This may be the longest book commentary/review I’ve ever written, as priceless quotes abound throughout the book and I plan to include many. All are from the 2011 paperback copy. I’m including numerous info links. Use them after your first read of the review or as you go. You choose.Trevanian's SHIBUMI. Originally published in 1979. Trevanian is one of the pen names of Rodney William Whitaker (1931-2005). He notably wrote The Eiger Sanction. ”In the process of converting this novel into a vapid film, a fine young climber was killed.” (Author’s footnote pg. 167.) His estate authorized the writing of the prequel to this book, SATORI by Don Winslow. (My Satori comments.)“…shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances.”“Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, …it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, …is spiritual tranquility that is not passive, it is being without the angst of becoming.”“One does not achieve it, one …discovers it.”“…one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity.”(All from pg. 77.) (Pudency.)The book SHIBUMI is the proverbial “…riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…”. (Winston Churchill.) (Proverbial, proverb, epigram, maxim.)I read SATORI (prequel by another author, links above) and my curiosity was significantly aroused to pursue the story in SHIBUMI.In my opinion the cover endorsements on the paperback edition get it wrong about the book.“The only writer of airport paperbacks to be compared to Zola, Ian Fleming, Poe, and Chaucer.” –New York Times. Airport paperbacks?!?! Sounds like a barely polite euphemism for pulp fiction. Writers of all genres (including pulp fiction) should be offended to be categorized as being merely worthy of filling airport shelves with illiterate works for passing travelers. But what do you expect from the New York Times and their singular evaluation of their own self-importance. :)Then there is “It’s hard to imagine a more nearly perfect spy story.” –Milwaukee Journal. What are they smoking, but not reading, up there in Wisconsin? SHIBUMI is barely a spy story at all. I admit after reading SATORI I “expected” a combination espionage/assassin thriller but the actual ‘spy story’, as excellent as it is, probably consumes only 25% or so of the novel. The rest is back (front, and side) story, equally excellent in its own right, but not spy story per se.Herein lies the riddle, mystery, and enigma. I think the book is the author’s philosophical commentary on life and contemporary humanity, much more than just the brief moralizing you may get in many works of fiction. The caricature shell of a spy story is his method of presenting it. In that respect it reminds me slightly of ISLAND by Aldous Huxley, though it doesn’t wax nearly as philosophical as that thin tome.A fictional novel about the game Go is a brief part of the story in Shibumi. ”The book was an elaborate joke in the form of a report and commentary on a fictional master’s game played at the turn of the century.” “…The book was in, in fact, a subtle and eloquent parody of the intellectual parasitism of the critic, and much of the delight lay in the knowledge that both the errors of play and the articulate nonsense of the commentary were so arcane that most readers would nod along in grave agreement.” (Pg 130-131.)Perhaps that is an allusion to SHIBUMI itself. The lead character is a fictional master assassin. There is more intellectual, philosophical critique than I have ever seen in a spy thriller or ‘airport paperback’. I can only speculate what the author’s motives were.The outright philosophical fiction of Ayn Rand not withstanding (Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, et al), I have never highlighted so many passages in what I thought was going to be light, pure entertainment, reading. (Ayn Rand on the other hand is neither light nor pure entertainment reading.)Let me present a few passages for you to contemplate, if you will:“America, after all, was populated by the lees and failures of Europe. Recognizing this, we must see them as innocent. As innocent as the adder, as innocent as the jackal. Dangerous and treacherous, but not sinful. You spoke of them as a despicable race. They are not a race. They are not even a culture. They are a cultural stew of the orts and leavings of the European feast. At best, they are a mannered technology. In place of ethics, they have rules. Size functions for them as quality functions for us. What for us is honor and dishonor, for them is winning and losing.” (Pg 103.)[I have sometimes contemplated, in the abysmal abyss of my mind, the lack of tangible heritage many of us WASPs derive from. I admire Jews and American Indians for theirs. As an Indian guide once noted on a tour I did of pueblo ruins, "You have no roots". No grounding, no foundation, no guideposts. Advantage, or disadvantage? Still contemplating.]“You can gain experience, if you are careful to avoid empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience–twenty times. And never resent the advantge of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coin of life, and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled.” (Pg 109.)“(He) arrived at a kind of emotional truce with the Americans among whom he worked. This is not to say that he came to like them, or to trust them; but he came to realize that they were not the amoral, depraved people their political and military behavior suggest they were. True, they were culturally immature, brash, and clumsy, materialistic and historically myopic, loud, bold, and endlessly tiresome in social encounters; but at the bottom they were good-hearted and hospitable; willing to share–indeed insistent upon sharing–their wealth and ideology with all the world.Above all, he came to recognize that all Americans were merchants, that the core of the American Genius, of the Yankee Spirit, was buying and selling. They vended their democratic ideology like hucksters, supported by the great protection racket of armaments deals and economic pressures. Their wars were monumental exercises in production and supply. Their government was a series of social contracts. Their education was sold as so much per unit hour. There marriages were emotional deals, the contracts easily broken if one party failed in his debt-servicing. Honor for them consisted in fair trading. And they were not, as they thought, a classless society; they were a one-class society–the mercantile.” (Pg 126-127.)