Writing and Running

I recently read Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and found it pretty interesting, though I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't a writer and a runner or a huge Murakami fan. He doesn't have a lot of insight into either running or writing; mostly he just says, to paraphrase: "I write because I'm good at it and I like doing it. And I run because I'm good at it too. I just started one day, and here I am, twenty years later, and it's been great." Then there's a lot of geeky detail about his writing schedule, his running schedule, his marathons, etc.

The book interested me because I've put a lot of thought into the connections between writing and running--they've always felt connected to me. I started running when I was ten, around the time I started writing. And I go through similar long periods of slackdom with both, often at the same time -- I can probably blame these slack periods for the fact that, considering how long I've been at them, I'm still -- embarassingly -- pretty much a beginner at both. They both require a not so easy-to-maintain combination of mental toughness and faith that the activity is really worthwhile, even though, minute by minute, very little gets accomplished. They're both solitary and don't depend on other people. And they both feel much better when they're over.

Plus, a lot of writers I know also run or, in the case of the wonky-kneed (JRL), walk. Joyce Carol Oates reportedly runs 6 miles every morning -- as prolific in her running as her writing. Just this morning I was reading an article about hydration during running, and there was a quote from a woman I happen to know, and who happens to be a novelist (and who sometimes looks at this blog -- are you there, KL?). I had no idea she runs, but I'm not surprised.

There are obvious, practical reasons writers might run: it's cheap, it counteracts all that sitting, it's outdoors. But I feel like there are deeper, more mystical reasons, maybe something to do its linearity, the way your eye moves past words on a page just like it moves past trees and weeds and telephone poles. Maybe it has to do with sustained attention. Or rhythm.

What do you think -- will doing a lot of one lead to a person doing a lot of the other? I, for one, hope so.

New Haruki Murakami

Rhian tells me that she read a few middling reviews of the new Haruki Murakami, but I just finished reading it and I think it's terrific. It's my favorite thing of his since The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in fact. Like that book, it's weird and full of great coincidences, intersections, and unexplained events; unlike that book, it's very simple: four people spend a strange night in and out of one another's company. There's an unplugged television displaying a mysterious room, a girl who has been asleep for months, an amateur jazz trombonist, a threatening phone call, a businessman who attacked a prostitute, and a room from which there is no exit. The narrative voice is wry and detatched, referring constantly to the point of view; yet the book is almost entirely dialogue. It's enigmatic, and you are never really informed of what the whole thing was about.

How does he get away with that? A student of mine suggests that it's his status as an "international" writer; he straddles two cultures without being really of either, and so can be himself alone, for better or worse. On one hand, you could say that this allows his mistakes to appear, to either Japanese or English readers, as merely a quirky product of the other culture; but on the other hand you could say that it frees Murakami to take risks.

Or maybe he's just having fun. I would be happy to watch him do this all day long. In perhaps my favorite scene, the trombonist finds a cell phone in a refrigerated case at a convenience store; it belongs to the prostitute who was earlier beaten by the businessman, who left it there. The phone rings; it's a gangster vowing violent reciprocation against the guy he thinks has the phone. The trombonist listens, and the phone feels "uncomfortably cold" in his hand. Not sure why I like that so much--it's the coldness of the refrigerated phone that makes it good. Elsewhere, the self-aware narrator is describing the sounds of the waking city, and says that if we strain our ears, "We might even be able to hear bread toasting."

Ultimately, though, what I like about this book is that it doesn't all fit together. I like books that don't fit together. That's one of things that bugs me about, say, Ian MacEwan--every novel ends in such a fitting way, loose ends tied up, metaphors locked tight (and in the most egregiously awful ending ever, that of Enduring Love, the charaters diagnosed, in an actual medical paper). This book is quiet and relaxed and in no hurry to go anywhere.

Out, Again

I posted a few days ago about Natsuo Kirino's crime novel Out, and while I said I liked it pretty well, I kind of condemned its writing style and plot with faint praise. I hadn't finished it at the time, though, and now I feel bad.

Having read the whole thing now, I have to admit that Out is a really strange, really interesting book. At the halfway point, Kirino appeared to be moving toward a number of familiar tropes of the genre--the women who covered up the murder of their friend's husband had inadvertently let out a few details, several unsavory figures got wind of their deed, and the police seemed to be closing in. I was certain there would be some blackmail, some betrayal, some retribution, in the classic style.

I was completely wrong. The plot takes a weird, surprising, and ultimately quite plausible turn which I won't reveal here. But the story picked up steam so completely at that point that I would later be amazed that I had once considered not bothering to finish.

As for the writing style, I can't decide. It's unadorned, which I usually like. But its character development is very expository--feelings are rather clinically described and explained, instead of being illustrated with action and dialogue. Ordinarily this would bother me, but by the end of Out I wondered if perhaps this is simply part of the character of Japanese fiction. Kirino's the only Japanese novelist I've read (save for Haruki Murakami, who I think of as more of a cross-cultural, "international" writer)...can anyone weigh in on this issue?

Anyway, my apologies--Out is a terrific book, especially the second half!

More on Translations

In the comments of my last post, reader 5 red brought up one of my favorite writers:

This talk of translation also brings to the fore the nagging question I have when I read Murakami's work. I can't help wondering what his work is like in Japanese. I've convinced myself that it's even better, and I feel like I'm missing out.

I've often wondered the same thing about other writers, but I don't worry too much about it in Haruki Murakami's case. The reason is that he's a very rare beast among writers who don't ordinarily write in English: he is both 1) completely fluent in English, and 2) popular enough so that all his books are translated into English during his lifetime. He also has a couple of translators he knows well and whom he can work with...thus, his translations have a certain "official" status, at least in my mind, as he gets to vet them, and can actually appreciate the way they "feel" in English.

I wish I could remember where I found this, but I remember reading a short essay or interview with Murakami in which discussed his English translations and his feelings toward them. If I remember right, he liked them, but appreciated that they had a different flavor. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, let us know.

On a side note, I got a real laugh when flipping through the Spanish edition of one of my own books...in the English, the character refers to someone having real "cojones," and in the translation there's a footnote reading, "In Spanish in the original."