What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

MURAKAMI, Haruki.

Item Number: 125622

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

First edition of Murakami’s memoir, in which he writes about his interest and participation in long-distance running. Octavo, original half cloth. Signed three times by Chip Kidd, on the front panel, on the title page and on the rear jacket flap. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.

Murakami began running soon after he sold his Tokyo jazz club to write full time. Now, more than a dozen books and 20 marathons later, he considers the ways running engenders “focus and endurance, qualities essential for writing.” The propelling story line is Murakami’s account of his rigorous training for the 2005 New York marathon. But he drops back often to recount such adventures as his exhausting run in Greece between Athens and Marathon and the unexpected repercussions of an ultramarathon (62 miles). He also ponders the frustrations and revelations of age and shares his love for American literature, including Raymond Carver’s What We Talk about When We Talk about Love (1981), which inspired the title of this meditative book of life lessons, artistic revelations, and humble self-analysis. “Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day,” writes Murakami, a splendidly creative and compassionate writer who lives a disciplined life in order to infuse his fiction with wildness. “A fascinating portrait of Murakami’s working mind and how he works his magic on the page" The Plain Dealer).