trevanian (was Re: Wanda Tinasky)

[RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com]

Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net> writes:

> On Tue, 19 Jan 1999 RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com wrote:

>>      possibly old hat... but...     
>>      does anyone remember a rumor that the author of the 70's spy 
>>      thriller parodies 'the eiger sanction', 'shibumi', and so on was 
>>      actually pynchon. i recall there having been certain similarities 
>>      between 'shibumi' and VL in terms of characters and voice.

> I never heard this before. I think that after The Eiger Sanction someone else 
> was assigned the task of writing the Trevanian books, Trevanian being a pen 
> name owned by the publisher.   E S was written at least in part by a writer 

interesting. i do recall major style differences between ES and 'shibumi' (which
came out around 1980 or so),  ES being more of a straight-up action thriller 
(murder mystery while while mountain climbing) while 'shibumi' was kind of an 
exercise in hyperbole (pitting the "deadliest assassin in the world" against a 
near omnipotent new-world-order-type supercorporation which owns the worlds 
fastest supercomputer of its time, code-named "fatboy" - and replacing mountain 
climbing with spelunking). so - i'm not surprised to hear that there was more 
than one trevanian....

> slightly. These might have been suggestive  of Pynchon as far as exotic and 
> grisly subject matter are concerned. 

actually, what made me think most of pynchon in 'shibumi' were the tangents - a 
great deal of the novel consisted of rather detailed descriptions of the game of
go ("chess is to go as double-ledger accounting is to philosophy"), the basque 
language, advanced climax-hovering, and other non-standard-for-spy-novels fare. 
there are portions of 'shibumi' (i'll try digging them up if anyone's interested
 & i can find the time) which resonate rather strongly with certain portions of 
VL (the takeshi threads in particular). also, there may have been a fairly 
striking re-rendering of the russian agent dude from GR (my... it's been a 
while....).

any-how/way...

--rwilson

"perhaps my brains have turned to sand" -- eno
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Date: 	Tue, 19 Jan 1999 17:20:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: trevanian (was Re: Wanda Tinasky)
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