Monday, November 19, 2012

The Ninja


The Ninja, by Eric Van Lustbader
No month stated, 1980  Fawcett Crest Books

This read has been decades in the making. I bought The Ninja fresh off the racks in the mid-‘80s, desperate like other kids my age for anything about ninjas. Even the cover of the mass market paperback seemed to suggest Sho Kosugi, who came to brief fame via Cannon’s Enter the Ninja -- which, I seem to recall reading, was rushed into production to jump onto the ninja bandwagon which was kicked off by the runaway success of this very novel.

But here’s the thing…as shoddy, goofy, and bad as Enter the Ninja sometimes is, it’s still a hell of a lot better than this novel. Comically overwritten, The Ninja is one of the more pretentious reads I’ve ever had the displeasure of enduring, as if Dow Mossman, after penning his similarly-overwritten Stones of Summer, had decided to take a stab at writing “something Oriental.” You’d think I was joking if I told you that a novel about a ninja was boring, but there it is – I tell you the truth. The book should come with a pack of No-Doze.

What makes it so funny is the story is quite simple; it’s just been overblown to staggering extremes. Our hero is Nicholas Linnear, improbably-named modern day ninja of caucasian and Japanese descent. Nicholas (and no, it’s never just “Nick”) is one of the more stoic/boring/unmemorable protagonists you’ll ever encounter, lacking much spark. Raised in Japan, Nicholas eventually came to the US (after becoming a ninja, though Lustbader keeps it a “mystery” for several hundred pages), where he apparently got a job at an ad agency (just like Darrin on Bewitched!). Not that it matters, for as it opens Nicholas has resigned his post after a breakdown...or something.

Anyway, it’s all just a convenient setup so that, when we meet him, Nicholas Linnear is a broken man, despite only being in his 30s, sort of living like a bum along the beach outside of New York City. Meanwhile, people around him are being murdered. Nicholas pays no heed, until he meets dropdead gorgeous Justine, who just happens to run into Nicholas on the beach…and several pages later they’re having sex in incredibly overwrought prose. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to get hot beneath the collar or consult a thesaurus.

Gradually (and I do mean “gradually”), Nicholas learns that Justine’s father is mega-wealthy, mega-infamous bad guy Raphael Tomkin. Nicholas gets dragged into Tomkin’s story when it develops that someone, apparently a ninja, is trying to kill him…and Nicholas incorrectly assumes that the mysterious muders going on around his beachhouse are due to the simple fact that Justine lives nearby – the murders are signs from the ninja that even Tomkin’s family is in danger.

The reader, of course, realizes that these signs are for Nicholas; in the occasional scenes from the evil ninja’s perspective, we learn that this guy has it in for Nicholas and is using this Tomkin job as a convenient way to kill the proverbial two birds. So he goes along murdering people Nicholas knows, most of them fellow Japanese who have moved over to the US, many of them martial arts instructors and etc.

Sounds like a thriller, doesn’t it, but the narrative style is so torpid as to rob the story of all tension. Seriously, everything is drawn out here, put through the metaphor/analogy wringer, until it all comes off like the literary equivalent of an unintentionally campy film. Even if a character merely looks out of a window, Lustbader will go on for a full paragraph or so, comparing this to that and that to this. Pretty soon the entire story collapses beneath the onslaught of fluffy prose.

But wait, it gets worse. Not content to wheel-spin in the “present” (apparently, 1979), Lustbader will often jump back to the late 1940s and early '60s, so we can witness Nicholas’s youth. But this portion too is unintentionally hilarious, because Lustbader only tries to come up with more “mystery” to keep us reading, but it’s all just so uninvolving. I assume Lustbader is trying to set up storylines for future volumes, as he leaves all sorts of things vague…for one, Nicholas’s mother appears to have several skeletons in her closet, not to mention her “sister,” who is married to an evil bastard who turns out to be a ninja.

