书名：What I Talk about When I Talk about Running当我谈跑步时我谈些什么村上春树随笔集

作者：Haruki Murakami村上春树
出版社名称：Vintage
出版时间：2009
语种：英文
ISBN：9780307473394
商品尺寸：10.6 x 1.1 x 17.5 cm
包装：简装
页数：192 （以实物为准）
“跑步是我日常生活的支柱。只要跑步，我便感到快乐。积极地选择磨难，就是将人生的主动权握在自己手中。” ——村上春树

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running《当我谈跑步时，我谈些什么》是村上春树很受欢迎的随笔集。开始作家生涯之际，村上春树也开始长跑。从夏威夷的考爱岛，到马萨诸塞的剑桥；从村上市的铁人三项赛，到希腊马拉松长跑古道，他永远在奔跑。“痛楚难以避免，而磨难可以选择。”每当村上长跑时，脑海里就反复出现这句话。积极地选择磨难，就是将人生的主动权握在自己手中。他将这些年来在路上一面奔跑，一面思索的东西集结成书，诚实地书写跑步，诚实地书写人生。

An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, from the incomparable, bestselling author Haruki Murakami.

While simply training for New York City Marathon would be enough for most people, Haruki Murakami's decided to write about it as well. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.

Review
“A fascinating portrait of Murakami’s working mind and how he works his magic on the page.”  — The Plain Dealer
“A brilliant meditation on how his running and writing nurture and sustain each other.... With spare, engaging prose... Murakami shares his runner's high.”   — Sports Illustrated
“Enthralling.... A quirky, brilliant gem.”  — Time Out New York
“Murakami's descriptive eye is as acute as ever.... Fascinating.... A glimpse into the creative process of one of the world's great writers.”  — The Hartford Courant
“A genuine memoir, filled with gentle minutiae that truly communicates the rhythm of Murakami's daily life and work... Murakami actually offers himself whole.”  — Jesse Jarnow, Paste Magazine
“A felicitous, casual series of reflections and anecdotes...[Murakami] has a Warholian way of tinting the mundane with mystery and restrained humor... Do still waters run deep? This paean to a runner's life keeps us, pleasurably, wondering.”  — Joel Rice, The Tennessean
“[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is] a graceful explanation of Mr. Murakami's intertwining obsessions, conveyed with his characteristic ability to draw unexpected connections. Running may be a matter of placing one foot in front of the other on the ground, but, as is so often the case with Mr. Murakami, terrestrial objects have a tendency to take flight.”  — Chloë Schama, New York Sun
“Beautifully written and full of great running aphorisms...Anyone who knows perseverance can appreciate this work.” — Helen Montoya, San Antonio Express-News
“Engaging, insightful... What I Talk About When I Talk About Running extends [Murakami's] winning streak.” — Jenny Shank, Sunday Camera
“Murakami constructs this piecemeal narrative with the same masterful, accessible prose marked by humor and streaks of magic which has made him a household name, the same staggering insights, the same fascinating connections...this is exactly what makes Murakami so special: his ability to render everything a part of everything else, and to end with monumental poignancy... In an extremely personal, candid and moving way, the book makes one want to read and run at the same time.”  — Reynard Seifert, Austin Fit Magazine
“[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running] provides a fascinating portrait of Murakami's working mind and how he works his magic on the page...[a] charming, sober little book.”  — John Freeman, Newark Star-Ledger
“Highly recommended... Practical philosophy from a man whose insight into his own character, and how running both suits and shapes that character, is revelatory and can provide tools for readers to examine and improve their own lives.” — Library Journal

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.

Who’s Going to Laugh at Mick Jagger?

I’m on Kauai, in Hawaii, today, Friday, August 5, 2005. It’s unbelievably clear and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. As if the concept clouds doesn’t even exist. I came here at the end of July and, as always, we rented a condo. During the mornings, when it’s cool, I sit at my desk, writing all sorts of things. Like now: I’m writing this, a piece on running that I can pretty much compose as I wish. It’s summer, so naturally it’s hot. Hawaii’s been called the island of eternal summer, but since it’s in the Northern Hemisphere there are, arguably, four seasons of a sort. Summer is somewhat hotter than winter. I spend a lot of time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and compared to Cambridge—so muggy and hot with all its bricks and concrete it’s like a form of torture—summer in Hawaii is a veritable paradise. No need for an air conditioner here—just leave the window open, and a refreshing breeze blows in. People in Cambridge are always surprised when they hear I’m spending August in Hawaii. “Why would you want to spend summer in a hot place like that?” they invariably ask. But they don’t know what it’s like. How the constant trade winds from the northeast make summers cool. How happy life is here, where we can enjoy lounging around, reading a book in the shade of trees, or, if the notion strikes us, go down, just as we are, for a dip in the inlet.

Since I arrived in Hawaii I’ve run about an hour every day, six days a week. It’s two and a half months now since I resumed my old lifestyle in which, unless it’s totally unavoidable, I run every single day. Today I ran for an hour and ten minutes, listening on my Walkman to two albums by the Lovin’ Spoonful—Daydream and Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful—which I’d recorded on an MD disc.

Right now I’m aiming at increasing the distance I run, so speed is less of an issue. As long as I can run a certain distance, that’s all I care about. Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. 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.

It rained for a short time while I was running, but it was a cooling rain that felt good. A thick cloud blew in from the ocean right over me, and a gentle rain fell for a while, but then, as if it had remembered, “Oh, I’ve got to do some errands!,” it whisked itself away without so much as a glance back. And then the merciless sun was back, scorching the ground. It’s a very easy-to-understand weather pattern. Nothing abstruse or ambivalent about it, not a speck of the metaphor or the symbolic. On the way I passed a few other joggers, about an equal number of men and women. The energetic ones were zipping down the road, slicing through the air like they had robbers at their heels. Others, overweight, huffed and puffed, their eyes half closed, their shoulders slumped like this was the last thing in the world they wanted to be doing. They looked like maybe a week ago their doctors had told them they have diabetes and warned them they had to start exercising. I’m somewhere in the middle.

I love listening to the Lovin’ Spoonful. Their music is sort of laid-back and never pretentious. Listening to this soothing music brings back a lot of memories of the 1960s. Nothing really special, though. If they were to make a movie about my life (just the thought of which scares me), these would be the scenes they’d leave on the cutting-room floor. “We can leave this episode out,” the editor would explain. “It’s not bad, but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much.” Those kinds of memories—unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they’re all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I’m sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. Me here and now, on the north shore of Kauai. Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

As I run, the trade winds blowing in from the direction of the lighthouse rustle the leaves of the eucalyptus over my head.