"Shibumi" by Trevanian (1979)

 **Classic spy novel, but it it still cracks me up that a lot of readers don't get that this book is satirical**

Satire is, in all seriousness, probably my absolute favorite form of art.  It is noble, it is fun, and it is a lot harder than most people credit it.  Or at least, good satire is.  Sure, you can parody the tropes and broad brush strokes of some other art form and call it "satire", but to me in order to truly excel it requires intelligence and thought and knowledge of the subject material.  In many ways, a truly great satire is a lot harder to create than a straightforward piece of art (as Wilde possibly apocryphally said, "you can fake being serious, but you can't fake being witty")

And at a level even above that is those works of satire that manage to simultaneously be a really good iteration of what they are satirizing.  These works truly have my absolute highest respect:  "Shrek" is actually a wonderful fairy tale, as is "Dealing with Dragons" which I talked about a few weeks ago; "Cabin in the Woods" is a great horror film; "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is a thoughtful meditation on the nature of literature while also Borges very much just fucking with us; "The Orville" and "Galaxy Quest" are probably the best Star Trek media we've had this millennium; "I'm On a Boat" is strangely enough kind of a banger; "Shaun of the Dead" is a solid, solid zombie movie; "One Punch Man" is a stunningly good action anime; "Frieren:  Beyond the Journey's End" is a delight of a sword and sorcery adventure show.  "Unforgiven" is straight up one of the best Westerns ever made, I will die on this hill.  I can go on, I absolutely love this sub-genre

Which brings us to "Shibumi" which is a very fun spy thriller, tale of one lone badass taking vengeance against the shadowy globe-spanning organization that secretly controls the world.  There are action scenes and betrayals and twists and turns.  It is also, and I want to make it very clear, absolutely taking the piss out of the entire genre.  Rodney William Whitaker, under his pen name Trevanian, basically spent an entire novel talking about how dumb James Bond is.  And it's great

The main character Nicholai Hel is one of the greatest Mary Sue characters every penned.  The most dangerous assassin in the world, he's an expert at "Naked/Kill", a martial art specializing in the use of everyday objects at weapons--he can kill with a pencil or a paperclip or a rolled-up piece of paper.  He is fluent in English, Russian, Chinese.  He is a master of Go, of cooking, of gardening.  He is a "Stage IV lovemaker", yes, that is the term used in the book (his concubine achieved this level, "by virtue of her excellent training", and he because of "his gift of proximity sense, which allowed him to eavesdrop on his partner's sensations and know precisely where she was in relation to climax contractions")

And yet, somehow people managed to read this book without realizing it's satire?  I guess Trevanian joins the august lineage of every comic book creator who's said, "surely this time readers will realize that my ridiculous overmasculine character is a subject of derision, not worship, aaaaannnnnd nope millions of people joined a fanclub for the character, goddammit"

(this book was even an Easter Egg in "John Wick", one of the mooks the John kills is reading a copy.  The director says it's one of his favorite books)

I guess part of the reason why so many people missed the satire is that Trevanian never "breaks character".  The closest thing to a joke in the whole novel is about 15 pages in where we get a reference to the "Deputy International Liaison Duty Officer, who was typically referred to by his acronym."  And even then, said acronym is never spelled out, never.  Trevanian stays absolutely committed to this bit

If there's any comedy, it's thanks to Niko's Basque partner in crime, Beñat Le Cagot:

This I have discovered: a man is happiest when there is a balance between his needs and his possessions. Now the question is: how to achieve this balance. One could seek to do this by increasing his goods to the level of his appetites, but that would be stupid. It would involve doing unnatural things—bargaining, haggling, scrimping, working. Ergo? Ergo, the wise man achieves the balance by reducing his needs to the level of his possessions. And this is best done by learning to value the free things of life: the mountains, laughter, poetry, wine offered by a friend, older and fatter women.

(later in the book, he insults the main character by saying, "'You know, Niko, I begin to suspect that you are a man of prose. It is a blemish in you.'")

The amusing part though is that, though the overall purpose is absolutely taking the piss, Trevanian sneaks in some very poignant observations about the nature of war, obsession, vengeance.  This book ping-pongs between silly passages like the one above and legitimately heartfelt ones like this:

On the third day of August 1945, all the Otake household were gathered with their cases and packages on the train platform. There was neither the time nor the privacy for Nicholai to say to Mariko what he felt. But he managed to put special emphasis and gentleness into his promise to visit her as soon as possible, once he had established himself in Tokyo. He looked forward to his visit, because Mariko always spoke so glowingly of her family and friends in her home city, Hiroshima.

The Otake family is, of course, never heard from again for the rest of the book.  Their fate is settled off-screen

In fact, so much of the book happens off-screen, from much of Niko's training and upbringing to the highlights of his assassin's career.  While the purpose of the book is blunt, Trevanian executes it with an almost aberrant subtlety.  So in the end, what do we make of this book?  I think we just have to consider it for what it is . . . kind of fun.  Rodney William Whitaker thought that the whole idea of a James Bond was utterly ridiculous, and proceeded to just have a good time writing a takedown of it

It's also worth noting that this book also has what still, coming up on a half-century later, is the best definition I've ever seen of the buzzword "antihero":

An antihero—not in the sense in which critics and scholars lusting for letters to dangle after their names use (misuse) the term. What they call antiheroes are really unlikely heroes, or attractive villains—the fat cop or Richard III. The true antihero is a version of the hero—not a clown with a principal role, not an audience member permitted to work out his violent fantasies. Like the classic hero, the antihero leads the mass toward salvation. There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primativism, but progress. And the new hero—the antihero—is one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don’t know how far.”

So yup.  Trevanian/Whitaker told us straight up what he was doing.  He was looking at literature and fiction at the time and saying that the best use of his time was to destroy, to mock, to take down.  I'm glad that he made that choice.  It's pretty fun to read

I loved this book

We have been fortunate. We have enjoyed the three best days of the cherry blossoms. The day of promise, when they are not yet perfect. The perfect day of enchantment. And today they are already past their prime. So this is the day of memory. The saddest day of the three…but the richest.