Shogun

Just about a third done with Shogun by James Clavell, and I hate to admit it, I am hooked. Hooked bad. I’m averaging about 22 or 23 pages a day, as compared to the 8 or 11 or so I was averaging with Cryptonomicon, a book of similar length (actually, about it’s around a hundred pages shorter). Shogun’s a simpler book than that one, but that in no way implies that its less worthy of the investment in time. Simple in this case means visceral, guttural, emotional. The reader’s held captive in an emotional vice as opposed to free reign in some museum of intellectual delights. It’s quite dreadful, in an enticing, perversely addicting sort of way.

Does any of that make sense?

My previous and only association of Shogun was some vague images of those 70s historical fiction books that were on all my relatives’ bookshelves. That, and a ridiculous Richard Chamberlain in a kimono. That’s all. I haven’t seen the miniseries nor read anything about the book. So, on a whim, after spotting it about a year ago in a used book store, I bought it. Started it three weeks ago, and now can’t put it down.

Full review will follow in a month or six weeks, but suffice it to say, Shogun grips you from the very first couple of pages. A 17th century sailor shipwrecked upon feudal Japan, and an immediate and forceful clash of cultures ensues. It’s violent, gritty, and almost hopeless, except for the fact that you know this guy is gonna make it through, because, like, there’s another thousand pages to go in the book. But his crew … Some of the ordeals and the torture they must go through approaches the unreadable. There but for the Grace of God, as is said.

Perhaps “simple” is not the best adjective to describe the book. Yes, Cryptonomicon addresses something like two dozen esoteric subjects jumbled about within its plot and character and thematic stew, from Japanese World War II culture to mathematics and cutting-edge financial cryptography. Shogun, in its own way, is complex, too, detailing the Machiavellian intricacies of the numerous political power struggles which our hero, the sailor Blackthorne, finds himself an unwitting pawn, while he himself struggles to hatch a plan to escape. After, of course, desperately figuring out how to survive in this crazy culture where politeness is held in greater esteem than life itself and death can come unexpected at any second with a flash of a blade.

I’m hooked.