A few thoughts on running books, and praise for Running With The Kenyans by Adharanand Finn

The most you can ever ask of an author is to take you on a journey.  In Running with the Kenyans [Amazon.ca Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk], Finn wisks us through the Kenyan countryside with terrific, and sometimes lyrical, prose that evokes a sense of realness lost in a lot of writing. It's a delight to read such a terrific book (following on the heels of the similarly satisfying memoir of Caleb Daniloff) and read an author who bares his soul on the page.  Murakami, as much as I love his writing and respect his world class authorship, never opened himself up the way Finn does, over the course of his own running memoir.

At any rate, running books are often hit and miss.  On my 16k bike ride (round trip) to the downtown branch of the Saskatoon Public Library, I reckoned I'd pick up a few running books.  And so I did, in addition to the Daniloff and Finn books, I picked up a book on Harry Jerome (a seemingly dispiriting introduction rather killed the book for me--after all, telling me how I should feel about the subject matter before the first chapter has even begun usually means the author doesn't trust the reader--obviously what happened to Harry Jerome was horrible, but at least let me experience it all through the narrative); C by Tom McCarthy (which has nothing to do with running); and a biography of Bill Rogers which was probably written by the co-writer--in any event, the amount of name dropping in the first 20 pages was enough for me to close the book and just stare at the wall while my 7-year-old step-kid drifted off to sleep.  There was one other book, written most likely by a sycophantic fan, of a runner from the 60's and 70's.  The author apologizes for his subject a bit too much for me to read very far (e.g. if he'd only entered school at the proper age, he woulda been state champion etc).

A good running book, in my humble blogging opinion, makes no excuses for what it is.  If an author name drops, it's not on purpose, nor is it the focal point of an entire chapter or the reason for an extended anecdote.  As readers with a finite amount of time on earth, we are owed authenticity. Cheers to Adharanand Finn and once again to Caleb Daniloff for the good read.

Autumn reading: Caleb Daniloff's Running on Ransom Road

Reading a good book will make you ask questions and intuit answers. Some authors paint in broad strokes, while others like Robert Caro and Nicholson Baker can seem impossibly myopic.  In either case, good writing exists within the realm of the qualitative, not quantitative.  Good writing is not perfect; in fact it's rather imperfect. 

I discovered Caleb Daniloff's "Running on Ransom Road" after biking to the library looking for a few books to read.  I reckoned I wanted a few running books and a (non-athletically concerned) novel.  Sure enough, nestled among books about the Boston Marathon, Haruki Murukami and runner biographies, was Daniloff's expository meditation. Part memoir, part diary, Daniloff takes us through his marathons against the backdrop of his boozing past, where bacon figured prominently.

I always enjoy hearing how people came to "believe" in running, and how they persevere despite injuries and other setbacks.  That we all suffer in much the same way is a kind of comfort, I suppose. In Daniloff's book, I find a clear and well-defined universe of anecdotes and memories laid out in the symmetry of easily digestible chapters.