Post by NikuradseFirst off, I apologize if I sounded "Sarky" and reviewing my
communications I can see where I didn't keep the discourse as elevated
as I should have. My natural cynicism seeping through no doubt. I do
however, find this particular conversation to be very stimulating as a
matter of intellectual curiousity in trying to reason out the mystery
surrounding "Trevanian".
no nneed whatever to apologize. my comment about sarkyness
applied Only to dennis's discussion of mr. hashian's possible financial
wants and other motivations for selling the Trevanian name. everything
else he's covered is backed up by solid factual analysis and logical
inferences. he only got sarky on the one topic where he didn't have
much in the way of facts [not primarily his fault; just an illustration
of the difficulties inherent in trying to prove a negative]. besides,
given my own tendencies, i can't really use the term "sarky" as a
pejorative.
Post by NikuradseI believe that Trevanian lives in France based on what Crown, St.
Martins, and "Trevanian" have stated in the past and present in various
media (i.e. blurbs on books, interviews, news articles, etc.), or
rather in the abscence of contradictory evidence I accept those claims
as asserted. Since I believe that Trevanian is Rodney Whitaker ergo I
believe that he lives in France, around or near St. Engrace being as
likely candidate as any locale.
someone, most likely mr. whitaker, created a pseudonym, Trevanian.
someone, probably mr. whitaker but possibly a publicist for crown
books, created a backstory to go with the pseudonym. while it is
certainly possible, even likely, that the creator would choose to use
elements of mr. whitaker's own biography to create the backstory, we
must remember that Trevanian's life is as much a literary construct as
any of the novels "he" wrote. especially with regard to those elements
of Trevanian's life story which relate directly to the backgrounds of
the novels, it is highly possible that marketing considerations or
simple playfulness on mr. whitaker's part played a role in how he
created the fictional character of Trevanian.
all we know of mr. whitaker's motivations for the use of several
interlocking pseudonyms, the convoluted relationship between them, the
long publishing hiatus [unless he was putting out other stuff under yet
another pseudonym which he has kept secret], and his continued use of
the same nom de plume long after it no longer served its original
purpose of concealing his identity, are mr. whitaker's own
explanations. these are confusing, and confused, enough that they
might well be subject to the same kind of sarky analysis of which i
accused dennis in connection with mr. hashian's supposed motives.
Post by NikuradseAs far as "Crazy Ladies" I believe that it is broadly accurate in a
biographical sense as a memoir disguised in novelistic form. Of course
I also believe that elements of Trevanian's life have been compressed,
combined, embellished, rearranged, etc. so on a strictly factual basis
I wouldn't accept it as a literal account of Trevanian's early life
from circa 1936 - 1945, rather I accept it as conveying a larger
emotional truth as to how the author percieved these early childhood
experiences. From this novel I have extracted a broad chronological
understanding of portions of Trevanian's life that I have no reason to
doubt as long as the focus is on the general rather than the
particular.
same as above. assuming that the book is generally
autobiographical, it is so in connection with the pseudonym under which
it is published. if, perchance, the biography of Trevanian deviates
from that of mr. whitaker in signifigant ways, then a novel based on
"his" life would likely follow the public Trevanian narrative rather
than the private whitaker one.
Post by NikuradseAs to No reason to belive in Hashian sueing if he really was the
original Trevanian (assuming he had sold the "rights" fair and square);
I still maintain that my subjective assesssment is still reasonable.
People sue each other all of the time in the US, particularly if money
is involved (and despite the presence of a contract or legally binding
instrument). It is quite common for people to seek to overturn a
contract and I would have expected hashian to have done so.
i am trying to come up with a way of dealing with the sheer
farfetchedness of this speculation without pegging the meter on the
sarkyness index. people do occasionally sue in situations where the
contracts they signed are clear and unambiguous and they have no chance
of winning. contrary to folklore, when they do they are generally
laughed out of court forthwith. to Expect someone to do so seems
farfetched. to expect it when there is little financial motivation is
more so. to use the fact that someone doesn't arbitrarily and
irrationally choose to sue someone else as the basis for concluding
that they never had any kind of business relationship is [remainder
deleted due to inability to find non-sarky way of expressing it].
