Book Review: Running, a novel

Running: A Novel
by Jean Echenoz
Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
The New Press, 2009

This fictionalized biography of Emil Zátopek came to my attention via an excerpt in the current issue of Marathon & Beyond magazine. It was released in French in 2008, and this translated version was released last October.

I ordered it on Sunday, it got here around 4:00 today, and I've finished reading it already (even with a break for dinner). It's a slim book, just 122 pages and in a small (8"x5") format to boot. All very good reading.

Author Echenoz has won several awards for her other novels. The style and outlook on life is very French, although I can't put my finger on why. I guess it's just a certain je ne se quois.

He picked a good subject to work with. By contrast, Paavo Nurmi's biography would be very dull even in the best of hands. The superficial story of Zátopek is well known to track fans: trained much harder than anyone before him, dominated for years, was punished by the Communists after the Prague Spring, but his optimistic outlook could never be crushed. What is not well known, at least to westerners or the young, is life under first the Nazis and then totalitarians. Echenoz transmits the feeling of unease, fear and suspicion very well. It is a quiet terror we forget at our peril.

Final analysis: one of the ten best track books I've read While it could have gone more in depth, it would have compromised the minimalist style. I just wish there was more. Scores 390 meters (out of 400).

Track On The Daily Show

On Tuesday night, Stewart interviewed Chris McDougal about his book, Born to Run.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Christopher McDougall
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Two things I like about Stewart, aside from the funny and the political:
1) He does really great interviews, some of the best on TV.
2) He actually reads the books his subjects are hawking.

Born To Run

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
By Christopher McDougall
Knopf. 287 pp. $24.95

This book has been out for a while, and I finally went out and dropped the $25 to get it after reading the first three pages at a bookstore on Friday night. (One of my original goals for this blog was to score free swag like books, a goal that has yet to be achieved.)

If you've got more than a superficial knowledge of distance running, you've probably heard of Mexico's Tarahumara Indians. They are reputed to be the world's greatest ultramarathoners, but I've always been a bit skeptical--why haven't they stormed the rest of the world like Kenya's Kalenjin runners have? McDougall answers that question quite well. Turns out two different Tarahumaras won the Leadville Trail 100 in the 90s, found even the low-key ultra world too modernized for their tastes, and found no reason to return. McDougall spent time living and running with the Tarahumaras and found out quite a bit else--and was there when the world's best ultra-trail-runners came down to their homeland and took them on.

The tale is a fascinating one, but in lesser hands it would have been mangled. McDougall is a below-average runner who has turned himself into a decent ultramarathoner; he's an absolute pro of a writer. Along the way to the climactic race, there are side trips to learn about human physiology and anthropology, various ultra races, and an amazing cast of characters. None of it is made up but much seems too entertaining to be true.

By far the most-talked about part of the book is the idea that modern running shoes are bad for runners. It's not new; Arthur Lydiard was going apeshit about this 35 years ago, and a recent trip to a running store left me feeling like John Cleese in the Cheese Shop sketch (a whole store reputedly full of shoes, yet not a single one I asked for). Anyone who zeroes in on that part doesn't get it.

The whole idea is that a strenuous life is the only enjoyable one, and a life of ignoble ease will slowly and painfully kill you. For it to be truly enjoyable, the strenuous life must not be thought of as working by the sweat of your brow all the days of your life, but rather a lifestyle that is embraced and loved by living in the moment rather than being concerned with the outcome. McDougall sets this out in such a way that he might end up responsible for more than a few suburbanites tuning in, turning on, dropping out, and becoming trail-running bums. His scenery is the brutal Mexican Copper Canyons and the high trails of the Rockies. Really, though, we can find this anywhere.

I live in northwest Ohio, with a relatively moderate four-season climate and no terrain to speak of. A lot of times, running seems like work, yet it's not at some of the most inexplicable times. I identified with McDougall's descriptions when I recall some of my most difficult yet enjoyable runs: 2+ hours in the winter. Our cold isn't extreme as compared to, say, Minnesota or Saskatchewan, but we do have some pretty fierce wind once you get out of town. I've done 20-milers in -15 degree wind chill, once wondering if gusts were going to blow me into the path of oncoming traffic. By simply trying to keep going rather than worrying about time and distance, I get to know my limits pretty well. And when I get home, I felt like one tough hombre.

This is not only the best track book of the year, it's one of the best in quite a while. Entertaining, and it's likely to make you examine your life and convince you to use up less and do more.

