A Literary View
I’m going through a reading surge. I do this from time to time. I go months without reading anything other than news and other short-form stuff. Then I get the urge to read a particular book, and before I know it it’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve breezed through 3 or 4. Over the last few years most of my reading has been non-fiction, but I was an English major in college and continue to be drawn to the fiction aisles of our local library and Borders. When I was younger I was more of a reading snob and did not read much “genre” fiction (other than sci-fi when I was a kid). As I got older I spent some time with Graham Greene and John LeCarre and then drifted into P.D. James and John D. Macdonald. After spending some time in Ross Macdonald’s Santa Teresa (his fictional version of Santa Barbara) I finally picked up a couple of Sue Grafton books over the last week. Sue lives here in Santa Barbara part time and resurrected the name Santa Teresa for the town.
Here’s where I begin to actually drift toward making a point.
Much of the work of the authors I named above can be divided into two categories (well, they can obviously be divided many more ways than that, but stick with me on this, I’m trying to make a point). Greene and LeCarre’s spy/thriller novels go in one pile. The other’s detective fiction go in the other. There are some fundamental differences between the two and, believe it or not, those differences can be related to running.
Spy novels are morally murky, for the most part. Nothing is as it seems and nobody is who they claim to be. The destination changes with each turn of the road and questions remain only partially answered.
Detective fiction, on the other hand, takes place in a world that tends to be more clearly defined. There is a specific problem that is presented and our hero, or heroine, logically works through to the end when the killer or thief is caught. The axis of the world is nudged back into place and we can all breath a sigh of relief until we begin reading the next book where the process repeats.
Lately I’ve been reading detective fiction, but my running has taken place in a spy-novel world. My running has been undefined with a future that is unclear. My motivation is unknown and it’s difficult to know where I stand in my little world. I have once again come to realize that I don’t do well without structure. I need the focus that a singular, well-defined goal provides and I need the solid reality of the specific, concrete, steps of a training schedule laid out in front of me.
It’s interesting to note, however, that if I were forced to choose a handful of books from one genre or the other, I would choose the grey world-views of Greene’s Lime and LeCarre’s Smiley over the better-ordered settings of Macdonald’s McGee and Grafton’s Millhone. Similarly, I also spend a fair share of time wishing that I could run for a season without a schedule, when and where and however far I wished. I have tried this a couple of times, and the result is months of slothful inactivity. So, my preference, in both reading and running is for the less constrained, even though it doesn’t work out the best for day-to-day running.
So, it’s back to the schedule making and the goal setting. I mentioned Big Sur before. That’s probably my next big event. It’s currently at 72% filled, so I can’t wait too much longer before pulling the trigger. It kind of sucks that I’ve got to shell out $120 just before Christmas for a race at the end of April, but given everything I’ve described about my schedule-favoring temperment, this might be what it takes to get me out the door and down the road.