What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

There is no reason someone reads an author’s memoirs unless they are attempting to steal a small glance at that indefinable, unknowable quality that allows the author to create something out of nothing. This, hopefully, will afford them insight into the mind of the author, allowing them to add another layer of context to the author’s oeuvre. That’s why when I first heard that my favorite writer, Haruki Murakami, was taking a break from writing immensely powerful novels to write a memoir, I was intrigued; mainly because Murakami is a very private person and something of an enigma and I wanted to know something, anything, about the mind that wrote The Wind Up Bird Chronicles and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and where its magic came from. However, when I heard that this memoir would be about running, my intrigue metamorphosed to werewolf rage. Logic would dictate that since I don’t like running (or any physical activity, for that matter), I would not like a book about running. It would be akin to an atheist reading the bible. In spite of my reticence, I read it and what’s more, I enjoyed it. The memoir turned out to be less about running and more about what the physical act means to Murakami and how the otherworldly discipline that allows him to run translates into artistic expression.

Murakami’s fascination with running was the direct result of the sedentary lifestyle he was leading as a professional author—a lifestyle that consisted mostly of smoking and thinking. Up until that point, he had been the owner and manager of a reputable jazz club in Tokyo and this had kept him in peak physical condition. Running began simply as an exercise to keep him in shape, but along the course of twenty-seven years, it has evolved into something much more for him; a sentiment made clear when he writes in the foreword of the memoir, “...I noticed that writing honestly about running and writing honestly about myself are nearly the same thing.”

The memoir is composed of nine chapters that alternate between something of a running diary (what he’s doing in terms of running) and a regular diary (how the running is affecting him/has affected him) that jumps around the globe from Boston to New York to Hokkaido to Tokyo and spans from August 2005 until October 2006. It is during this time that Murakami is preparing to run in various events including the New York City Marathon and a famous triathlon in Murakami City, Japan (a real place!).

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running does deliver some insight into Murakami’s mind in the way that he draws a comparison between running and writing insomuch as it’s an exercise in pure discipline. Running is never easy for Murakami and it takes everything in him to complete a marathon much in the same way that writing is never easy for him either; he has to struggle for every single word. Despite the fact that his physique is diminishing and his finish times are steadily decreasing as he enters his sixties, his mind remains razor-edged; still capable of producing excellent works of fiction and non-fiction alike.