In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.
Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor. It doesn’t involve heavy lifting, running fast, or leaping high. Most people, though, only see the surface reality of writing and think of writers as involved in quiet, intellectual work done in their study. If you have the strength to lift a coffee cup, they figure, you can write a novel. But once you try your hand at it, you soon find that it isn’t as peaceful a job as it seems. The whole process—sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the whole flow of the story on track— requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine. You might not move your body around, but there’s grueling, dynamic labor going on inside you. Everybody uses their mind when they think. But a writer puts on an outfit called narrative and thinks with his entire being; and for the novelist that process requires putting into play all your physical reserve, often to the point of overexertion.
Chapter 5
Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison —this might be something similar to what I’m getting at.) No matter how you spin it, this isn’t a healthy activity.
So from the start, artistic activity contains elements that are unhealthy and antisocial. I’ll admit this. This is why among writers and other artists there are quite a few whose real lives are decadent or who pretend to be antisocial. I can understand this. Or, rather, I don’t necessarily deny this phenomenon. // But those of us hoping to have long careers as professional writers have to develop an autoimmune system of our own that can resist the dangerous (in some cases lethal) toxin that resides within. Do this, and we can more efficiently dispose of even stronger toxins. In other words, we can create even more powerful narratives to deal with these. But you need a great deal of energy to create an immune system and maintain it over a long period. You have to find that energy somewhere, and where else to find it but in our own basic physical being? Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not arguing that this is the only correct path that writers should take. Just as there are lots of types of literature, there are many types of writers, each with his own worldview. What they deal with is different, as are their goals. So there’s no such thing as one right way for novelists. This goes without saying. But, frankly, if I want to write a large-scale work, increasing my strength and stamina is a must, and I believe this is something worth doing, or at least that doing it is much better than not. This is a trite observation, but as they say: If something’s worth doing, it’s worth giving it your best —or in some cases beyond your best.
To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That’s my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body. This might sound paradoxical, but it’s something I’ve felt very keenly ever since I became a professional writer. The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don’t stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together.
Sure, many people who are on a healthy track in life think only of good health, while those who are getting unhealthy think only of that. But if you follow this sort of one-sided view, your life won’t be fruitful.
2. Local Races/Runners in Argentina
Looking the previous up in twitter I find other characters going around. Actually, I wanted to find a local book from Argentina on local races and runners and found, again, an American athlete: JeffGalloway
@JeffGalloway
US Olympian, Runner's World columnist, inventor of the run-walk-run™ training method and author of 19 books on running/walking/fatburning
3. Two main book candidates on local Argentine authors:
Aquí, Carlos Andrada -médico, ultramaratonista y estudioso del tema- recorre la historia de las carreras, los grandes cambios a través de los siglos, los personajes salientes de la especialidad; detalla la biomecánica del corredor (la patada, la zancada, la respiración, qué tipo de zapatillas conviene utilizar según las características de cada persona); analiza su fisiología (energía, consumo de oxígeno, pruebas de evaluación física, reacciones del organismo ante la exigencia física y las condiciones extremas de clima y altura); da pautas sobre el entrenamiento (cómo, cuándo, cuánto y dónde correr, los sistemas más utilizados, el sobreentrenamiento, la elongación); pone el acento en la nutrición (qué dieta seguir, qué ingerir antes, durante y después de correr, las bebidas deportivas), y subraya las particularidades de correr en la infancia, en la tercera edad o durante el embarazo, si es bueno tener sexo antes de una carrera, cómo llegar a correr distancias imposibles, la acción terapéutica del running.
En suma, un abordaje amplio y minucioso de este fenómeno que no para de crecer.