Then there’s Yukio, a Japanese girl of Nicholas’s age, a nympho with the mouth of a truckdriver; incapable of loving or showing any emotion, she exists only to screw, therefore giving Lustbader opportunity to write a bunch of unsexily-rendered sex scenes. Speaking of which, there’s a whopper of one a quarter of the way through the book, where Gelda, Justine’s hooker sister (and a lesbian to boot) has sex with a female client…a jawdropper of a scene involving a bathtub and a revolver. Truly, even Harold Robbins would have been impressed.

But even these flashes of perversion are lost in the deluge of pretension. Dialog also suffers, with characters, no matter how minor, given to grandiose, poetic speeches about life, love, or what have you. I mean, it would be fine if one or two characters spoke this way, but every single character speaks exactly the same. Even Croaker, a tough New York City cop who works with Nicholas in the novel, is given to prosaic utterances that seemingly have no end. And don’t even get me started on the “wizened Asian types” who proliferate through the narrative; the older they are, the bigger their bluster.

As overwrought as the dialog is, the characters themselves are just as bad. Early scenes featuring Justine are probably the worst; the victim of several unhappy romances, Justine now distrusts most people and is reluctant to get involved with Nicholas. So ensues soap opera-etic drama between the two, culminating in an uninentionally hilarious scene (one of many, really) where Nicholas, breaking the news to a heartbroken Justine that he’s going to work for her father, falls to his knees and begins to weep…! All he needed to add was a little teeth-gnashing.

Another priceless sequence is when Nicholas and Justine later reunite, in an honest-to-God disco… a scene that contains Lustbader's overwritten-but-nonsensical prose in spades. Such as:

Somewhere was the bar, obscured behind a forest of raised arms, swirling hair, shiny mindlessly concentrating faces. Dance dance dance: the imperitave was clear, treading an atavistic path, the primitive’s tribal revivals, an ecstatic communal orgy, trivialized to the point where all possible consequence was nullified.

Seriously, what does that even mean? This entire scene is hilarious, given the lengths Lustbader goes in describing the “modern hell” that is the disco…and the lyrics he writes for the blaring music is just the icing on the cake.

This is one of those novels where you start to root for the villain, if only because he does you the favor of killing off all of the annoying protagonists. So then, evil ninja Saito was a godsend for me, popping up from the shadows every once in a while to do in some colleague of Nicholas’s. Unfortunately Saito himself is lost in the turgid shuffle, to such a point that even a late scene, in which we see his own perversions (namely, taking a heroin-LSD combo and sodomizing young boys), loses its impact due to the torpor which has overtaken us.

But wait, you ask, isn’t this a novel about ninjas? Well…sort of. In actual fact, the ninja stuff takes up around 10% of the narrative. The rest is given over to elaborate backstories, elaborate philosophizing, and elaborate prose. Nicholas gets in a few quick scuffles here and there, but actual ninja warfare stuff doesn’t occur until the end, when Nicholas and Saito have their expected confrontation. But it too is anticlimatic, over in just a few pages, and lacks any novelty save for a part where Saito uses a handy corpse he keeps nearby to fool everyone into thinking he’s been killed.

And yet, The Ninja was a big seller, and indeed spawned a series of five more novels, each of them doing well. But then who am I to judge, given that the bestsellers of today are things like the Harry Potter or Twilight books; at least back then adults were reading novels for adults.

Summing up, while the storyline in no way justified the overblown prose and dialog, I still found some enjoyment in The Ninja; namely, the same sort of sick enjoyment I get when I watch overblown turkeys like Valley of the Dolls…bad films that were treated by their creators with such gravitas that you can’t help but laugh. The Ninja is just like that, and it’s a shame a similarly-overblown film was never made from it. It would've been an instant camp classic.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been curious about this one going back to the '80s myself, but was never able to crack the first 50 pages, let alone the whole thing. I thank you for enduring that torture for me so I don't have to.

Nicholas Ahlhelm said...

I was way into this series when I was a teenager. And everything written here is 100% factual.

Lustbader combined men's adventure with the sheer boredom of a Ludlum narrative to create a weird mismatch, which in the 80s was exactly what people read.

