Trevanian -Shibumi: A Novel- Review

 

When this novel was first published in 1979, the leading critics had difficulty 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.

Hel's 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 'every man' 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.

Musings on Sleeplessness, Climate & Evolution.

 

It is late, and sleep is impossible as the heat and humidity hang and permeate everything…there seems to be no escape, so I sit in front of the computer and write.

Weather affects one’s mood and our general view of the world.

When a civilization begins, depending on one’s specific geographical location does indeed truly determine the development of a particular culture because heat and cold play a big part in how we deal with and view the world.

The Aboriginals of Australia, for example, lived in dry desert conditions. To merely survive was at the top of the priority list, thus their knowledge of the terrain, how to attain food, and their views of existence. Their time was taken up with the search for food and shade from the heat. Because of the heat and barrenness of the landscape, there was no need to change…just survival and the “Dream Time.”

Civilization truly reached its peak in the ancient world around the fertile land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and along the Nile River. However, it can get sweltering during the summer months around Cairo. In the spring and autumn, the Nile flows over, ensuring crops survive and thrive.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I miss the four distinctive seasons living in Melbourne, Australia. Please don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved Melbourne’s erratic weather – four seasons in one day is not just the words to a popular song but actually valid.

It was the Explorer and adventurer Sir Francis Richard Burton who, in an article he had written, attempted to persuade his readers that climate determines the development of a particular race. At the time of the writing, Darwin had crept into “scientific” circles; thus the hierarchy of man – White Anglo-Saxon at the top, (women because of their smaller brains) somewhere around third and down it goes from there, depicting other cultures as “savages,” “Non-Human,” (see Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man) thus justifying the genocide of the Australian Aboriginals, the American Indian and other inferior races like Jews, using Darwin’s theory as fact and justification for mass murder.

Appalling.

Sir Richard was indeed onto something but did not have the opportunity to delve deeper into his hypothesis, flesh out his ideas. (Too busy translating (The Perfumed Garden).

In the Northern Hemisphere, there is a plethora of natural resources. Thus, the particular “races” development, adapting to the climate (four seasons) and therefore having the time to pursue better technology, better infrastructure, etc.

When humans have worries about where their next meal is coming from, there is no time for innovation, art, and the development of civilization.

I am astonished that so many “educated” people consider Darwin’s entire theory scientific fact. In a word, it is not, and remains a theory because he and other scientists have yet to discover the so-called “missing link”: that is to say, the link between, Neanderthal man (Ape) and Cro-Magnon.

Personally, hot, humid weather does nothing for my creative sensibilities because it’s too damn uncomfortable.

As far as other cultures and races are concerned, the “survival of the fittest” theory does not add up because the human is a highly adaptable beings and will use resources that are available in their specific geographical area for survival as mentioned, the climate of the site is a significant factor.

Darwin was an intellectual but a 19th-century misogynist, which, by the way, was, is, and has been a standard view (albeit false) of women for thousands of years.

On that note, I’ll return to bed, contemplating where my next meal is coming from….

Democratic/Establishment – Violations of Free Speech

 

Censorship in the media and social media took hold and ramped up after the 2020 presidential election. Immediately after the election, all social media outlets banned President Trump. A popular social media site (Parlor) was targeted by democrats like the faux progressive AOC to bring the website down due to "hate speech" and disinformation. Despite the platform's popularity, the powers took the site down due to democratic pressure. Over the last 2 years, there's been a blatant campaign to silence certain voices on social media. More to the point, government pressure to silence any voice that contradicts the party line. This is a direct violation of the US Constitution.

Governments should not have the power to influence media to cater to their party politics. But the evidence is clear that the MSM and the democratic party collude on this subject. This is not like the good old days when one could read an editorial exposing anti-war sentiments and another arguing against welfare benefits. Now they have the power to silence any opposing point of view. Canceling them totally is currently the intent. The democrats and their pundits desire only one point of view, and no other is allowed in the public discourse. This is the primary tool of fascism.