New Book on the Market

Juggernauts: The Making of a Runner & a Team in the First American Running Boom
by Steve Adkisson
Outskirts Press, $16.95 ($5 e-book available)

I haven't been able to get my hands on this one yet, but I'll work on it and get up a review when I can. Let's Run indicates it's worth my time. Available via Amazon or its own website.

Blurb:
As the first running boom was sprouting in the early 1970’s, a group of Kentucky teenagers were brought together by a young coach who was ahead of his time. Cross country was regarded as a sport for the slightly odd and unathletic, a means of “getting an easy varsity letter”. Among this group of runners was a particularly odd (though strangely athletic) teenager who was taken in by the joy of running over the grass, hills, and mud of cross country courses. The coach and seasonally growing team rose to dominance of Kentucky cross country in the span of four short years. Along the way, they “learned the lessons every runner has to learn, mostly the hard way, many of them twice.” From humble backgrounds and with guidance from a ground breaking coach, the Lloyd Memorial High School Juggernauts led the way for high schools in Northern Kentucky to win State Championships for over thirty consecutive years. This is that story.

Sneaker Wars

Sneaker Wars
By Barbara Smit
(Ecco, 384 pages, $26.95)

I have not yet been able to get my hands on this book (the official release date is Tuesday), but the Wall Street Journal published a review and an excerpt. The book details the first two international kingpins in shoes, Adidas and Puma, the ascendancy of Nike, and the bareknuckle fights between them.

A similar upcoming book is Geoff Hollister's "Out of Nowhere: The Inside Story of How Nike Marketed the Culture of Running", to be released in just a few weeks. Hollister was Nike's third employee, after founder/CEO Phil Knight and superguru Bill Bowerman.

Book Review

I finally got my hands on Silent Gesture, Tommie Smith's autobiography. I passed along the media plugs when it first came out.

It's not what you'd call a snappy read. There's a lot of repetition, and it's more a collection of topical chapters than an ever-advancing narrative. It assumes the reader knows quite a bit about the events in question, and spends remarkably little time covering Smith's sprinting exploits.

Final judgement: A good book, but not an entertaining one. Only for the hard-core fan or the college student looking to get sports into his ethnic studies paper. Better to borrow than buy.

Duel in the Sun

Yeah, I know it's a bit late for a book review (it came out a year ago). But I'm an amateur and have to buy these things myself. Besides, the paperback edition comes out in three weeks.

The book traces the lives of both Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley in flashback form while detailing their 1982 Boston Marathon battle. Brant does a good job of avoiding the problems usually found in this kind of material.

He doesn't shy away from telling us about the dark side of either athlete. For the first half of the book, I thought it ironic that Beardsley is the one named "Dick" because Salazar sure comes off as one. But around the same time that we learn about nice guy Beardsley's descent into drug addiction, we also get to see the humble side of Salazar.

The other problem inherent in biographies is a lack of plot. This is because life doesn't have a plot, it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. For example, Coal Miner's Daughter is a good film but at the end I found myself wondering what the whole point was. By contrast, Walk the Line builds towards a climactic moment. Brant accomplishes the same here by telling each runner's story in a topical rather than chronological fashion.

Brant gets all the little things right, too. I am ignorant of the Cuban-American exile community, and he could be way off base about it and I wouldn't ever know. But I do know plenty about addicts, and Brant's description of Beardsley's life before his horrific accident reveal an addiction waiting to happen. Based on that alone, I trust the author; and the superfan of track history in me didn't see a single error or exaggeration anywhere either.

Final judgement: on the same level as Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, and maybe better. Easily worth your $12.

The Other Shulman: Book Review

This isn't the first time I've pimped this novel, as I noted its winning the Thurber Award for comedy writing. I got it yesterday morning, and read the whole thing before midnight.

I won't bother with much of a synopsis; Amazon has plenty. "Middle-aged schlimazel waddles through NYC marathon and self-discovery" does fine. If you're looking for the exploits of superstars, skip it. This is a great story of an ordinary person's struggles. My only complaint is the ending, which feels like it was thrown together in the final hour before a publishing deadline.

What I should add is that while this is billed as comedy, funniness is not the point of the book. It's much like Little Miss Sunshine or Dry: A Memoir in that the comedy complements the storyline, which otherwise would be too horribly, suicidally depressing to get through. Like these other stories, the suffering is both necessary and passing. Plus, it's the New York City marathon...