Shibumi: Trevanian

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L’amministratore in seconda della CIA è il Secondo Ufficiale di Collegamento Internazionale Operativo, meglio noto come SUdiCIO. bölümlerde bu adamlar kim, Munih Beşlisi, Kara Eylülcüler kimler, kimin peşindeler anlamaya çalışırken açıkcası biraz sıkılmıştım, ama sonra kitap bir açılmış bir aktmıştı ki , elimden bırakamamıştım. Hele o son bölümdeki eşsiz hayatta kalma mücadelesini soluksuz okumuştum. We only meet the Gnome briefly, but we are able to see a true bromance having formed. I liked how De Llandes telescopes their friendship into twelve hours: "We have know each other for more than twenty years, but...we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another's minds and emotions...Actually, that's not bad. Most good friends and married couples (these are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles." (p. 405). I found that rings true because my best, deepest friendships are with those I spend the least time with to some degree. 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. Felsefeye, sanata, doğaya, onura, saygıya ve daha birçok insani değere yoğun bir saygı besler. Şovenist değildir, kadınlara güç gösterisinde bulunmaz, onlara saygısızlık etmez. Çok akıllı ve kurnazdır, birçok meseleyi doğru bağlantıları ve insanları kullanarak kas ve silah gücü kullanmadan halleder.

But in the end, Hel gets annoying. He's so anti-American, which is not unwarranted mind you, that it gets tiresome. At one point he thumbs his nose at barbeques. I can understand going after American consumerism, but barbeques are amazing unless you think you're better than everyone. Trevanian (Rodney Whitaker, 1931–2005) was the bestselling author of Shibumi, The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, The Main, The Summer of Katya, and Incident at Twenty-Mile. He was also an educator in communication and dramatic arts and wrote nonfiction books under his own name. His books have been translated into more than fourteen languages. 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. urn:lcp:shibuminovel0000trev:epub:3400f4b6-2bc6-4330-810e-66a28c7b61c7 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier shibuminovel0000trev Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2sb51zx8gf Invoice 1652 Isbn 1400098033 Lccn 2004030110 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9661 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200077 Openlibrary_edition

Batının değerlerine inat tamamen doğu değerleriyle eğitilen Nicholai, batının şaşalı görünümünden de uzaktır; ona dışarıdan bakıldığında sahip olduğu özelliklerin çoğu fark edilmez; çünkü o sadeliğin ve olgunluğun peşindedir, tüm yaşamını “şibumi” kavramına adar. Onun bedeni, davranışları ve sesi özündeki üstün özelliklerin sade bir yansımasıdır; Amerika’da yaratılan süper kahramanlar gibi rengarenk elbiseler ve havalı hareketlerin adamı değildir Nicholai Hel. If history, intelligence, espionage, and satire aren’t enough to interest you, Shibumi is a novel of spelunking and Go, too, neither of which is added in only passing thought. Indeed, the two adventures into the Gouffre Porte-de-Larrau cave system, which bookend the rising action of the story, were favorite parts for me — the descriptions of the cave system and the physical demands of the journey placed me directly in both.

Per Trevanian, c’è un americano, un cinese, un francese, un basco… e via avanti con insulsaggini del genere. trevenian mahlasini kullanan yazar her kimdiyse her seyi yanlis anlamis, humanizmi de, dinginlik halini de, asaleti de, cinselligi de, kultur farkini da her seyi ama herseyi yanlis anlamis. 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’.Over the course of the war and Japan's eventual surrender, Hel finds himself without a country. Being half-Russian, he is suspect among conquering Americans, who learn to accept him because of his multi-linguistic capabilities. His knowledge of martial arts helps him during meditation periods after he spends a time in prison. Upon his eventual release, Americans use his skills to infiltrate enemy organizations, and Hel soon becomes an efficient killer. But Hel takes revenge on those who have thrust him into this life of murder-for-hire. And when a man seeking revenge for the loss of his brother by Hel's hands, Nikko Hel's quiet, dignified life in the Spanish Basque mountains is suddenly turned upside down. It will take all of his skills to survive and possible seek to 'quiet' those who would dare challenge him. Need I say that I realize the CIA has some "asses" and that I know some operations were quite probably far from kosher. Then again there are bad cops, soldiers who run or turn traitor and so on. The Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy could never function treated the way the CIA is. I know, I was in the army in the early '70s (discharged in '75). I was once cursed by a teen for wearing my Class A uniform. 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. 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).

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: 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. 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. A classic spy novel from the bestselling author, Trevanian, about a westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world's most accomplished assassins.

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.” 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." Characters? Nicholai Hel and Le Cagot have to be two of the most memorable I’ve encountered. And the minor characters — Mother Company man Mr. Diamond, CIA veteran agent Starr, the Gnome, Pierre the gardner, Hana, and Hannah, to name a few — provide a colorful, thoroughly developed and memorable ensemble. The reader does a fairly good job covering all the characters and accents, although there is still the under-twang of an American accent, I didn't find it to be disconcerting.