Download Now Shibumi Penned By Trevanian Accessible As Hardbound
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 timedefying 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. A novel I was introduced to when I was a kid, by my father, This novel was a great thriller about an assassin Nicholai Hel who is also into culture, languages, mathematics and sexual competition with his female lovers, It had some great social commentary, Trevanian shits on American cities like New York where he says people are full of fear and fury, He also castigates Arab males for hiding the females in burqas, There is a long passage which just goes on and on where Nicholai Hel and his sidekick Le Cabot do some cave climbing, I remember it irritated the hell out of me, The main villain is a CIA agent who goes by the name of Diamond, I remember the book had a lot of sex, I liked reading those. It is set across many continents, My father is a big fan of this novel, I remember he owned multiple copies of this novel, He would lend to people whom he met and they would never return it, I might have given itor,if I was absolutely sure all of it was satire, My favorite parts were the conversations on GO, his time in prison, spelunking, and the various Basque characters, It was fun more than it was important, Other reasons I didn't give itstarsThe weird fixation on sex that seems today to really date the novel,The reliance on ethnic stereotypes,
Again, this all really pivots on whether or not Trevanian was coming at this as a farce or playing it straight, if this really was more of a Tropic Thunder satire, I get it, But I'm afraid a lot of those who love it view it more in the James Bond which I think also sinks into a satire soup model,
Not that are some cosmically important or useful measure, Fuck. I have to retract two and my rave review, I mean, clearly it was a rave, I'd say this book loses the plot about half way through, but to be fair, there isn't really a plot, Once the book leaves Japan and finds its home in Basque land, it rapidly becomes close to unbearable, I am afraid that whilst I savoured the first half, the second I ended up just skimming, I have way too many good books on the shelf to be spending precious time on this one,
I am leaving my halfcocked first discussion of this as it, testimony to my idiocy, It follows.
Im only half way through, but my opinion will not change, This is a clearasdaystar book and thats from a fussy star attributor,
After having to read or start, at least popular best sellers of late which are so badly written: Harry P, the third volume and the others of Northern Lights, the Dragon Tattoo trilogy it is a vast relief to be reminded that a book can be both finely written and unputdownable fun, thrilling and thoughtful.
It can even be propagandist, if it is done the right way,
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.
This, quoted from Trevanians own site:
Q: Americans are reading lots of books, but at least anecdotally it appears they are reading blockbusters and that smaller, literary titles are being pushed to the margins.
Do you see a similar trend in Europe, and what impact will this have
A: Alas, yes, its coming to Europe as well and its a great pity.
A lot of excellent new writers will never get read, This is hardest on the storytellers of America, because writers of attractivelypackaged fact and history are still doing fairly well, although even these readerships are dwindling, captured by the internet and by the electronic games that consume so much of the time of the kinds of kids who used to read history and science.
The shadow of literary globalization is falling across all of western Europe, and will hit the Englishwriting countries first, as English is the language of commerce, and therefore its the foreign language of preference for the teeming populations whose five hundred word vocabularies limit them to language on a comic book level.
Hence Barbara Cartland is still the most popular English language writer in India, And Ive heard there is a similar dumbingdown impulse at home, where a series of childrens books by a very canny English writer is the most popular read on American campuses.
Does this mean that HP, NL and DT had to be badly written That although Shibumi was a best seller in its day, late seventies, now it would not survive, it is too intelligent and well written The point is not that they are reading blockbusters, but that once upon a time these blockbusters were well crafted things, at least if this book is any guide.
In fact, Shibumi has been an eyeopener for me, I have been sticking up for some of these books lately when clearly I should not have been, But if Manny is correct in suggesting, as Trevanian is also observing, that English is going through a period of simplification and that this is the consequence, badly written tripe being lapped up by the reading public, what a tragedy.
I cant imagine a world in which we have lost the capacity to say interesting things, because we have had the linguistic skills necessary to do so taken away by generations of illiterate facebookers and smsers.
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:
Q:Since I first read Shibumi and then reread it twenty years later, my opinion of the IsraeliPalestinian situation has changed entirely, as a result of becoming much better informed.
. . Has your opinion in this regard at all changed since Shibumi has been published
A:I hope there are many Americans who can remain flexible through the fog of prejudice and fear about this issue.
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 Petrochemical 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 overpopulation.
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.
What should America do now Using such tatters of evenhandedness as we still possess, we should guide drag, if necessary the Israelis into as fair and honest a sharing of land and water as is possible.
Then we must open our hands and carefully step back, out of Middle East affairs, turning them over to the United Nations,
I wonder when this was written, it shows an unlikely trust in the United Nations, which in my opinion, is shamefully bereft of moral purpose.
Oh, and this: I must take issue with all my friends who have reviewed this, It is not just a fun book, or a thriller, It is a very strongly felt position about how we are living and how we should live, This book manages to hammer and hammer and hammer this message home, whilst making you feel like you are 'just reading a best seller', That he has managed to write something so entirely enjoyable whilst doing this is such a feat, I am completely in awe of it,
Daha önce okuduğum hiçbir kitaba benzemiyordu kurgu düzeni o yüzden çok farklı geldi, Biraz daha ilgi çekici bir şekilde yazılabilirdi diye düşünüyorum ama karakterlerin her zaman okuduğum tiplemelerden farklı olmasına bayıldım, I must really be missing something, A quick internet search locates many favourable reviews of both this book, and of its author, Rodney William Whitaker aka Trevanian, who apparently positioned himself as someone who read Proust, but not much else written in theth century.
Consider this statement from Wikipedia: Shibumi is elaborately written, using a very extended vocabulary, based on a sound knowledge in history and geopolitics, switching easily from pessimism to wry humor, Shibumi is more than a mere thriller, and may be compared to other works such as Brave New World, Nineteen Eightyfour and Fahrenheit.
And theres much more of the same in other reviews, However, I have seldom read or listened to a more inept, poorlywritten thriller, and the comparison to the three great works referred to is ludicrous, The characters in Shibumi are absurd stereotypes, the writingstyle is awkward clearly if the author indeed read Proust extensively, he absorbed little, and the plotline is as weak as cheap coffee.
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 thefilm 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 SpideySense! 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 inwill strike a chord of plausibility in those of us today who sometimes wonder who's really running things.
Plus, he taught me about "Volvobashing", 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 lérudition au confluent de loriginalité et de limprévisible.
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