A pertinent example was the US presidential democratic race in 2020. The candidate Tulsi Gabbard was campaigning on an anti-regime change ticket along with her type of universal health care. In the first Democratic debates, she slaughtered many candidates on their past records and stances on war. The democratic MO to combat criticism on policy is to name-call and change the subject as soon as possible. After the first debate, Tulsi was smeared by being called an Assadist (president of Syria) and a Russian asset. Although Gabbard had the votes to attend the second and third debates, the Neo-Liberal media banned her or ensured she could never come back to the arguments. Her anti-war stance and awareness of other candidates' shady records caused her to be canceled. Later, the warmonger Hillary Clinton publicly called Gabbard a Russian asset without evidence. The meatheads of the democratic party and their pundits are using the same tactics today at anyone contradicting their party line.

I view Australian MSM (when my tolerance level permits), US mainstream, and mostly specific internet sites that explore all aspects of subjects under discussion. Recently I've been exposed to an apparent cancel campaign to rub out such luminaries as Joe Rogan and Russel Brand. Both podcasts are top-rated. Rogan has over an 11 million audience, and Brand is nearing 5 million subs on YouTube. Russel Brand has been called a "right-winger," and Rogan a "racist" and a significant source of disinformation. These are ad hominem arguments (the lowest form of view) and blatant lies. Their censorship campaigns are not based on substantial ideas or truth but simply accusations and lies. I listen to both gentlemen, and I can assure you that Rogan is not a racist, and Brand is decidedly left-wing. (Although Brand will claim to be neutral) his show consistently exposes political and corporate corruption.

It has come to my attention that these cancel and censor campaigns against these two men are politically backed by prominent pundits in the democratic party. It appears to be evident at face value as the tactics are the same as the democratic party: name-calling, smearing with lies without touching the actual arguments. This is the Clinton MO, therefore, the democratic party MO. And on cursory observation, this strategy is childish (though effective) at best.

The problem is that the establishment parties have nothing to offer – both democratic and republican. They're essentially the same, paid by the same corporate interests. When you have nothing to offer the people, distract with scandals and target to silence those voices contrary to party policy.

I know the word fascism has been thrown around a lot lately, usually incorrectly, though what the establishment attempts to achieve is the primary tool of totalitarianism. Silence all dissenting voices apart from the ruling party.

A democracy, the political ideal that politicians talk about non-stop, is a state where all speech is free and the press can criticize the government.

Over the last 2 years, at least, we are losing both.

Theodore Dalrymple – Life at the Bottom - Review

Dr. Dalrymple proposes a compelling though controversial thesis in this fascinating and highly conservative collection of essays. Over the last twenty-five years a new type of underclass has emerged in western societies, an underclass that uses the welfare system in all its forms, subsidised housing, free by-weekly pay checks, child support and free medical benefits. From a liberal political standpoint, this support for the nation's "have nots" is a compassionate gesture to take care of its own poor. 

One would logically assume that providing the poor with life's essentials would bring the crime rate down and provide incentive for these people to further their standing in society. In fact, as Dalrymple proposes, it has had an opposite effect: crime in his native England has skyrocketed; drug use is at an all time high and domestic violence is a wide spread common occurrence. Why? Liberal values not economics has created individuals that deny any responsibility for their own lives, it is always the rich, the government or societies institutions that is to blame, thus crime continues to rise while England's Welfare State has grown into an unwieldy Goliath.

Dalrymple has worked in numerous countries and has been an attending physician and psychiatric consultant in London's prisons for many years. Thus his thesis is not born from some abstract social theory about human behaviour. He has treated thousands of victims of domestic violence, consulted thousands of prisoners who have been incarcerated for petty crime to murder. The common thread that runs through all these cases is a pathological denial of responsibility for their own circumstances or conditions.

