What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Hardcover)

Author Haruki Murakami · Publisher Munhak Sasang · Published 2009-01-06 · ISBN 9788970128337

About the Book

● Completed 25 full marathons, why does Haruki run?
In April 1978, while watching a baseball game at Meiji Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, Haruki decided, "That's it, I'll try writing a novel," the moment a batter hit the ball cleanly. He was twenty-nine years old and had been running a jazz club for four years after graduating from Waseda University's Department of Theater and Film.
Less than a year after that moment of revelation, he wrote the novel <Hear the Wind Sing>, won the Gunzo New Writer's Award, and debuted in the literary world, embarking on a career as a writer. Haruki, who quit his successful jazz club to become a full-time writer, began running seriously in the fall of 1982, shortly after completing the novel <A Wild Sheep Chase>. For the next 26 years, he continuously ran full marathons, 100-kilometer ultramarathons, and triathlons in various parts of the world. Running shoes were always in his travel bag.
Why did Haruki become a "running novelist"? Haruki, who believes that "writing novels is physical labor," chose running to build stamina, concentration, and endurance. For Haruki, who had enjoyed running and swimming since childhood as simple individual exercises rather than group activities, running, or rather marathons, might have been an inevitable choice. In this book, Haruki confesses that if he hadn't run, the nature of his novels might have been very different. What does "running" truly mean to Haruki, the "running novelist"?

● Highly recommended for literature students, 4 million marathoners, and young people of this era!
In the preface to this book, Haruki said, "This is a book about running, not about health. I'm not here to proclaim, 'Let's all run every day and get healthy.'" However, any reader of this book will feel the urge to run as soon as they read it.
Haruki runs marathons and triathlons, activities well-suited to the adjective "brutal" among many sports. What does he gain from running those challenging 42.195 kilometers? What is the correlation between running and his literature? As you read the book with these questions in mind, it becomes clear what you can learn from Haruki. In this first memoir, where he frankly discusses his literature and life centered around marathons, literature students can learn about his convictions on literature, and runners can learn about Haruki's passion, who, at the ripe age of 60, runs a full marathon once a year. And young people with big dreams can realize what mindset and practical guidelines are needed to achieve their life goals.

To write honestly about running
was also to write honestly about myself. -Haruki Murakami

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface | The Pain of Choice
Chapter 1 | August 5, 2005, Kauai, Hawaii
Who Can Laugh at Mick Jagger?
Chapter 2 | August 14, 2005, Kauai, Hawaii
How a Person Becomes a Running Novelist
Chapter 3 | September 1, 2005, Kauai, Hawaii
Running 42 Kilometers for the First Time in Midsummer Athens
Chapter 4 | September 19, 2005, Tokyo
I've Learned Much About How to Write Novels by Running on the Road Every Morning
Chapter 5 | October 3, 2005, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Even If I Had a Long Ponytail Back Then
Chapter 6 | June 23, 1996, Lake Saroma, Hokkaido
No One Was Tapping the Table, No One Was Throwing Cups Anymore
Chapter 7 | October 30, 2005, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Autumn in New York
Chapter 8 | August 26, 2006, Somewhere in Kanagawa Prefecture
Eighteen Until the Day I Die
Chapter 9 | October 1, 2006, Murakami City, Niigata Prefecture
At Least I Didn't Walk to the End
Afterword | On the Roads of the World
Translator's Afterword | Haruki's Literature, Marathon, and Life by Lim Hong-bin