Jack Badelaire said...

Awesome - I'm so glad you reviewed this book. I read it as a freshman in college, which was around the time I got into the "Ninja Craze" with the War of the Ninja Master books and so forth.

This book is awful. Eric van Lustbader is probably one of the most overblown writers of his time, a rambling, pretentious mess of an author. That books should have been, at best, half its length. The sex scenes are ridiculous (the bathtub scene was an eye-opener, but mostly because it is so utterly gratuitous). The whole Mystical Ninja Force Mojo Sorcery Ki Chi Power nonsense just made me want to throw up repeatedly. And worst of all, I don't even remember the ninjas really using any cool ninja gear or ninja moves - I think Nicholas used a dai-katana, which as any ninja fan knows, is like, the most non-ninja weapon ever.

I did get through the entire book, and I recall I read most, if not all, of the sequel "White Ninja" (which apparently doesn't actually mean a "white" ninja, it means a ninja who has lost his mystical ninja mojo because someone stole it from him a la Undercover Brother). I believe I started "Floating City", but gave up on it when the main character makes some woman orgasm just by being in the room with her...or something...

Again, talk about a guy who managed to come along at the right place and the right time to ride the Trend Train to Bestsellertown.

Will Errickson said...

Man I remember stacks and stacks of Lustbader titles when I was working in a used bookstore in the late '80s.

"...and the lyrics he writes for the blaring music is just the icing on the cake."

I have never, ever, EVER read a novelist's version of song "lyrics" - whether rock, country, metal, pop, disco, etc. - that were anything but utterly fucking laughable. EVER. So don't blame that just on Lustbader!

Joe Kenney said...

Everyone, thanks for the comments.

Jack -- I remember you said before you'd read (endured) this novel; thanks for the writeup! And you are right, no ninja gear or moves in the novel...I've got the next volume, the Miko, and will probably give it a shot someday.

Will -- I love bad lyrics in novels, though Lustbader's are not the worst (best?). I think that honor would go to Don DeLillo, in Great Jones Street -- the lyrics in that one come off like, I don't know...like if Micky Dolenz decided he'd become the next Bob Dylan.

Will Errickson said...

That DeLillo is one I was thinking of!

russell1200 said...

I read this one! Or at least I started it. I don't remember finishing it, but it was a really really long time ago, and I was either in high school or college when I started it.

The Japanese were definitely going to be the next world empire.

But the Teenage Mutant Turtles were to appear in short order and set us straight.

said...

Oh yes... when I was a teen my peer group was all about these books... mostly for the 'hot scenes'. I will always refer to these novels as 'Ninja Porn'

for your amusement on the matter...

http://albruno3.blogspot.com/2010/06/rpgnet-rant-14-reservoir-torgs.html

Joe Kenney said...

Thanks Russell and Al for the comments...I enjoyed seeing how this novel stirred up memories for so many of you. And Al, thanks for the link! "Ninja porn" sums it up...with the caveat that this is really, really boring ninja porn.

Derrick Ferguson said...

I don't think I've ever finished any Lustbader novel I started. The guy just doesn't know how to keep a story moving.

Laura Roberts @ Buttontapper Press said...

Dammit, I just ordered a copy of this book from Paperback Swap, thinking it'd be awesome since I've never read any ninja books actually aimed at adults. Having written a ninja novella myself, I've been looking for something similar that I could compare to when people say "Ninja novella? Huh?" Oh well!

Horace E. Walcott said...

Over the past three decades, I have greatly enjoyed reading Eric Von Lusbader's Nicholas Linear series. My experiences as a martial artist and yogi have helped to read his novel at another dimension. It is a dimension a non-martial artist or non-yogi may never appreciate. Granted Mr. Lusbader's novels are written to a readership greatly exceeding the martial arts and yoga communities. My dear brothers and sisters what t do you think of the Japanese documentary: Budo and the Art of Killing or the master piece, Red Beard. I am about to complete my own ninja novel. I started my book decades before any knowledge of the Arrow or Green Arrow.

