Shibumi

Rating:
Summary: Don't read this book!
Review: Don't read this book! You will never be able to enjoy another thriller again - Ludlum, Clancy, etc. pale in comparison to the master! The good news is that once you read Shibumi, you'll be "thrilled" to find out that Trevanian has written two other terrific thrillers - The Eiger Sanction and The Loo Sanction. Neither can compare to the masterpiece that is Shibumi, but 2nd best by Trevanian is better than the best of the "best-sellers".

I first read Shibumi while in high school (over 20 years ago) and it has remained my favorite book since then. I have re-read it at least 5 or 6 times, and will probably re-read it every few years for the rest of my life to remind myself of what good writing should look like. As a side note - it is amazing how many people have told me that Shibumi is their favorite book also.

Trevanian does not "rush" into the plot, like today's best-sellers. Too often, with Clancy, et. al., I feel like the book was written as a precursor to a screenplay for a Hollywood summer blockbuster. Trevanian takes the time to fully develop his characters, so that when the action starts, you feel as though you're reading about close friends (or close enemies). Trevanian is a true craftsman as a writer, so that even the background and characterizations are thoroughly enjoyable to read. If you're a fan of spy-thrillers, you can't do better than Shibumi!

But as I said, don't read it - it will ruin every thriller you read subsequent to this one...

Rating:
Summary: Be prepared to be changed
Review: This is a spy novel/thriller which transcends all others of the genre. The book contains the most skillful pacing, the most extraordinary, painstakingly wrought, eccentric characters (impossible to forget!) and all the attraction and drama of Myth. The storyline woven by Trevanian reflects the myth-like narrative: intertwined with the actual plot playing in modern times, telling of the efforts of the Mother Company and its minions in the U.S. Government secret services to hunt down the main character Nicholai Hel, are a series of explanatory recounts of the hero's past. This careful and seemingly effortless storytelling mirrors the main character's lofty goal of achieving shibumi, "authority without domination." Trevanian has created one of the most detailed and fascinating character studies I have ever read -- even though, as one poster complained, Hel may be rather too close in character to a superhero to be believable. However, in the context of the plot such a grievance seems irrelevant.. The arrogant Soigné, the cultivated mystic, the frighteningly disciplined Go champion, the calculating murderer, the dedicated speleologist, the practitioner of esoteric sexual techniques, Hel is a paradoxical man who lives by ancient patrician codes of conduct, yet kills his fellow kind for money. Reading of Hel's unorthodox, noble origins, his unusual upbringing and cultivated schooling, and later his humbling privations, loss and even torture, one can forgive his pragmatic decision to earn a living as a paid assassin. Through Hel, Trevanian tries to teach (or is it preach?) to the reader the distinction between pseudo-class, and true style, the synthetic and authentic, discriminating and trend-following, genuine friendship and crass exploitation, the nobility of honor and tradition and the cheezy, superficial trappings of a deteriorating, consumerist culture. Most editors nowadays would probably balk at some of Hel's lengthy, caustic rants against the greedy oil monopolies, America's cultural decline and the corruption of our government. Hel may very well be a mouthpiece for Trevanian's personal doctrine, but I don't much mind if he is. Then there is the writing: rich, superlative; Trevanian seizes the senses and masterfully manipulates them. He is an accomplished veteran of the craft, and Shibumi is his finest and certainly most well known work. This novel abounds with exquisite phrasing and evocative place description. Broad in narrative scope, the emotional tone is alternately snide, then humorous, then terrifying, then poignant, then riveting. I have visited the real village Etchebar, in the Basque mountains, the fictional home of Nicholai Hel. As a sort of spiritual endeavor I re-trod the character Hannah's steps and read again Shibumi's opening chapter. I asked several locals about Trevanian, inquired as to the location of Hel's exquisite Chateau. I received friendly, although cryptic denial of such knowledge. It is said that Trevanian resides in the Southwestern French mountains -- as mysterious and aloof as his most memorable character. Read it, and be prepared to be changed. Maybe you'll even achieve a tiny little shibumi yourself...

