The joy of running? Not so much. A book about running and writing by Haruki Murakami.
As much as I call myself a runner, I’ve never really picked up this book until a colleague of mine, who I might have converted into running lent it to me. Honestly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Murakami’s style. I always sniff a little bit of pretentiousness in every book of his that I pick up — some obscure music that I expect he expected you to know or look up, and that I couldn’t care less about, a reference to other books that might elevate his own fiction at a mention. Sometimes I don’t know why he keeps name dropping these big guns.
But after reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I did reassess my relationship with the author. The book, even though isn’t really an autobiography, comes closest to his autobiography to what we have so far. Judging from the monotony of his life, I doubt that we will ever get a complete autobiography of his life, even though I daresay that there will be biographers who would pick his life apart. When they do pick it apart, they would find two pivot points in his life, also mentioned in the book: the moment when he gave up running a jazz bar to being a full time novelist; and the time when he decided to go for a run.
But these pivotal moments are only droplets of water in the full pond of his life. What we see of the author, as he wrote himself in the book, is a man who’s a recluse, creature of habit and to my surprise, someone who makes an effort not to be pretentious. When Murakami goes for a run, he pick out something straightforward, something “unpretentious”. Yet, he is also not an author who would try actively (perhaps) to rein down his ego. A quiet lifestyle full of routines will make sure of that. And of course, at the centre of that, writing and running are two very prominent presences. And a distant, yet no less important but not featuring prominently in this book is the author’s relationship with his wife, who he married when he was only twenty-two.
In the book, there is some causality between writing and running. Early in his writing career, the hangover from a life of a bar owner was strong. He would smoke up SIXTY ciggies in a day: it wasn’t really a healthy lifestyle and would soon spell a health disaster. Running was a natural choice for Murakami as it costs nothing financially or socially — a good fit for a recluse. Soon after he started running, naturally struggling in the beginning, he would also sacrifice his smoking life and late nights.
Whether you like, love, despise or mildly dislike Murakami’s work, it’s hard to deny the effect that running has on his output. Would he had needed more cigarettes or alcohol to come up with some darker shit? Arguable because some of the stuff that he writes can be dark, but like one of his title characters, Tony Takitani, he could prove to be a technically capable author but lacking the filling, or the substance behind it. Or hey, maybe that’s just me.
But writing has helped his writing, not in a way to inspire, but more to throw the author into a void where only the next steps matter. Running, as most runners would know, can be a meditative act. It may serve a purpose, but it can only serve the purpose of running itself and nothing else. Sometimes he would get inspiration while he’s running, but most times not. Writing and running, though intertwined in the schedule of his daily lives, for much of his life is much separated and arguably, this separation is important.
Running had also made Murakami a better writer through the sheer act of discipline. He would argue that the success of the novel relies on three key components from the author: talent, focus and endurance. The first, he would admit, he may not have it in Scrooge McDuck like amounts, but the last two can be trained and can be trained overtime. Running, which requires the disciplines of focus and endurance (and the sheer act of showing up) complement the requirements for the writer perfectly.
We would follow Murakami through some of his highlights: his first marathon retracing the route of Phillipides backwards from Athens to Marathon; racing triathlons in a city of his own namesake (the Murakami City triathlon); and the lead up to the New York City marathon, which he had done multiple times, but not so much when his body was in decline.
And perhaps in the midst of all this writing, the act of writing the book may be an act to justify continuing his running. At the start of the book, we see Murakami about to hit his fifties and admitting that after his late forties he had started to see a decline in his performance and thus, had started to enjoy the sport less. But at the end of the book, he had learned to accept this fact gracefully and to continue his running regardless of his declining performance, though he would always still his dogged to get that ever more elusive PB.
For runners who are getting older like me, there is a lot to take out of this book. For one, Murakami’s performance declines only when he reaches his late forties. If I track the same way for someone who in his life had drank and smoked way, way less than he had this is super encouraging. This means I’ve got about a good ten or dozen years to chase my PBs, marathons included.
There are also the same thought processes that go through in my mind that Murakami put to words in the book. A case in point:
“But after I finish and some time has passed, I forget all the pain and misery and am already planning how I can run an even better time in the next race. The funny thing is, no matter how old I get, it’s all just a repeat of what came before.”
And:
“I don’t care about the time that I run. I can try all I want, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to run the way I used to. I’m ready to accept that. It’s not one of your happier realities, but that’s what happens when you get older. Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do.”
(But of course we all care about the time, even though we shouldn’t)
But running is different for everybody and not every thing which Murakami wrote about running rings true for me as a runner. And that’s perfectly alright.
