Comments on: Rodney Whitaker, aka Trevanian, passes

By: tim mckee

tim mckee — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:01:08 +0000

why is adverse reaction to certainty of fact and strength of character as virulent?..
rodney was the finest author of his gen..he eclipsed tom harris nicely..nicco hel kicks all your skinny/fat asses..grab your popcorn and movie guides and return to intellecual hibernation

By: John Sipher

John Sipher — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:18:04 +0000

I checked a couple Trevanian books out of the local library after reading this post. Tucked inside “The Eiger Sanction” (which I’m enjoying) I found a note that says:

Killed 5 flies

3 males

2 females

3 on beer can

2 on phone

By: ForNow

ForNow — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:39:58 +0000

I will ne say why I say it, but John Leonard is James Purdy’s “Tim Raisin.”

By: Xixi

Xixi — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 20:30:29 +0000

It is my hope that in 20 years, nobody remembers the New York Times except as a failed newspaper ó failed because it printed opinion instead of news.

By: Charlie (Colorado)

Charlie (Colorado) — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:44:11 +0000

Wait, I just remembered the part where in the mid-1970’s the CIA computer decided to write files on black terrorist groups on black paper and lost all the data on them. The reviewer for the Times was dead right, it is a silly novel.

I dunno, sounds like CIA to me.

I’m just so disappointed to find that “Trevainian” was really named “Rodney”.

By: Patrick S Lasswell

Patrick S Lasswell — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:46:48 +0000

Wait, I just remembered the part where in the mid-1970’s the CIA computer decided to write files on black terrorist groups on black paper and lost all the data on them. The reviewer for the Times was dead right, it is a silly novel.

By: Patrick S Lasswell

Patrick S Lasswell — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:34:01 +0000

Roger,

While I was reading Shibumi, I found it riveting…afterwards, I came to the conclusion that Trevanian was an arrogant SOB who I would be much better off never reading again. The arrogant pretense perpetrated on the reader bothered me on a lot of levels until I reached an important conclusion: the author was just making this crap up and making me feel small to increase the relative scope of his work. I don’t mind at all an author writing a character larger than life, but I really hated Trevanian accomplishing this by diminishing me and everyone I knew for our cultural inadequacies.

In a lot of ways for me, Shibumi was a ball kicking contest where everybody not the main character got to go last. The book was not silly, it was a series of insults that I didn’t deserve and would not stand to sit through again. I’m sure Trevanian wrote some great stuff, but I wouldn’t put Shibumi up as any defense of his work.

Unless, of course, you are a triple grand master Go player who is fully conversant in killing with ball point pens while arranging flowers on an esthetic plane that can only be appreciated by a miniscule fragment on the non-ethnically Japanese. If he had written that stack of pretension for a comic book, I might have been willing to file it away as a radioactive spider bite.

By: Peg C.

Peg C. — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:41:24 +0000

For what it’s worth, Trevanian was always one of my fave reads, and I found “Shibumi” and the “Sanction” novels absolutely riveting. I went through an Eric Van Lustbader phase because I found him to be similar in content and style. Both draw intense characters and exotic action, the 2 things I most seek in fiction. I admit to being quite drawn to assassins.

By: chuck

chuck — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 15:54:22 +0000

I can’t find a link, but a year or two ago there was an article where the reviewer went back and reread the bestsellers from sometime back in 1942 – 1944, I can’t recall the exact date. Anyway, in his opinion the book that held up best and was still a good read was some sort of rollicking romance by a woman author. Mind, there were also works of “serious” literature in the list. Darn, I wish I could be more precise.