Guest Contributor - Book Review

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

“What running has meant to me as a person” is Murakami’s own description of this lively memoir of a former barkeeper turned ultramarathoner, filled with life lessons and training tips.  In colorful and easy prose, he describes his flamboyant gesture of running in extreme heat in midsummer from Athens to Marathon (“at 23 miles I start to hate everything”); running 62 miles around Lake Saroma in Hokkaido, Japan (“my whole world consists of the ground three yards ahead”); and training for a triathlon (cycling is an “intricate form of torture”).


Most interesting to me, though, is his examination—as a novelist—of the intersection between running and writing. Talent is the most important aspect of a writer, he notes, but also key are focus, and, yes, endurance. And that’s where the disciplined training for running comes in handy. Most of what he knows about writing, he has learned through running every day, he says. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: “that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life.” 


—Michelle Spring


Note: This review was based on the Kindle version of the book (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).