As Dalrymple explains:

"Like so many modern ills, the coarseness of spirit and behaviour grows out of ideas brewed up in the academy and among intellectuals - ideas that have seeped outward and are now having their practical effect on society. The relativism that has ruled the academy for many years has now come to rule the mind of the population." (P.85)

In other words, this post modern notion that there is no high and low art, no good and bad, no subtlety and crudeness, only relative perspectives; taking this further, our behaviour too is not individually determined, but society and its oppressive inequalities that make me who I am, and a biological predisposition which causes me to steal from the old lady next door, beat my wife beyond recognition and consume drugs and alcohol like there is no tomorrow. The trickling down of these academic theories, biological determinism, Marxism and the post modern theory that there are no levels of hierarchical values, only difference, has created an underclass of victims who believe they should get something for nothing and commit crime because society has created them as victims as self-determinism does not exist.

Dalrymple provides numerous real life examples from his practice working in a hospital in London. His writing style is straight forward, at times literary but never sentimental. The arguments in these essays are persuasive and push the reader to examine the underlying modern ideologies that have created and sustain a well provided for underclass of criminal "victims".

Roland Topor – The Tenant – Review

 

The French writer Roland Topor first published his novel, The Tenant, in 1964. In 1976, the Polish director, Roman Polanski, adapted the book to film with limited success in Europe. This recent edition from Valancourt Books, 2020, includes an engaging Introduction by R.B. Russell.

Topor is known primarily as an artist and illustrator. He published several books with his drawings, sketches, and wood cuttings. An artist with many talents, a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor, film producer, set designer – he also wrote and produced a puppet show Telchat that ran for two years on French television. However, he is most famous for his surrealist flair in all his work across the spectrum.

One cannot necessarily include The Tenant as a surrealist novel. Russell calls the text, "The Tenant is a quietly subversive realist novel" (p7). It can be labeled an absurdist work for many reasons. First, the reader cannot precisely depend on the narrator, whether he is the victim of evil intent by those around him or a tale of a once sane man falling into paranoia and utter madness. It really isn't a big stretch either way because both views are absurd and cannot be trusted.

Trelkovsky is a 30 something Parisian, employed, single, and seeking another flat to rent in the city. The man is a Parisian of bourgeoisie sensibilities. Meaning a man who fits into polite society, conforming to all the rules demanded of that society. When he finds his new dwellings, he's treated like an outsider, someone who doesn't follow the rules, disturbing the status quo. Trelkovsky is targeted by his neighbors in the apartment complex for making too much noise. There are constant raps and pounding on the ceiling and walls for him to quiet down. Strangely, it is only on the first night that he has a housewarming party. The weeks and months afterward, he's quiet as a mouse. So the psychological sense of persecution begins to pervade his consciousness, promoting a developing sense of severe paranoia.

When he rents the flat, he is told that the previous tenant committed suicide by jumping out the window through a glass terrace below. Making a few more inquiries, Trelkovsky discovers the tenant hasn't died at all and is lying in hospital. He visits the woman, bandaged like a mummy and near death. He meets Stella, a friend of the bedridden woman, and develops a relationship with her.

The longer he remains at the apartment, the more his neighbors abuse him. Finally, he tells his colleagues at work, and they make fun of him for not standing up for himself. He soon separates from his friends and workmates, becoming a loner, living alone.

Some critics have called The Tenant, and other Topor projects an analysis of the conformist and nonconformist in society. Though Trelkovsky is a well-behaved bourgeois, following all the rules and living a quiet life, suddenly, he's kicked outside acceptable community and forced to survive... thus leading to madness.

The text's ending felt to be tied up, though absurd, like a birthday ribbon.

That said, an exciting and original tale of French society and madness.

Hal Bennett – Lord of Dark Places – Review

 

This was a complex novel to read. The reasons vary, though, on the surface, the book is plagued with sexual imagery and gratuitous sexual exploits. However, in the narrative, the criminal actions can be unspeakable in any civilized society. To understand Bennett's commentary through the main protagonist is to delve into American culture, including religion, war, racism, politics, and what it meant to be black American during the '50s and '60s. The novel is also exceptionally well written, penned by a master of prose.

