WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

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WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING

Name: WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING
Author: Haruki Murakami
ISBN: 978-0-307-26919-5

A MEMOIR

by Haruki Murakami & translated by Philip Gabriel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2008

Though the insights don’t resonate on the level of his novels, as always Murakami employs his artful, lucid prose to good...

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The celebrated novelist contemplates one of his favorite pastimes.

Adapting his title from the fine Raymond Carver collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Murakami (After Dark, 2007, etc.) pulls together various pieces he has written on the subject of running over the years. “I see this book as a kind of memoir,” he writes. “Not something as grand as a personal history, but calling it an essay collection is a bit forced.” It’s actually a slight but pleasant combination of all three forms, as the author recalls his near-obsession with running, an interest that has occupied him as much as writing during the past 25 years. Though he is often self-deprecating about his physique (“…the sad spreadsheet of my life that reveals how much my debts far outweigh my assets”), Murakami’s single-minded focus on the task at hand will impress runners and athletes of all levels. He maintains a methodical, disciplined training schedule, never taking two consecutive days off and never walking during a race. “I have only a few reasons to keep on running,” he notes, “and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.” His discipline also extends to his writing, which he approaches with the simple but devoted attention of a master craftsman. “I’m not the type who operates through pure theory or logic,” he notes, “not the type whose energy source is intellectual speculation.” By maintaining a steady work ethic—and exercise regimen—he hopes to avoid the “literary burnout” that afflicted many of his favorite writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, Murakami reveres (“the kind of literature that nourishes you as you read”). Throughout this sleek volume, he draws many germane parallels between running and writing. He also recalls running in Central Park with John Irving in 1983, and remembers vividly the exact moment he decided to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing: at a baseball game in Japan at 1:30 p.m. on April 1, 1978.

Though the insights don’t resonate on the level of his novels, as always Murakami employs his artful, lucid prose to good effect.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-307-26919-5

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HEALTH & FITNESS | SPORTS & RECREATION | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel

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NOVELIST AS A VOCATION
by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen

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MURAKAMI T
by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.