read. 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 Hei takes this all in stride, but I found myself snorting out loud several times at the Le Cagot wit. Trevanian must have had a giggle or two coming up with some of the Le Cagot expressions. 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.) Shibumi is, without question, the stupidest book I have ever read. Period. Full stop. It's not close. Shibumi is the 1927 Yankees of stupid books. John Grisham and Dan Brown, working together, operating at the peak of their vaguely misogynist, airport-novel spewing powers, could never hope to approach the mind-exploding stupidity of this book.

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You know, since the late 1960s or so the CIA has become the favored "whipping boy" (I apologize for the cliche given my complaints about the book). If the CIA really had as many traitorous, evil, inept and/or downright stupid agents as I've seen in movies, books and on TV there would be no good agents. I was tempted to put in a link to the CIA Memorial Wall. That's the wall where nameless stars are inset in a wall for agents killed in the line of duty. War-time military intelligence mission? - Yes Who's the terrorist enemy here? - commies! Main Character Gender - Male My original review was wrong in a couple of respects, not bad though for the 25 years or so that had passed since I read it. I'd say it is somewhat closer to Eisler's John Rain than the other authors I mentioned, & it wasn't shibumi that I didn't like, it was Hel's final thoughts & conclusions, although I must admit they fit him well & brings home a point made early on. Truly well done. 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.” Some months after this conversation, Hel is in prison where he begins studying Basque as a way to keep his mind occupied. Much of the plot of the book will later take place in the Basque region of France, so Basque terminology and maxims feature heavily. Nearly all of the Basque words and phrases found in Shibumi can also be found word for word in Philippe Veyrin's 1949 French-language history of the Basque people, Les Basques de Labourd, de Soule et de Basse-Navarre: Leur histoire et leurs traditions and its 2011 English translation by Andrew Brown. [3] Basque words often have several definitions and multiple accepted spellings, [4] but those found in Shibumi always mirror those found in Veyrin.