What I blog about when I blog about blogging

In case you've missed (or avoided) my previous ramblings on the subject, the name of this blog is a quotation from the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, whose latest book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running has recently made its way to the tottering pile at my pillowside. As the title suggests, it's the author's thoughts on distance running, a pastime that he took up in 1982; not coincidentally, also the year that he became a full-time writer.

At first the link between job and hobby was a purely pragmatic one, to the point of banality: he gave up his job as owner/manager of a jazz bar to write, and running was the simplest way to keep his weight down in his newly sedentary occupation. But at some point, the connection became deeper:

In the novelist's profession, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics' praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature, but none of them really matter. What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away. When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can't fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn't seek validation in the outwardly visible.

Now, this strikes me as a little disingenuous. After all, Murakami is in a small minority of published authors, in that he can make a comfortable living from book sales alone; no more wiping tables and rolling drunks to the sound of 'Autumn Leaves'. And, speaking as a published author who certainly can't retire on his royalties, critics' praise is always an issue, if only to offer a distraction from the lack of cash. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is.

Which is as good a moment as any to offer up the results of a recent, despondent self-Google. First, a mention in The Independent of a biography of the doomed R&B princess Aaliyah. Laurence Phelan describes it as:

...sugary and a bit tacky.

Which is probably fair enough. Over at Amazon, one David Navarrete describes my tome about one-joke gitpunks Blink 182 thus:

This was a present for my sister, in Chile, she said that is a berry god book, I dont know realy because i'm living in spain right now.

The only response to which is a recent, anonymous addition to my Wikipedia page:

From 1999 to 2001 he was the editor of Guinness World Records during which time its emphasis became markedly more light-hearted.

I'm not sure about you, but I need a break after that lot. Here's Creedence Clearwater Revival, for no reason other than Murakami's fondness for them as running music. (He uses a MiniDisc, which is endearingly perverse.)



Of course, not all of my writing is done for money, or even for critical praise. There's blogging, for a start. Now, I certainly don't "seek validation in the outwardly visible" when I slam down my thoughts here. (While we're in this quadrant, do check out Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on why just slamming down thoughts is a no-no: "Blog posts are written, not defecated," he says, which made me smile. Thanks to Dr Ian for the tip.)

But not even blogging exists in a vacuum. I've never understood bloggers who disable the comments facility. Patroclus got it right when she called blogging a conversation: if you want to get more poncy and theoretical than that, you can always pull Roland Barthes out from under the laundry van and get him to explain his "multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash". The point is that writing may well be a solitary activity, but it usually needs to brush up against other people for it to have value; a fresh pair of reading eyes can be transformative.

Incidentally, the same applies to running, although some of you may remember some of the humiliations I've endured while bashing the tarmac, so I'm not going to pontificate too much on that subject. Even if Murakami is only aiming for a self-imposed target as he notches up yet another 26.2 miles, the simple presence of other participants can only affect his thinking, and thus his performance. At one point in the book he describes a run from Athens to Marathon, accompanied only by a support van, which makes for an utterly different experience from the bustle of a big race. After all, his final dedication is "to all the runners I've encountered on the road - those I've passed, and those who've passed me."

Go on. Treat yourselves to a lap of honour.

You are what you read

One of the dangers of modern media is that it encourages us to hold value judgements about people - the sort of thing we'd ordinarily develop from actual, meatspace interaction - on very limited and possibly spurious information. A single, unsourced one-liner on Holy Moly is enough to classify someone as hero or villain, genius or dolt, Madonna or Katona. We feel we know these people; we feel entitled to hold opinions, not about what they do or say, but what they're like.

A couple of years ago, I made some catty remarks about sometime Waterstone's buyer Scott Pack; subsequently I revised those because: a) his blog is quite good; and b) he's a serious Murakami fan.