Rating:
Summary: Asinine
Review: At least James Bond isn't an elitist vegitarian. Plotting obvious, "Anti-hero" subtext snooze-o-rama. Spelunking bits read like (...) boring/extraneous unless you're writing a dissertation. Is that what you want from a thriller? I didn't think so. We give this the finger.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre book which is strangely riveting -- Highly Recommend
Review: This thriller jumps all over the map and moves in and out of a number of off-beat speciality areas (Eastern religion and Zen-like thought; caving; the Spanish Basque region; computers; the spy industry; World War II era history). Its tremendous appeal probably lies in the mystic aura surrounding the almost God-like protagonist, who just happens to be an assasin, but also in the cynical tone the author adopts as he views the world through his characters. The book features excitment, plot movement, sex, adventure and the clashing cultures of espionage and soft emotion. It's occasionally silly, but absolutely powerful. Who can forget the young woman who is punished for life because Nicholas makes love to her -- thereby dooming her to the futile attempt forever more to attempt to match the experience with ordinary lovers!? Bizarre -- but probably the world's finest airplane book. A must read

Rating:
Summary: The intellectual masterpiece
Review: For those who enjoy an action packed book with small, monosyllabic words like pow, slam, blap, and thork, this book is not for you.

On the otherhand, those who appreciate reading a well-woven story with intelligent, complex thinking and anti-heroic ideals, this may be your thing. It's old school!

I have read all of Trevanian's stuff, but they all pale in comparison to Shibumi. The Eiger Sanction was pretty good, Loo Sanction wasn't bad, everything else was a little disapointing.

I have read Shibumi at least 10 times over the years and I still enjoy going through it every once in a while.

Rating:
Summary: Modern medieval anti-hero of the establishment.
Review: When this novel was first published in 1979, the leading critics had a difficult time classifying the work. It wasn't exactly an espionage thriller or an epic, but it seemed to touch upon many genres and themes. ~Shibumi~ is a fictional biography more than anything else, for its central character, Nicholai Hel, is the tale's main concern. A minor character in the story sums up the protagonist superbly at the end of the book by calling him half saintly ascetic, half Vandal marauder - a medieval anti-hero. Nicholai Hel is your vintage 'man-against-the establishment' with a mind like a steel trap and the tastes and lifestyle of an 18th century aristocrat. His pedigree is a throw back to the German/Russian elite, where generations of breeding and culture have contributed to his unusual character. Nicholai is a man without a country, a natural mystic, philosopher, linguist, master of Go, a complex Japanese board game of high strategy, and most importantly, a self trained assassin for hire who is expert in the arts of naked/kill. More than this, he is a seeker of spiritual perfection, his ultimate goal being that hard to define state or condition known as Shibumi.

Trevanian (Rodney Whitaker) is a first rate writer. His technical skill in the craft well exceeds many leading 'thriller' writers of today. When one reads about the art of naked/kill, the mystical states of Nicholai Hel, or even the machinations of the CIA and their unscrupulous methods for creating and combating terror, one gets the distinct impression that the author knows exactly what he's talking about and must have access to some kind of inside information. His writing is almost too believable. Throughout the reading, I had to continue to remind myself that this novel was written in 1979, well before the general public had any concern about terrorism. Other than the main character, this tale is about corruption in governments, who will go to any lengths to secure oil rights in the Middle East. The book is also about technology, which has aided civilization in many ways, yet has eroded our basic values. In many respects, Nicholai Hel is a modern Luddite, despising machines in all their forms, and the waste they create. Nicholai Hel is an 'everyman' character, a representation of the virtuous individual, alone and pitted against the dangerous technological and consumerist values of the herd. In the end, however, does Nicholai Hel win this battle over the modern, vulgar, techno-centred majority and finally attain 'Shibumi'?

This work should be considered a classic, for it has a timelessness about it, and can be read many times, for it will continue to offer intellectual stimulation as well as pure entertainment for many years to come.

Rating:
Summary: 1 star since 0 stars is not an option.
Review: Okay, first of all I guess this book wouldn't have been even half as bad if it hadn't been marketed as a thriller. About 95% of the book was just about the hero's life history and the book does NOT have even one proper action sequence. It's just talk, talk, talk, spend a hundred pages explaining how the hero used to have a psychic gift when he was a boy (which has aboslutely NOTHING to do with the story.), talk some more, then just wrap the story up with a very vague action scene that ends in less than page.
Now dont get me wrong. I like a good low-key intellectual thriller with good characterisation just as much as anyone else but it's just that around 95 percent of the book is completely irrelevant to the plot and it is very boring if you read the book, expecting it to be a thriller. It reads more like the life account of a man, which if it had been marketed as, I would have given it 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Great Start, Then Crashes and Burns
Review: I couldn't put the book down, as they say, for its first half. Although I knew I was reading a Japanese view of WWII, it was nonetheless fascinating if terribly incomplete and as one sided as an American WWII propanganda film. Then when the book moves locales to the Basque region and modern times, it tumbles and falls deeply into coyness and predictability. All of a sudden, it's as if some ronin author barged in, drugged the first author and started writing some one dimensional cartoon novel. The characters become cardboard and cute and the protaganist's sermonizing puts him right up there with the Sunday T.V. preachers genre, albeit the protaganist is pushing a different theology.