Having some knowledge of contemporary American literature, it was unfortunate not to have even heard of Hal Bennett, let alone read any of his work. Nevertheless, Lord of Dark Places is a good start.

Bennett was born in 1930 in the state of Virginia. He wrote under many pseudonyms, including Harriet Janeway and John D. Revere. One critic described "the Lord of Dark Places as a satirical and all but scatological attack on the phallic myth. Indeed the Freudian allusions are numerous and graphic in this novel; at times too much to bear.

We follow the life and mind of Joe Market. Born in the deep south, he witnesses his mother's death and the despicable actions of his father. Joe's father Titus is a conman turned preacher, creating a new religion exclusively for black men. Under the guise of this religion is a traveling sex show, Titus pimping young Joe out to the Hallelujah crowds, both male and female. The young Joe is led to believe he is a type of new god, his massive member and pristine naked body, a symbol of the new savior of the black American.

Religion and sex combine to make the perfect con. Joe finally escapes this life through a chain of circumstances, ending up North, selling his body to make a living. This is all he knows until almost being arrested for solicitation by an Italian cop. The cop gives Joe an alternative of either jailing or going back to school. Joe reluctantly chooses the latter.

Joe volunteers to go to Vietnam. It's here he inadvertently kills a man, and wittiness a black pilot castrated and killed from a bomb. He eventually is wounded and returns home. Joe's commentary on war, country and African Americans' place in this milieu is spot on and relevant today.

For Joe Market, sex drives everything: identity, manhood, love, murder, death, pleasure, pain, violence, and ultimately spiritual redemption.

This view combines and peaks at the novel's profound climax and ending.

The novel is original. It's a carnival of satire, myth, detective thriller, and profound social commentary.

A difficult though thought-provoking experience.

Lee Child – The Affair (Jack Reacher) - Review

Many have called Jack Reacher the modern fictional hero of our times. Although “The Affair” is the sixth novel read in some months, this protagonist continues his appeal and there is no desire to stop reading the many instalments that the author, Lee Child, has produced over the years. What makes Jack Reacher so popular and loved by so many people?

Reacher is an ex Army MP that has decided to hit the road carrying no more than a toothbrush and the cloths on his back. Reacher is a Jack Kerouac without the literary bent, falling into adventures, and using his detective skills to protect the weak, and seeking justice at every turn. The man is tough, a born fighter and in the stories, usually kicks the hell out of someone, usually a gang all at once, which, by the way, always deserve it.

He loves the Blues, beautiful women and can't stand bullies. Jack also has a clock in his head, where he knows the time no matter, day or night. Like any well trained solider, he has the observational and deductive powers rivalling even the 19th century sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. The man also has a excellent sense of geography, that is, he has the ability to measure an area, for example, a crime scene, down to the centimetre, in all four directions of the map...all in his head. He is ferociously intelligent, yet has simple values – as far as Reacher is concerned, there are no shades of grey, only black and white. He will never waver from these values, thus the man's integrity is impeccable. Lastly, and it should go without saying, women love him, 

“The Affair” is Reacher's last assignment for the army, acting as an MP. He is sent down south to an out of the way military base used to train highly specialised rangers. A small town next to a rail-road track... which caters to the base, (two bars and one diner) however, a woman has been brutally murdered. Major Reacher's job is to babysit another MP who has been sent down to investigate the murder as well. Then he meets the local Chief of Police, Elizabeth Deveraux, and she is an absolute stunner! This is how Reacher describes the woman:

Deveraux was a seriously good looking woman. Truly beautiful. Out of the car she was relatively tall, and her hair was startling. There must have been five pounds of it in her ponytail alone. She had all the right parts in all the right proportions. She looked great in uniform. But then, I liked women in uniform, possibly because I had known very few of the other kind...

I'm sure you get the idea.

All the Reacher novels, (the six I've read anyway) are tightly plotted and gain momentum through to the very end. As is the case with this genre, (thriller) there is the obligatory double twist at the tales end.

I love these novel's for there pure entertainment value and skilful rendering.

So far, “The Affair” has to be one of the better instalments.