Is the revision any less shallow than my initial prejudices, based as they were on a purist, kneejerk revulsion regarding the power of vast bookshop chains? (Which I can't really maintain without hypocrisy if they're kind enough to sell books that I write. That said, though, I'll just note that Waterstone's is currently doing a promotion on "Books you know you should read"; when they offer a similar selection of "Books you know you shouldn't read", I'll pay more serious attention to their recommendations, thanks.)

And how far can I take the if-he-likes-Murakami-he-must-be-a-good-chap meme? Especially when I discover that Alastair bloody Campbell is a Haruki junkie as well.

Running a book

Haruki Murakami (the author who gave this blog its name) has a new book due out in August, but this one isn't about mysterious girls offering manual relief to shy jazz musicians while spaghetti falls from the sky and a cat watches. Instead, it's an extended meditation on his chosen profession (writing, often about the previously mentioned spaghetti, handjobs, etc) and the relationship it has with his preferred pastime (distance running, specifically marathons).

In this extract, he describes his preparation for the 2005 New York Marathon, and his experience of the race itself:

An understated, rainy-day-sneakers sort of conclusion. An anticlimax, if you will. Turn it into a screenplay, and the Hollywood producer would just glance at the last page and toss it back.

Which gives some sort of validation to my dislike of fiction that offers too neat a closure, and also explains why I love Murakami so much. Life isn't bound by a Robert McKee-ordained three-act structure; it's not designed to fit bloody narrative arcs. So why should fiction - if it has any relation to life - have to follow those rules? Murakami doesn't. Long may he, um, run.

PS: Ariel Leve on a similar theme in the Sunday Times.

Repressed memory of toe-curling humiliation for the day

A few years ago, encouraged by my GP to lose a bit of flab, I entered a charity 10K race. Having, in the distant past, worked for a major running magazine, I had access to training plans for events of all distances, and sedulously applied myself to the mix of speed days, endurance days and rest days prescribed by the experts.

It was deviating from the plan that brought about my abject humiliation. One day I was scheduled to go for a bit of endurance, which usually involved walk/jogging to a grassy expanse round the back of the Purley Way, almost under the shadow of the mighty IKEA chimneys. Once there, I would do two circuits of the common at medium pace, then jog back slowly to warm down.

Possessed by an excess of enthusiasm, I decided to do three circuits, and then run back at the same pace. I realised something was wrong as I was crossing a road halfway home, when I became afflicted with stitches on both sides. I made it to the pavement, and did the most dangerous thing possible - I stopped. It was only then that I realised I hadn't really been breathing for the last couple of minutes. I stood, gasping for air, feeling the veins in my head and neck throbbing as if they wanted to escape. My legs started shaking and hurting. I felt sick, but nothing wanted to come up. I bent over, just in case.

"I must look a bloody mess," I thought. Having occasionally caught sight of myself in the mirror during my rare excursions to the gym, I knew that excessive activity usually turned my face a vibrant shade of raspberry. Sweat splashed onto the pavement as I retched saliva and tried to acquire some oxygen from somewhere, anywhere. And then I heard the tapping sound.

I'd pulled up by the left-hand fork of a T-junction, and a minibus had stopped there, waiting for a gap in the traffic. With some difficulty I got myself into a vaguely upright position and turned to look at the vehicle, to see whether it was the source of the noise. And then I realised it wasn't just any old minibus.

It was the blue bus.

It was the blue bus that belonged to the school for children with learning difficulties.

The special school.

And they were in the blue bus, tapping on the window and pointing. And they were laughing hysterically. They were pointing and laughing. At me.


And as I stood there, damp, hot, bedraggled, aching, gasping, I felt that maybe this was some sort of karmic payback for all the times I'd thoughtlessly mocked someone with words like "spaz" or "mong" or "flid" or "joey". And I was suddenly thankful that my face had already gone red.

"Did you have a good run?" asked Small Boo when I got home. I told her what had happened, hoping for a little sympathy.

Three hours later, she'd almost stopped laughing.