A good writer realizes there is no black and white in any character: within the circle there is the yin and the yang and even within each yin there is a little yang and vice versa. This makes for authenticity, for we see ourselves in the mixture.

Rating:
Summary: A novel, not an unbiased history text
Review: This review is not meant to stand on its own. The merits of this fine novel are detailed by many reviewers, and to repeat them here would be futile.

Rather, this review is a counterpoint to that scathing review below which criticizes this novel for its biased view of 20th century history. That review may well have been accurate in its history, but was lacking in its understanding of fiction writing. Throughout much of the book, the point of view is pretty closely attached to Nicholai Hel, protagonist, assassin, and man brought up in early-to-mid-20th-century Japanese cultural tradition. To have presented an American-biased, Chinese-biased, or even unbiased point of view with respect to this character would have rendered the book, and the character, impotent. Characters aren't perfectly objective in their worldview - they are products of their own history. In Shibumi, Trevanian does an excellent job of crafting his protagonist in a psychologically sophisticated manner, using the perceptions of WW2-era history as Nicholai Hel would have witnessed them. He doesn't ignore Japan's culpability - in fact, he even mentions it - though, like Hel would have, he passes over it quickly, almost shamefully.

The background material is not history lessons, it's character development, and as such, is done near to perfection.

Rating:
Summary: JUST THE FACTS INSTEAD OF ARTICULATE CRAP
Review: A spy novel in which a Westerner (Nicholai Hel) is raised in Asian cultural settings and becomes the world's top assasin and apparently the antiheisis of the "corruption" of Western capitalist culture that seeks to exploit the rest of the world. Trevanian does have a talent for good turn-of-phrase, but this is eclipsed by the fact that there are so many absurdities in this book I'd have to write a book just to detail them all, so I'll just give some topical details on one, i.e. the portrayal of the Japanese as tragic victims in World War II. Just for the record and what Trevanian blantantly ignores is that 15 million Chinese were killed in the unprovoked Japanese invasion of China, and during this time the Japanese pursued a policy that was actually given in Japanese dispatches as "burn all, loot all, kill all" (read Mikiso Hane's book, "History of Modern Japan" or Saburo's Ienaga's (sp?) "The Pacific War". Trevanian also doesn't deign to mention that the Japanese also practiced and experimented with biological and chemical warfare as well as perfoming inhumane medical experiments with the same, all of which was against the Geneva Convention's regulations on national conduct in war and of which the Japanese were signatoires. Another fact left out by the apparently biasied author was the practice of the Japanese Army forcing women in all of their occupied territories (Polynesia, the Philipines, China, North and South Korea, Indonchine, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Taiwan, as well as many Japanese women) to become "comfort women"; an euphemism for sex slave. The Republic of South Korea alone claims up to 20,000 South Korean women were forced into such service. Nor does Trevanian mention "The Rape of Nanking" (read the book by the same name by Iris Chang) when the Japanese Imperial Army arbitrarily slaughtered 200,000 Chinese in a month's time creating a larger death toll than that which resulted when the U.S. dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima. His dismissal of Japanese attrocities as cultral relativism is gross hypocrisy and to to sum it up, Shibumi is about as realistic as The James Bond franchise of which is first book, The Eiger Sanction, was supposedly a spoof . Just a last note, Trevanian's constant disparagement of Western Culture in general and American culture specifically leaves out the fact that when 19th Century China and Japan were still existing in a largely feudal society, the Western world was 2 or 3 generations away from finding cures for polio, cholera, smallpox, influenza and inventing things like blood plazma and anti-biotics. Any one of these medical discoveries in the last 100 years has saved more people than were killed in both World Wars. And if you want a realistic picture of Japanese society and culture before the "corruption" of the American occupation starting in 1945, instead of Trevanian's wishful fantasy, Shibumi, read the Japanese historian Mikiso Hane's book, "Peasants, Rebels, and Outcasts" (which is in English) or see the Japanese film , "Sansho the Bailif. Either work by themselves debunk the rediculously rosy picture Trevanian paints of pre-1945 Japan.