Horace E. Walcott said...

I correct myself on the author's name Van Lusbader

Unknown said...

Nicholas Linnear is a terrible character. It's a shame Saigo didn't kill him in the end. Saigo was a badass. Justine deserved much better than she was given.

Unknown said...

Hey man just wondering if you ever finished your ninja novel and if you got in published?? If so under what name and title, I found a Horace E. Walcott, he a scientist is that you? Hope to get ia response from you!

Unknown said...

Joe I respect your opinion, but have to disagree! Maybe because unlike yourself and others here I was not just getting into “the ninja craze” in the 1970s, I was already years ahead, so I can appreciate Lustbaders’ novel, character and writing. I think when you and some others picked up the novel you were expecting page to page, back to back full blown action. But this novel actually represented the ninja and their discipline perfectly, for it it involves espionage, sabotage, and most of all the patience they are taught, like a sniper they can wait hours, days or years for the perfect time to strike or gain revenge! Oh and the action parts weren’t bad either, certain strikes with and without swords were accurate. But since you didn’t like this novel, please give me a ninja or similar type list of novels you did think we’re good, I’ll add them to my reading list! Hope to receive a response from you!

Unknown said...

I read this book as a kid. Reread it as an adult. Read the whole series too. They are extremely well researched and respectful of Japanese history and culture. Nick Linnear is a great leading man and the stories were epic. Anyone who thinks they are smart enough to pretend these aren't well written are full of themselves. Best novel series outside of serious prose ever.

Horace E. Walcott said...

Unknown, I support you 100%. To truly appreciate the Nick Lannier series or at least one way to truly do so, is to be on the same path fictionalized in the series. To be on such a journey in life requires more than the use of the code of Bushido to guide the seeker's path.

Horace E. Walcott said...

Unknown, It's me; I am the scientist. I am also a yogi and have studied martial arts since I was a high school student. My yoga training included studies in India. I plan to have my novel published in about 12 months. The title will be, Breaking The Code of A Green Death. There is also another ninja novel, which will follow my first title. It will be titled the Psych Quest. The Psych Quest was initially completed as a comic book in Marvel style and I have rewritten it as a fully scripted novel. It is a sci-fi underwater adventure, in which the hero is a human doctor and veterinarian, but also a shadow warrior.

Adrian Livesley said...

This was amazing. I was trying to think of the worst novel I have ever read and The Ninja takes the cake. I remember totally useless scenes and dialogue. For example, the lesbian hooker is ordering a sandwich and she says "tell the chef no onions. Not when I'm working". Who cares about the bloody onions? Characters are always smoking and the author seems obsessed by this. We don't need a description of every time a character inhales or taps the ash into the ashtray!

Every character talks the same and there isn't a whiff of humor to be found anywhere. If I was Justine I'd be totally bored with Nicolas and vice versa.

There are terrible novels where the author knows that they are terrible. I'm convinced that Lustbader thinks he is amazing and probably gets a lot of praise for his work.

Horace E. Walcott said...

Adrian, some women with Justine's personality or archetype are bored with men with Nicolas's archetype. According to Jean-Shinoda-Bolen, the archetype of Nicolas is similar to that of George Bush, who was the Vice President and a war hero. Women can be bored by the Hermes-Mars Jungian archetype in men. How would you compare Mr. Van LusBader's series with Sir Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice?
One way to judge a novel is to understand its metacognitive influences on its readers. You Only Live Twice, the novel became a successful Bond movie; it inspired a young martial artist from America to travel to India, China, and Japan on a journey to become a ninja master. The movie based on Flemin's novel was one of the first to introduce the West to ninjitsu during the heat-up of the Cold War. Sir Ian, as a spy for British Naval Intelligence and as a reporter for Reuters, would have had inside information about Japan's use of ninjitsu in WW II.

Horace E. Walcott said...

Sir Ian, JFK, AND Papa Bush, all war heroes, have many Jungian archetypes in common; Sir Ian and JFK were magnets for the opposite sex!