Authors, we encounter authors

On Friday I went to see Anne Enright read at the KGB Bar in the East
Village. Enright is a short, wry woman who interjected her reading of
an excerpt from her latest novel THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ with eyebrow
raises and "oh dear"s, which was very charming. The bar phone rang
several times during her reading and she made a joke about how
impossible it would be to read in the pauses between rings (where was
the bartender? Why was there a phone there in the first pace? Who ever
knows) I dislike using the adjective "earthy" because in most contexts
I find it lacks meaning, but as her narrator cursed, so did Enright,
without decorous pause.

On Saturday I went to see an author who first became known ("famous"
is a bit of a stretch) as a character in someone else's book. In
Christopher McDougall's BORN TO RUN Scott Jurek is just one of a
handful of Americans who travel to Mexico to compete in a foot race
against members of the Tarahumara tribe, who run insanely long
distances in the desert in sandals made out of old tires. McDougall's
book is more fad than fantastic (Peter Sarsgaard liked it so much he's
directing the movie version) but has brought to Jurek, a physical
therapist by trade, kind of a cult status. His event this week,
unfortunately, was overshadowed by the death of another character in
BORN TO RUN, a man who went for a run and never came back. (Because
there hasn't been an autopsy, there isn't much to say besides what a
shame it is.) So while Jurek was primed to talk about his new book EAT
AND RUN, about nutrition on some kind of macro level I didn't
completely follow, he was eased away from that by the restless
audience, most of whom were in some kind of running gear.

Damned if you do...

Am I wrong in saying that this Wall Street Journal article on authors running their own promotions is kind of backwards in its opener? After describing Ayelet Waldman's giveaway efforts despite her own aversion to it, it really gives her the bitchback by describing her as someone who "frankly, seems approximately as shy as a Kardashian."

This seems a bit unfair. First, I take her honest word when she says she didn't want to do Facebook giveaways, but the fact is she still did. And second, the Kardashian sisters are a blight on whatever channel their 800 shows are on, and all Waldman did to earn her oversharey reputation was write one Modern Love piece. Come back when she is endorsing a perfume, I guess I would say.

Well anyway, Christopher McDougall of BORN TO RUN fame gets a brief mention further down without any snippiness. (But where is Jennifer Belle? NEVER FORGET.)

I do wonder though how the author got away with describing sex toy shop Babeland as "a sort of FAO Schwarz for adults." (Obviously, don't search for it at work.) I see a lawsuit a-comin'.

The emperor has no shoes

Christopher McDougall's BORN TO RUN can be credited with launching the biggest fad to hit running in the past five years. And when I use that f-word, I use it in the nicest way possible. (Roll it out over your tongue for a second. A faaaaaaaad. Such a pleasing sound.) I read this book to see what the fuss was about, and I see now, even if I'm not prepared to join in the fussing.

McDougall opens the book a broken man, a longtime runner plagued by seemingly unsolvable foot pain and told to basically get a bike and move on. Then he hears about an indigenous tribe in northern Mexico whose members routinely run hundreds of miles, and whose all-day social running competitions (preceded by all-night drunken parties) are rarely witnessed by outsiders. When he finds a guide to introduce him to the Tarahumara, he discovers their feats to be even more impressive: Not only do they run long distances in the desert heat, they scramble up rocky cliffs in their way either barefoot or with very thin sandals.

(One of the book's major effects has been to advance the spread of the Vibram Fivefingers shoe, which is supposed to help you mimic barefoot running while providing a little comfort. They are also the most ridiculous looking type of footwear I have ever seen, and in the big city I see a lot of Regrettable Footwear Choices. I saw a guy wearing these in 30-degree weather outside in the park, and as he vainly massaged his toes I thought, You know what would work great on those? SOCKS AND SHOES.)

McDougall adopts their running stride, their barefootedness and some of their fuel, all while doing research into why and how humans have run throughout their evolution. In the midst of his own quest he takes a detour into the world of ultrarunning, a sort of supersport for crazy people who enjoy competing in events like 100 miles nonstop in the Rockies. Unlike the Tarahumara, inviting but impenetrable, these death cheaters (of which Scott Jurek is probably the sanest) are only too happy to open up to McDougall about their exploits, which could fill several books of their own.

The long hours McDougall logs with the personalities of BORN TO RUN paid off for me; his research did not. Armed with anecdotes, the author sets out to construct a powerful image of pre-modern man running for survival -- he even brings in the testimony of an anthropologist who witnessed a high-speed hunt on foot in Africa -- but it all seems a little too convenient. A section about the birth of Nike in the 1970s is fascinating, but capped off with a sort of blanket indictment of shoe companies for making our feet unstable and injury-prone. It's good to be skeptical of the effects of modern technology, but if people have evolved to run over thousands of years, how could thirty years of sports footwear undo that?

I sort of wish I could be on the bandwagon on this one, but maybe if I manage your expectations you will enjoy it more than I did. Pick it up for the adventure story and the suspense, not to have it change the way you think about running; you'll be much better off.