I read Shibumi 20 years ago in junior high, and since then I’ve managed to read almost everything Trevanian wrote. His whacked-out conspiracy theories, bizarro-world politics, and racism could be infuriating at times, but damn, he could keep a story going. I was always a bit sorry Shibumi never made it to film.
It’s not really surprising that his death went largely unremarked; the man rivaled J.D. Salinger for reclusiveness and search for privacy, living most of his life in the Pyrenees. I stumbled upon his obituary when searching for the title of one of his works.
My oldest brother lent Shibumi to me when I was in high school and I was quite excited to find a copy of it in hard cover at a used book store. So it is quite sad to see him go, I had always held out hope that we might see Shibumi on the big screen. Who knows, perhaps we will, but it won’t be him writing the script.
I read his espionage stuff when I was young and impressionable. It wasn’t until years later that I learned I wasn’t supposed to take it seriously.
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to find the books he wrote under the pen name of Nicholas Seare. There’s no mistaking that those are funny.
His Incident at Twenty Mile is good too – it’s a western with a serial killer, and I guess it could also be read as a parody. Parts of it are way over the top.
I also liked Summer of Katya and a short story collection (Hot Night in the City) where he wrote the same story twice, from different points of view.
I’m sorry he’s gone. He deserved to be more well-known, IMHO.
This quote was taken from a footnote to Shibumi. In the footnote, Trevanian wasn’t lamenting the vapidity of the movie as much as he was the death of a mountain climber during filming. This incident based on his work, along with another incident involving the theft and later defacement of a painting, led him to stop describing his protagonists’ methods in detail.
William Poundstone nailed Trevanian as Rodney Witaker from clues, back in his 1993 book Biggest Secrets (pp. 30-33)
“Nat Wartels, who published Trevanian at Crown, told The New York Times that Trevanian was teaching film at the University of Texas when he submitted The Eiger Sanction…There weren’t that many lecturers on film at the University of Texas circa 1971. We quickly determined that Trevanian’s true identity id Rodney Witaker, Ph.D…”
…I never read any Trevanian. Maybe I’ll have to have a look.
I always liked Trevanian’s books even though he seemed a little bit full of himself at times. He was a compulsively readable storyteller.
I seem to remember something he wrote in one of his books where he said he wasn’t going to describe some allegedly highly advanced sexual techniques engaged in by characters in the book because they would be too dangerous for amateurs. He then cited the theft of a painting which had followed a method described in one of his other books and said something to the effect that he was going to keep some details out of his books from then on.
At the time I though he was really full of himself but in retrospect, I think he was just being tongue in cheek. His books always had a subtle air of self-parody to them, like he knew that some of the conventions of spy novels/ westerns/ Asian mysticism were kind of silly so he just pushed them almost to the level of absurdity, but he did it in such a dry way that it would be pretty easy to miss that he wasn’t really serious.
The thing that sticks in my mind from Shibumi is the main character (who’s name I cannot remember) teaching himself Basque from a translation dictionary while in prison. I knew right there that nothing in the book should be taken seriously.
I read The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction, and Shibumi when I was in high school. I enjoyed reading them (for the most part), but with each succeeding volume I got more and more weary of the author’s smug, “I’m so much smarter and better informed than you” attitude.
The lead character in Shibumi, btw, was Nicholai Hel (sp?) – something of the ultimate “man without a country.” I recall the footnote in question, and it was just as Diogenes describes. At the time, I took it to be just another “I’m soooOOOooo enlightened” jab at the reading audience. Looking back, though, I’ll buy the tongue-in-cheek interpretation.
Yeah, that was when he earned a roll-eyes from me when I read it as a teenager. Speaking of which, it seems like he created the protagonist by melding together different parts of the wet dreams of teenage boys. I mean, if I remember correctly, the hero lived in a Thai bordello for 18 months to learn how to be the ultimate lover, for chrissakes.
But, man, he could write when he wanted to. I don’t remember the book, but there was one section on spelunking that was just masterful.