He likes writing, running, jazz, baseball, and lives and runs near Jingu Stadium, the Japanese equivalent of the Chicago Cubs. What's not to like? I have enjoyed Murakami's writing for nearly fifteen years. As he has evolved from some pretty great but wild cyber-punk type fantasy toward a more mature but no less fantastic style, I am convinced he will be Japan's next Nobel laureate. The Wind-Up Bird's Chronicle is a masterpiece, one of the ten or twenty best novels I have read.
And he runs. Every day. A Lot. Triathalons too. Claims he never stops during a marathon (except for the time he describes when he uber-cramped).
I enjoyed his running book a lot more the second time around when I reread it for our mini-symposium, The first time, I was a little hurt and offended that my favorite writer thought it was cheating to walk during a marathon. It was one of the few categorical statements in a book that seemed to take pride in being personal rather than universal.
This time, I was more taken with his meditations about time, running and writing and the need to keep moving forward and keep at your craft if you want to be a pro in any endeavor. We all write at least one article a year (he does a book a year) and I come close to running one marathon a year.
As Murakami notes, they have a lot in common beyond just a similar gestation period. The research is the training, the writing itself is the race. Both are about the contentment not just the final product. The journey not just the destination. The inner peace from a job well done, not just the time on the clock at the finish line (or the final placement, well not just the final placement of the article).
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