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The title
of Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk
About Running is a play on the title of a Raymond Carver
short story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."
This new Murakami work covers a little over a year in the
Japanese author's life as he prepares to run a marathon in
New York. However, as to be expected from Murakami, the memoir
is much more than a simple exercise journal.
Some
Murakami fans grumbled upon hearing that the author's follow
up to 2007's After Dark would revolve around running
because the sport was so removed from their lives and they
desired a new work of fiction. Yet, What I Talk About When
I Talk About Running is an invaluable source for the Murakami
fan because one can see Murakami's characters within his personal
makeup and understand how Murakami's different and somewhat
difficult nature has made him a bit of an outsider within
Japan's literary establishment.
Through
the book is too brief at 175 pages, Murakami weaves his own
personal narrative in which running, if not as essential to
writing his novels, acts as a strong support for his professional
career. Unlike a number of other Japanese writers such as
Osamu Dazai and Ryunosuke Akutagawa, for whom self-destruction
through alcohol and other substances acted as a creative boost,
Murakami advocates a healthy lifestyle in order to keep writing,
though he has not always lived a healthy life.
Writing
from a desk in Kauai, Hawaii, Murakami tells of his lifestyle
before he became a fulltime writer, when he ran a successful
jazz bar and followed such unhealthy habits as smoking 60
cigarettes a day. But after the success of his first two novels,
Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, he decided
to become a fulltime writer. Along with the bar and its noisy
patrons, Murakami decided to give up cigarettes and other
things which were injurious to his health and to take up running.
Running, Murakami states, fit his solitary nature best. It
required no equipment besides running shoes, and he took to
it as easily as he took to writing novels and translating
works of American fiction. At the publication of his memoir,
Murakami had been running for some 25 years and had added
such sports as squash and the triathlon to his repertoire.
Over
the years, however, Murakami's interest in running has begun
to fade along with his youth. The author will be 60 in 2009,
and his body is no longer able to perform as strongly as it
did when he was younger. As his muscles cramp into hard stones,
Murakami, like a number of his characters, contemplates death
and aging and what impact he has had, if any, on the world.
The memoir itself consists of nine chapters which Murakami
wrote in various locations including Kauai, Hawaii; Cambridge,
Massachusetts; and Tokyo and Sapporo, Japan The writing style,
like the style in Murakami's other works, is conversational
and gives the reader the feeling of listening to an old friend
talk about exercise and aging, and how said exercise helps
sustain his professional work. The essays might be a bit loose
for some readers because Murakami constantly jumps from topic
to topic, such as from running to novel writing and then,
quite unexpectedly, to something like record collecting. However,
each chapter filled with small vignettes of knowledge about
Murakami gives the memoir more of a friendly, personal edge.
Although
its focus on running and its recent appearance in Sports
Illustrated might put off some potential readers, What
I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a fine memoir
which gives the Murakami fan insight into the reclusive author.
(September
2008)
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