07/29/08
Text: Alex Kish
Reading a Haruki Murakami book is like reading something from a god. The characters, however flawed, always manage to save the day (or at least figure out a point to their own existence). The pop culture allusions keep them sounding fresh, not tabloid-y, and the surrealist elements in the novels are so flawlessly delivered you don’t even question a reality in which cats talk and Colonel Sanders is a spiritual guide. The dreamlike novels are so enriched with the remnants of our own world that you can’t help but think that Murakami must be some higher being blessed with the ability to read everyone perfectly and then write mind-bending novels about his observations.
But his new memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, reveals the elusive Murakami to be a pretty normal dude, struggling to keep a balance between marathon running, writing professionally and maintaining his life in New England and Japan. It even reveals some of his insecurities (what??)
The book—the title of which is a play off Raymond Carver’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Love—recounts Murakami’s days training for the marathon races all over the world, including Hawaii, Japan, Boston, and the famous New York City Marathon. Although most of the chapters are set between 2005 and 2006, Murakami delves into the past to provide context for his running obsession, and even more interesting, his transition into novel writing. Although the moment he realizes that he can write a novel—described as “something [that] flew down from the sky, at that instant”—is rather ordinary, it’s the simplicity in which Murakami transitions from jazz bar owner to professional writer, and later to amateur runner that’s striking. Murakami depicts these transitions as things that just happened rather than major life changes, which makes his success in both areas so intriguing. And he also makes personal goals seem so much more attainable for those out there who think the world is too unjust to even bother striving towards them.
Although this book mainly talks about his marathon training and ridiculously long running sessions, it somehow never gets boring. Maybe it’s the ease of the sentence structure, or his ability to make you feel the pain of running 62 miles in one day, but mostly is derives from Murakami’s humble persona. His isn’t afraid to address his fears in the book—which include hyperventilating before a triathlon or legs cramping up right before a finish line—or his personal defeats when he didn’t make his goal times in races. For a man whose written over fifteen novels, it’s refreshing to realize that he struggles with life problems, and unlike some of us, isn’t afraid to admit he’s not perfect!
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running may have made us realize that Murakami is no god, but we still love him anyway. If anything, it has only lowered his standard to the nicest, most intelligent man in the universe.