“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.” (Pg 137.)“We would all be happier if the Palestinian issue (and the Palestinians with it) would simply disappear. They’re a nasty, ill-disciplined, vicious lot who history happened to put in the position of a symbol of Arab unity.” (Pg 228.)“…and the concept of fair play is totally alien to the mentality of the French, a people who have produced generations of aristocrats, but not a single gentleman; a culture in which the legal substitutes for the fair; a language in which the only word for fair play is the borrowed English.” (Pg 266.)“It’s not Americans I find annoying; it’s Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called ‘American’ only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady… …Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant ifforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experience.” (Pg 306.)“It is revealing of the American culture that its prototypic hero is the cowboy: an uneducated, boorish, Victorian migrant agricultural worker.” (Pg 341.)…to cite a few.This American-born author certainly has his opinions of his fellow countrymen! All of them are still applicable to todays mores. The role and opinions of “big oil” in the book are equally apropos. (Recall the book was published in 1979, 32 years ago.)In retrospect I’ve revealed practically nothing about the story and will leave it that way. Having a lot of time on my hands at the moment, I inhaled the book in a matter of a few days, which is fast for me. It IS an espionage/assassin thriller, and a very good one, but it does not consume itself with that solely. Don’t expect it to be a Ludlum, Silva, Baldacci, Flynn non-stop action book, though the shell story will not disappoint. The front, back, and side stories (just a little off the top please) are immensely entertaining, and the social/philosophical commentary is priceless.Airport paperbacks. Give.. me.. a.. break..Tsuru no Sugomori.
The reading public back in 1979 picked this book up thinking they were reading a best selling thriller novel, little did they know they were going to be exposed to a Trevanian philosophy called SHIBUMI. “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 prudency. 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…authority without domination. One does not achieve SHIBUMI, one…discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. One must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity to arrive at SHIBUMI.”I've seen reviewers say that this book is too intelligently written to be published today. A bit cynical in my opinion, the book is a product of the time, but certainly doesn't come across as a typical written by-the-numbers thriller. Written today it would obviously be written differently. Probably some of the more defining aspects of the book would be lost, but I still think this book would make the spring list of a major publisher. The first part is about Nicholai Hei's upbringing in Shanghai and Tokyo. He was born to an exiled Russian countess and a German soldier. His mother does whatever she needs to do to survive as territory changes hands and new armies march into town. Luckily for Hei his mom has the good fortune to snag a Japanese General, Kishikawa,who takes a shine to the boy. He arranges for Nicholai to be sent back to friends who can further his teachings in the Japanese philosophy game of GO. Nicholai has a natural ear for languages and learns five. As the world destabilizes and the Americans and the Russians start competing for trophies, Nicholai finds himself without a country. His one asset is his knowledge of languages. He takes a job working for the Americans even though he loathes them. The book is filled with pointed criticisms of all nationalities, but Trevanian's favorite target is the Americans. "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."Hei commits an act that brings him under the control of the CIA. The accusations that are thrown at him reminded me of 2008 when then Senator Obama was running for President and people were holding up signs with a Hitler mustache under his nose and accusing him of being a Stalinist. I kind of felt they needed to pick whether he was a Nazi or a Communist. It is really hard to be both. "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?"Hei is subjected to devastating torture while in the hands of the Americans and this treatment sets him on his course of being an international assassin for hire and a level four master of sexual intercourse. Yes, in this novel there are four levels of sexual aptitude and I am not going to speculate as to where I fall on the spectrum. 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. 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."A typical conversation Hei always has to endure Le Cagotisms. "Is everything laid out?"Does the devil hate the wafer?""Have you tested the Brunton compass?""Do babies shit yellow?"And you're sure there's no iron in the rock?""Did Moses start forest fires?""And the fluorescein is packed up?""Is Franco an asshole?"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. Needless to say Hei becomes enmeshed with a situation counter to American interests. He enlists the aid of his other friend "The Gnome" a dwarf (Peter Dinklage?) and a world class blackmailer who has the means to bring governments to their knees. Body counts rise quickly, and in the course of his chess match with the Americans he realizes he has much more to lose than his life philosophy would ever have him admit. The book is at times over the top, spoofish, but the real brilliance of the book is the ability to read it on whatever level you want. If you want to take it to the beach as a mind diverting entertainment it will deliver. If you want to read it and let your mind toss around the aspects of the philosophy of Shibumi that is also quite easily done. Either approach to the book will garner enjoyment. Highly recommended and if I write much more I'm going to convince myself to bump it from four to five stars. I want to leave you with a summary of Hei's view of American culture. "It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun."
What do You think about Shibumi (2005)?
