Review: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

In this memoir, novelist and marathon runner Haruki Murakami reflects on his relationship with running. As a runner myself, I enjoyed recognizing common ground in our experiences: an approachable form of exercise initially picked up to support a long, healthy life became a source of enjoyable routine and self-improvement. We have both also found in running a way to practice coming to terms with disappointment, failure, and personal limits. 

There are also substantial differences: Murakami is much more focused on competitive running (marathons, triathlons, and one ultramarathon), while I enjoy running more as a way of exploring and relating to my urban environment, and I have never run an official race nor much farther than a half-marathon. Of our differences, the reflections I found most compelling were those on how aging shapes his relationship with running. I am a decade or so younger than he was when he wrote this book, and so these passages present a peek into my future. For now, I will continue with my 35 kilometers per week while I can.

Overall, however, I was disappointed in the book. A good memoir either offers the reader a rare glimpse into an unknown world, or finds a way to make the author’s particular experience general. Jesse Thistle’s memoir is an example of the first, showing the reader how Canada’s social system traps homeless people in a cycle of poverty, crime and addiction, and how hard it is to emerge from it. Examples of the second approach include The Message, Born to Run, and to a lesser extent, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. These works interleave personal reflection with science, history, and sociology to connect their own experiences with the broader human experience. 

In contrast, Murakami’s narrative is very internal — many passages read like stream-of-consciousness — and I found the result a bit overly self-indulgent. Although I haven’t read Murakami’s novels, this memoir made me less interested in doing so. I find he essentializes “talent” too much (“what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have[?]. It’s pretty obvious: talent.”), views education too hierarchically (“the pupil has no idea what the real point of this sort of practice is.”), and writes strangely about women he sees (the "aggressive challenge” “emanating” from the “small, slim” girls with “blond hair in a ponytail” that “run like the wind.”). I found the prose to be unremarkable, although it is possible the fault lies with the translator. However, I am suspicious of a writer that claims “the fear I feel when I weave in and out of traffic on my sports bike with its skinny tires and my bike shoes strapped tight in the straps is something you can’t understand unless you’ve gone through it.” Isn’t the task of a novelist to make us deeply emotionally understand an experience we have not gone through? 

Altogether, this is a memoir better suited to the Murakami fan than to the casual runner.