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What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | 
| Author: Haruki Murakami
Creator: Philip Gabriel
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $21.00
Buy New: $12.86
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 291
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 175
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0307269191
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.635
EAN: 9780307269195
ASIN: 0307269191
Publication Date: July 29, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Ships USPS w/tracking number.
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Product Description
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing.
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.
By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Stick to Fiction August 21, 2008
I have read about half of Murakami's novel and love them all for their unique perspective and deep insight. With the caveat that I am not a long distance runner, I found this book disappointing. It is very mundane compared to Murakami's other writing. I would recommend any of his novels over this book.
 Pain is Inevitable; Suffering is Optional August 20, 2008
Rarely do "writing" and "exercise" appear as the main topics for a memoir--there's something almost un-writerly about working out. Aren't all the great novelists supposed to be drunks? Well, no. Murakami compares running marathons to writing novels, and it's a damn fine analogy. His prose is masterly yet humble. Whether you're a writer, a runner, or just someone who enjoys a good book, Murakami delvers with "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running."
 Written for Murakami enthusiasts... August 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Murakami, 58, authored 15+ novels, many highly acclaimed. He has received many literary awards and honorary doctorates. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed most of his best selling works (including my favorites: Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood and A Wild Sheep Chase). In reading this book, I had come to learn that Murakami had completed 25+ marathons, 1 ultra marathon (60+miles) and 5+ triathlons - this is a truly extraordinary accomplishment.
Murakami is humble, candid and straightforward exposing his mistakes, flaws and shortcomings - - one passage: "But this wretched story of feeling I had as I stood in front of the mirror at sixteen, listing all of my physical shortcomings, is still sort of touchstone for me even now. The sad spreadsheet of my life reveals how my debts outweigh my assets."
You get into his mind and his incredible determination to complete marathons and triathlons - feeling the sun baking his skin and the water filling his lungs - yet he keeps his feet and arms moving despite his mind and body telling him to stop.
You also learn about the impact that advancing middle age has on his performance times and that they are no longer improving despite a rigorous training regimen - "even if, seen from the outside, or from some higher vantage point, this short of life looks pointless or futile, or even extremely efficient, it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's a pointless act like as I've said before, pouring water into an old pan that has a hole in the bottom, but at least the effort you put into it remains. Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart."
The book is described by Murakami as a collection of essays he wrote between 2005 and 2007 and then pieced together and edited for this book. I felt that the book often read like a loosely edited diary - - in contrast to his visually beautiful, smooth, multi-layered, dreamy fictional works. While I found flashes of the profile of his prior novels in a few passages, I found this book to be choppy and informal in comparison.
Early on in the book, Murakami discusses his strategy in running a Jazz bar in Tokyo - he wasn't out "to please everybody" - "it didn't matter if 9 out of 10" didn't like his bar but that "if one in ten was a repeat customer" his business would survive. My sense is that this book will narrowly appeal to the "one in ten repeaters" of devoted Murakami's fans (me being one of them) - - readers who wish to learn more about his life, his experiences, what makes him "tick" - and more specifically, the role that running, biking, swimming and training for marathons and triathlons had on his writing and his life.
You don't have to be a runner to enjoy this reflective book by one of Japan's most prominent contemporary novelists August 18, 2008
Most of us probably have had the unpleasant experience of being collared by a friend who is intent on sharing the details of some passion --- whether it's golf, stamp collecting or scuba diving --- about which we know little and care less. As a non-runner, I approached Haruki Murakami's memoir with some of the trepidation that attends those conversations. Instead I found a spritely, engaging story of one writer's quarter-century encounter with serious running and how that pursuit has threaded its way meaningfully through his life. Focusing in the main on the period from August 2005 through the New York City Marathon on November 6, 2005 (his 24th marathon since 1982), Murakami blends snippets of autobiography, descriptions of his running life and insights on the craft of writing into an entertaining mix.
Murakami, author of critically acclaimed and popular novels like THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE and KAFKA ON THE SHORE, started running at the age of 33, turning to it as casually as he apparently did writing ("One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run --- simply because I wanted to."). Refreshingly, he's no proselytizer for the sport, conceding that "I've tried my best never to say something like, Running is great. Everybody should try it. If some people have an interest in long-distance running, just leave them be, and they'll start running on their own."
Departing from the central time frame of the memoir (the origin of whose title should be readily known to fans of Raymond Carver, for whose work he confesses his admiration and which he has translated into Japanese), Murakami provides a lyrical account of his first "marathon," one that took him backwards on the original route, from Athens to Marathon (in fact, one mile shorter than the standard marathon distance of 26.2 miles) in the searing heat of a Greek summer. He describes his single ultramarathon (62 miles, completed in 11 hours and 42 minutes) in such grim detail as to make one question the sanity of anyone running such a race. While doing so, he brings to bear the novelist's keen eye for detail in describing the closing stretch of the race: "Evening had come on...and the air had a special clarity to it. I could also smell the deep grass of the beginning of summer. I saw a few foxes, too, gathered in a field. They looked at us runners curiously. Thick, meaningful clouds, like something out of a nineteenth century British landscape painting, covered the sky."
Murakami hasn't confined his athletic activities to long-distance running. In the 1990s he competed in his first triathlon. His account of the training to overcome the panic he experienced at the beginning of the swimming leg in an event in 2000, ultimately disqualifying him, is both candid and instructive. In the final triathlon described in the book, he makes gentle sport of how the Vaseline he applied to make his swimsuit easier to remove fogged his swimming goggles and how his shoelaces became untied during the running leg.
Although Murakami offers brief glimpses into the subjects that engage him and his view of the writing craft ("manual labor," as he describes it at one point), there's no strained effort here to draw parallels between his running and writing lives or to import cosmic lessons from one realm to the other. More by indirection, he hints at the ways in which similar qualities --- dogged persistence, attention to detail, a willingness to press on in a solitary way through extended periods of effort --- inform and enrich both pursuits.
Although he admits to something of a prickly nature, Murakami's tone throughout is self-effacing, even self-critical at times. He's a realist about the ravages of age: "Even when I grow old and feeble, when people warn me it's about time to throw in the towel, I won't care. As long as my body allows, I'll keep on running." And while he hopes to pursue his passions for many years, he has already decided he wants to be buried under a tombstone that reads, in part, "At Least He Never Walked."
Murakami's small memoir didn't inspire me to leap from my chair and lace up my Nikes, but you don't have to be a runner to enjoy this reflective book by one of Japan's most prominent contemporary novelists.
--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
One of THE Best Running Books, Ever! August 14, 2008
Haruki Murakami offers an extended, albeit concise, meditation on distance running that is both introspective yet absorbing. Unpretentious and not self-absorbed, Murakami draws interesting parallels between the life of a distance runner and that of a writer, in his specific case, a novelist.
He also offers trenchant insights on the aches and pains of distance running, triathlon competitions and the lifestyle issues that confront those who pursue such pastimes. Murakami is not in any way attempting to proselytize and his understated style may win many converts nonetheless.
My sole quibble is his bias against walking in marathons. He wants his tombstone epitaph to read, "At least he never walked." Yet, I firmly believe that there is nothing shameful - either in a race, a training run or a life -- in stopping to walk. The point is not always the completing time, but the fact that one keeps moving forward, even at a walker's gait. Sometimes slowing down to a more measured pace is good.
Walk or run to get a copy of this book to read. If you consider yourself a runner or an endurance athlete - whether it's a journeyman or an elite competitor -- "What I Talk About:" is a genuine treat and may give you more to talk about, and think about!
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