What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Embrace the void
When I'm criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.
Commentary
I first read Kafka on the Shore fifteen years ago, at the recommendation of a friend who was an English major. For some strange reason, I can still recall vivid feelings and details from the book—the metaphysical undercurrents, and even the dark green Miata with gold rims. Murakami’s writing has a way of sticking with you like that.
Before reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I listened to the Founders podcast episode on it, which is not my usual order of things. But I was so struck by what David Senra outlined that I knew I had to experience the book for myself.
Right now, I'm in a season of life where I relate deeply to Murakami. In an almost eerie similarity, I started writing and running at the age of 33. Working to improve at both has been profoundly enriching, and I look forward to continuing both practices into old age.
After reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I feel like Murakami and I would have been fast friends—kindred spirits, if you will. While I’ll likely never write a novel, I do plan to run my first marathon in 2025. I believe the insights Murakami shared about the writing process have deeply infiltrated my consciousness, in a way that will pay dividends for the rest of my life.
What I’m stealing
Keep up the rhythm. Get the flywheel spinning at a set speed. Let momentum carry you.
Embrace the void.
Quietly absorb things for release later.
Commit to practices that reveal physical and mental potential.
Tinker away like the village blacksmith.
There is honor in physical decline.
Taking time, in many cases, is the shortcut.
Always grasp a concrete lesson, no matter how small.
Supplemental Resources
Blog post with some cool pictures and info on his hi-fi setup - Murakami’s Listening Room
Dog ears, highlights, marginalia
I think that one more condition for being a gentleman would be keeping quiet about what you do to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit.
Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn't agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.
To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed-and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.
The point is whether not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.
Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running. I prefer the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gorillaz, and Beck, and oldies like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beach Boys. Music with as simple a rhythm as possible. A lot of runners now use iPods, but I prefer the MD player I'm used to. It's a little bigger than an iPod and can't hold nearly as much data, but it works for me. At this point I don't want to mix music and computers. Just like it's not good to mix friends and work, and sex.
I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.
So the fact that I'm me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
When I'm criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual. By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.
To tell the truth, I didn't think I had much aptitude for business either. I just figured, though, that since failure was not an option, I'd have to give it everything I had. My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I'm more a workhorse than a racehorse.
And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfy ing crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it.
I shipped it off without making a copy, so it seems I didn't much care if it wasn't selected and vanished forever.
This is the work that's published under the title Hear the Wind Sing. I was more interested in having finished it than in whether or not it would ever see the light of day.
Running has a lot of advantages. First of all, you don't need anybody else to do it, and no need for special equipment. You don't have to go to any special place to do it. As long as you have running shoes and a good road you can run to your heart's content
I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills.
I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
In other words, you can't please everybody.
Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.
The main thing was not the speed or distance so much as running every day, without taking a break.
The more I ran, the more my physical potential was revealed.
For the reasons I give above, I think this physical nuisance should be viewed in a positive way, as a blessing. We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible.
At any rate, that's how I started running. Thirty-three+ that's how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died.
The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill.
That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.
One other way I keep healthy is by taking a nap. I really nap a lot. Usually I get sleepy right after lunch, plop down on the sofa, and doze off. Thirty minutes later I come wide awake. As soon as I wake up, my body isn't sluggish and my mind is totally clear.
This may be the reason why, while I'm training for my next marathon-the New York City Marathon-I'm also writing this. Bit by bit I'm remembering things that took place when I was a beginning runner more than twenty years ago. Retracing my memories, rereading the simple journal I kept (I'm never able to keep a regular diary for very long, but I've faithfully kept up my runner's journal) and reworking them into essay form, helps me consider the path I've taken and rediscover the feelings I had back then. I do this to both admonish and encourage myself. It's also intended as a wake-up call for the motivation that, somewhere along the line, went dormant. I'm writing, in other words, to put my thoughts in some kind of order. And in hindsight-in the final analysis it's always in hindsight-this may very well end up a kind of memoir that centers on the act of running.
Let's go back to 1983. A nostalgic era now, back when Duran Duran and Hall and Oates were cranking out the hits.
In July of that year I traveled to Greece and ran by myself from Athens to the town of Marathon.
Greece is the home of the original marathon course,
Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.
I think certain types of processes don't allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform-or perhaps distort-yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality.
Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step.
they learn to take it. As long as you explain your expec tations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to endure, your muscles will comply and gradually get stronger.
Our muscles are very conscientious. As long as we observe the correct procedure, they won't complain.
If, however, the load halts for a few days, the muscles automatically assume they don't have to work that hard anymore, and they lower their limits. Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn't applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work.
I have to maintain a certain tension by being unsparing, but not to the point where I burn out.
These are tactics that all experienced runners learn over time.
While I've been in Japan a new short-story collection of mine, Strange Tales from Tokyo, has come out, and I have to do several interviews about the book. I also have to check the galleys for a book of music criticism that's coming out in November and meet with people to discuss the cover. Then I have to go over my old translations of Raymond Carver's complete works. With new paperback editions of these coming out, I want to revise all the translations, which is time consuming. On top of this, I have to write a long introduction to the short-story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which will be published next year in the U.S. Plus I'm steadily working on these essays on running, though nobody in particular has asked me to. Just like a silent village blacksmith, tinkering away.
**Note:** Village blacksmith
Even if there were two of me, I still couldn't do all that has to be done. No matter what, though, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I'm not going to lay off or quit just because I'm busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.
Even if the skill level varies, there are things that only runners understand and share. I truly believe that.
: focus-the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment. Without that you can't accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you'll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it.
focus and endurance-are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You'll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do.
This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner's physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.
How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate-and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself.
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.
When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison.
remember to get the audience to laugh to put them at ease.
Since I was on autopilot, if someone had told me to keep on running I might well have run beyond sixty-two miles. It's weird, but at the end I hardly knew who I was or what I was doing. This should have been a very alarming feeling, but it didn't feel that way. By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical.
Thick, meaningful clouds, like something out of a nineteenth-century British landscape painting, covered the sky.
the most significant fallout from running the ultramarathon wasn't physical but mental. What I ended up with was a sense of lethargy, and before I knew it, I felt covered by a thin film, something I've sinced dubbed runner's blues. (Though the actual feeling of it was closer to a milky white.)
And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it's been moving ever forward without a moment's rest. And one of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
Competing against time isn't important. What's going to be much more meaningful to me now is how much I can enjoy myself, whether I can finish twenty six miles with a feeling of contentment. I'll enjoy and value things that can't be expressed in numbers, and I'll grope for a feeling of pride that comes from a slightly different place.
Vernon Duke, "Autumn in New York."
"18" Til I Die," the name of a Bryan Adams hit. It's a joke, of course. Being eighteen until you die means you die when you're eighteen.
Seventy percent of the records I bought were jazz, the rest classical, plus a few rock records. I'm a very (or perhaps I should say extremely) enthusiastic record collector.
In order to get there you have to stubbornly, rigorously, and very patiently tighten all the screws of each individual part. This takes time, of course, but sometimes taking time is actually a shortcut.
**Note:** On learning to swim
It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.
My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what's really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. (It's got to be concrete, no matter how small it is.)
The title of this book is taken from the title of a shortstory collection by a writer beloved to me, Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
I’ve been that English major friend who’s recommended Murakami more times than I care to count. Really great stuff in here.