Post by NikuradseAs far as any especial reason or attachment with Trevelyan (presumably
G.M. Trevelyan; 1876-1962), I can only hazard a guess that Trevelyan's
arguement that History was a literary art or some other such connection
had an appeal or attraction for Trevanian.
quite possibly. my only point was that any outside evidence of
such an appeal To Whitaker would be a data point in favor of the
contention that he was the original and only trevanian. conversely,
any similar evidence for an interest in trevelyan on hashian's part
would be a data point as well. of course, we only have anecdotal
evidence, again from a deliberately unreliable narrator, that the
trevanian name was chosen in homage to trevelyan.
Post by NikuradseAs to why the importance of Whitaker's children's names, there is no
importance to me personally save to establish their number (three) and
that they do exist. I have made an educated guess that "Apology for a
Pedlar" written by Nicholas Seare and copyrighted to Rod Whitaker is
dedicated to three persons who are his children.
i was merely pointing out that whatever importance you attach to
the fact that whitaker's and trevanian's biographies are identical in
this respect, the references to the "Apology..." dedication are
irrelevant, since there has never been any controversy over the fact
that the pseudonym nicholas seare is really whitaker.
Post by NikuradseAs I stated I accept the 1979 New York Times article as an authentic
contact with "Trevanian". The importance is the various biographical
facts contained therein, (i.e. three children, four college degrees,
writes under five different names, etc.). Since I accept this article
as true then whomever is a candidate as the true identity of Trevanian
would by neccessity have to share the same biographical facts or be
excluded from consideration.
one can certainly accept that the NYT article is an authentic
contact with "trevanian", and that this inherently means with whitaker,
and still not assume that the latter always told the truth about his
alter ego's biography. again, Trevanian is a fictional character,
probably created by whitaker. whitaker may well have used major
elements of his own background in creating this character, but that
doesn't mean that everything in "trevanian's" life story is equally
real. this is especially true of those elements directly relevant to
the books that "trevanian" wrote. furthermore, what elements are real
and what aren't would be unaffected by whether whitaker is the sole and
only author of 'trevanian's" body of work, or if he merely played the
role of trevanian and wrote some of the books while one or more
ghostwriters produced others.
Post by NikuradsePS_ Excellent observations on the dedications to Shibumi and Rude
Tales, I will have to revisit my to-convenient conclusion and
re-evaluate. I did rather like my original interpretation.
As to the descriptions of mountineering and caving you may find the
observations contained in the following discussion thread to be of
http://www.caves.org/soapbox/showthread.php?t=1432
I would welcome your impressions.
i take two main impressions from the discussion on the caving
website about the climactic scenes in Shibumi and The Eiger Sanction:
1. besides doing a fair amount of research on the places and
subcultures in which his novels are set, trevanian/whitaker cribbed
from stories about real life events to make such research easier. i
think this strengthens my conviction that we have little or no evidence
that he ever lived in or had inside knowledge of the areas of south
france in which parts of his work are set. he could have written the
relvant scenes in Shibumi or of Le Cagot's writings without ever having
seen the locations. thus we are again left with only his own assertion
As The Fictional Trevanian that "he" lives there. i'm certainly not
cliaming that he doesn't or didn't; i am however saying that the
evidence that he does is very limited and the contention highly
unproved.
2. given his penchant for adapting real life incidents so closely
that knowledganble people can immediately identify the particular
magazine articles he cribbed, i am more convinced than ever that Otake
is Kitani Minoru, and that a dedication "to the memories of the men who
here appear as...." means exactly what it says. the four characters
are very closely based on real individuals, rather than being very
loosely based upon "aspects" of the characters of four other unknown
persons to whom he dedicates an unrelated book. as the easiest of the
other three to research i'd look for a japanese general [or german;
that's a fictional adaptation i wouldn't find far-fetched] who was
accused of being a class A war criminal, perhaps under dodgy
circumstances, and who committed suicide before or during trial.
chiwito