I think I first read about the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in Sports Illustrated a few years ago. It’s a memoir written by a Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, translated into English by Philip Gabriel. The audiobook was available for limited-time download from the L.A. Public Library so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s unabridged in four sections, each about the length of one CD. The reader is Roy Porter who has a slightly cynical sounding voice matching the unabashed honesty of the book. Murakami is a serious runner in his ‘50s at the time of the book’s writing in 2004-2006. The book has the structure of a diary though there are passages going back to his youth, young adulthood and how he began writing and running. There were some interesting parts and some I could relate to. But I couldn’t get into it completely.
Murakami talks about himself without hesitation. He is very competitive and not especially social, though he did own and manage a jazz club in Japan before challenging himself to write his first novel. He started running in the early ‘80s around the time he started writing. He runs marathons every year and more recently has started doing triathlons. He describes how he is able to run for one hour every day because his job is to sit at home and write for eight hours per day. He doesn’t have to “take a crowded train to a job of mindless meeting.” He also states that he has never suffered a major injury that stopped him from running. I used to run in high school but stopped before college since preparing for the college cross country team gave me tendonitis in both hips. But Murakami just tells it like it is for him. Porter’s voice almost sounds cynical with an “I don’t care what you think” attitude. He’s sometimes poetic such as when he uses the phrase “of my discontent.”
The book goes into much detail about Murakami’s runs. He spends some time in Boston working at a university and running along the Charles River to train. He doesn’t use an iPod, but rather a Sony Walkman. He uses Mizuno shoes because they’re straight up without any bells and whistles. It takes a few weeks to break in a new pair. The book isn’t really told in linear fashion. There’s a lot of skipping around to different events in time but that doesn’t detract much. He describes runs such as the New York Marathon, a triathlon and 60-mile ultra-marathon in Japan. During the latter race he had to switch from a size 8 to size 8 ½ shoes midway because his feet swelled so much. He doesn’t seem to enjoy the runs but just to suffer through them.
Listening to the book is a bit like one of the author’s runs. Once I started I felt I had to keep going even though I didn’t have much motivation from the content to do so. The book’s long title is a variation of another book title: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. Murakami got permission from Carver’s widow to use the title. I guess I kept listening because I thought there would be some redeeming value later, some insight or truth. There wasn’t really. Just another marathon or triathlon to train for. I don’t think I’ll check out any of his other books. This one was just what I listened to when I swept the balcony and dusted the living room.
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