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5! Senses Working Overtime!SEE the assassin in his youth! see him as a child in war-torn Shanghai, as a young Go-Master in Japan, as a dutiful son and as a tortured prisoner, as an expert caver in Basque Spain, as an equally expert Stage IV Lovemaker! see him enact the "Delight of the Razor" upon his lovely and loving concubine! see him destroy his enemies in an equally subtle fashion!HEAR the clock ticking! an assassin does not live forever! shall he go to his grave as a disposable pawn to the malevolent Mother Company? or shall he go to his grave in a state of meditative bliss? shall he go to his grave at all? listen to the sound of your heartbeat as you await his decision! he hears you, hiding in that cave, blind and foolish and terminally Western in your inability to truly listen. die, deaf Westerner, die!SMELL the sour tang of fear, the smell of sweat flowing from under your arms to soak your expensive business suit as you contemplate who exactly you have crossed! you have crossed a Master of the "Naked/Kill" technique! smell yourself, businessman! you smell like a fool. die, fool, die!TASTE the sumptuous flavors served to you in an assassin's lair! do they remind you of the unctuous flavors of french cuisine or the brassy flavors of american bbq? you are being served the flavors of the two nations our assassin despises the most! notice the meals of the assassin and his concubine: simple brown rice and sauteed vegetables. enjoy your fatty decadence, Westerner! will it be your last?FEEL the calm and warming presence of the sublime meadow that is the assassin's mystical meditative psychic retreat. and what shall come to those blundering dolts who dare encroach upon this special Happy Place? you have one guess! it is a word that starts with D, foolish Company Man!you think this is a tale of a deadly assassin forced into battle with evil corporate interests; forces that are set upon his destruction in order to further their evil corporate goals of fascist world domination. YOU ARE WRONG. this is a story that is about style. style over substance. style that equals substance. style that is superior to the whinging, entitled, utterly deluded and very Western sense of "substance" - substance that actually equals grandiose self-absorption. style that equals form and form that equals meaning. if you are looking for a book that will give you a fast-paced tale of devious dark deeds and sweet revenge and justice righteously served... look elsewhere, dum-dum! but if you are looking for a novel that takes you to a place of contemplation, a place of understanding that the things we do may not amount to much but the way we do things - the meaning that is implicit in how we actually move about in the world and how that represents what is truly important - that that is what is important, that that is what is genuinely meaningful... well, this is the book for you. "...To be truthful, I hadn't expected such good form from you. Most people of your age and class are so wrapped up in themselves - so concerned with what they're 'into' - that they fail to realize that style and form are everything, and substance a passing myth." He opened his eyes and smiled as he made a pallid effort to imitate the American accent: "It ain't what you do, it's how you do it."plus, a special bonus Sixth Sense included free of charge! PROXIMITY AWARENESSfoolish Westerners like to imagine that the sixth sense is telepathy - or perhaps seeing dead people. ha! what use is that exactly? why waste time hearing the despairing dead in their various depressing doldrums? and what is the use of reading the tedious and predictable thoughts of your tedious and predictable fellow humans? i for one am happy to be spared the monotony of those "insights". instead, Shibumi offers a delightful and very useful sixth sense: Proximity Awareness! i would much prefer to be aware of when someone is approaching, or thinking about me, or contemplating using a camera or gun on me. all the better to avoid such monotonous interactions!
—mark monday
This book is brilliant. It is a work of genius. It works on so many levels. Most of all, though, the entire book is a brilliant joke. I see from some of the reviews here that many readers are on the receiving end of that joke.A little research on the author will reveal some of his character. "Trevanian" is not only a pen name but a character by a writer (Rod Whitaker) who took on the personas of his pseudonyms like a method actor. The satire is happening on several levels and we're not always sure if Trevanian is executing the satire upon the reader or if Rod Whitaker is executing it upon Trevanian.If that sounds a little egghead then don't worry about it - just read and enjoy! If you get it, you'll get it. If not, you're probably just, through no fault of your own, an American *evil grin*.For all that, this book is a very easy and enjoyable read. The exotic foreign locales and situations are beautifully described and the characters are colourful and exciting.Of course, it doesn't hurt that the protagonist, super assassin Nicholai Hel, is ridiculously fun to read about, regardless of any satire attached. He's so suave and sophisticated he makes James Bond look like... well, Daniel Craig.This was definitely one of the most fun books I have read in a long time. I could never have expected a single book to fulfill the escapist spy fantasy while at the same time having so much depth.
—Gordon Shumway
This is definitely the most ridiculous book I have ever read. Another Goodreads reader wrote:"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."That said, it's also one of the most entertaining. I read it more than a decade ago, but I think of it often and have recommended it to several people as a source of *inspiration*. What's most enjoyable is how it recklessly mixes genres. Stephen King is as close as I've gotten to reading pulp paperbacks from the late seventies, so maybe the drugstores of thirty years ago were packed with books as delicious as this. But I doubt it. I'll write off an otherwise good book with an unbelievable plot twist, but Shibumi is so over the top, I never questioned it's crazy path. Which is stupid, yes, but fun and, above all, freeing.
—Ian