Correr para Vivir, Vivir para Correr [Ed Defin.] de Santiago Garcia
Solapa
Santiago García nació en Buenos Aires en 1970. [Desde 2009] su amor por el running lo ha llevado a correr por todo el país y el mundo. Aun siendo un corredor amateur, ha logrado grandes objetivos, como dos podios en la legendaria carrera Cruce de los Andes, y en 2015 completó el circuito de las World Marathon Majors. Su mejor marca en maratón es de 02:51:17. En 2013 contó su experiencia en Correr para vivir, vivir para correr (Debate) -que es, de su tema, el libro más vendido en la historia argentina-, al que siguieron Correr mejor, vivir mejor (Debate, 2014) y Correr para vivir, vivir para correr, edición definitiva (Debate, 2016). Convertido hoy en uno de los mayores referentes argentinos sobre el running, tiene desde 2014 una columna en el programa Lanata sin filtro (Radio Mitre), que lidera la audiencia de su franja horaria con un millón de oyentes diarios. Aprender a correr es su cuarto libro acerca de esta aventura que es correr. www.correrparavivir.com Twitter + Instagram: @sangarciacorre
Contratapa
«Creí que era una aventura y en realidad era la vida.» Joseph Conrad
García nos invita a calzarnos las zapatillas y sumarnos a una aventura destinada a transformarnos física y espiritualmente. Esta edición definitiva compila y actualiza los dos títulos del autor sobre el tema: Correr para vivir, vivir para correr (2013) y Correr mejor, vivir mejor (2014). No es la mirada de un atleta de elite ni la de un entrenador, sino un libro completo y motivador pensado para todos los corredores. Para animar a aquellos que aún no han empezado su camino; para ayudar a progresar a quienes recién se inician, y para que los más experimentados aprovechen al máximo aquello que más placer les da en la vida. RESEÑAS: «El periodista-runner Santiago García ensaya, en primera persona, un manual de instrucciones para empezar a correr. Y para empezar a vivir una vida más sana y mucho más divertida.» Terra «Santiago García se distancia de su oficio periodístico para construir un relato íntimo sobre el furor de los maratones desde una mirada que, al margen de lo deportivo, posiciona a esta disciplina como una herramienta de introspección.» Diario Popular «Muchas veces se habla de la pasión por el running, y aun aceptando que apasionados somos muchos, es difícil llegar al nivel de Santiago García.» iloverunn.com.ar
«Correr para vivir, vivir para correr está destinado a todos aquellos que buscan una forma de felicidad en sus vidas. Para el autor, correr significó eso: el acceso a la felicidad.» endondecorrer.com
4. Pre's Art | Thinking on the extent of Pre Stevene Prefontaine's idea:
Unsourced: "The Only Good Race Pace is a Suicide Pace and Today Looks Like a Good Day to Die". This phrase may not be accurate, since maybe Pre didn't actually say it, it just became famous with no good reason. The internet.
I emailed Tom Jordan, the director of the Pre Classic and the author of the biography Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend asking him about the quote. Here's what he said: "I have never heard that quote before and never ascribed to Pre. Not that he couldn't have said it, but I figure if it were genuine, I would have heard it before now."Jan 25, 2016 | Dennis Young. Today would be Steve Prefontaine's 65th birthday.
Perhaps the "some people create..." quote is also without source.
Abebooks. Pre: The Story of America's Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine, by Tom Jordan. Less than $4.
A lot of people run a race to see who is the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Similar to Murakami. But true?
5. Running is a form of art. Pre thinks so, Murakami thinks so.
Mariana Anibal | Published on Sep 19, 2017 | NOTA DE OJO AL PIOJO SÁBADO 16 DE SEPTIEMBRE 90.7 La radio pública de Marcos Paz | Sábados de 9 a 11:30 13 views
Sebastián Armenault es el único ultramaratonista al que no le importan los cronómetros: corre para llegar a la meta y conseguir que las marcas que lo auspician traduzcan en donaciones cada kilómetro que hace.
A los 40 años decidió empezar a correr, corrió sus primeros 2 km en los lagos de Palermo y a los 45 años dejó su trabajo y armó su propio proyecto: SA18
Lleva recorridos más de 25.000 km en todos los continentes.
Nota mental. Leyendo Canetti pienso que rugbiers son un poco como la muta, solidaridad mecánica, pero no tanta diferenciación individual. Tal vez el caso de Sebastián me indica lo contrario, una persona que realmente sabe quién es, y puede tener la fuerza para luchar en una carrera solitaria, no ya con apoyo de compañeros de equipo de 15 miembros.
Corrió su primera carrera larga pidiendo días de trabajo: Desierto de Omán, en los Emiratos Árabes, 165 kms. Después despegó con proyecto solidario. Consiguió respaldo de empresas, no había respaldo familiar ni personal.
Uno no tiene la vida resuelta. Tiene que trabajar mucho en paralelo. 250 kms en el Sahara! El primero ganó un mega atleta 5000 dólares de premio. Yo llegué 793, de los últimos: por llegar, por completar los 250 kms doné 3 desfibriladores, 3 electrocardíafos, 3 respiradores artificiales, 250 pares de zapatillas, 250 pares de anteojos recetados, leche en polvo, cereales, útiles; y esa donación superó los 50 000 dólares. Y en las conferencias que doy les pregunto: y para uds quién ganó la carrera?
Weber, material de construcción, por cada kilometro que corro aporta 2 bolsas de cemento. La gente de Puma, un par de zapatillas, la gente de GAE es un desfibrilador.
Las hijas se preocuparon cuando dejó la corbata así que la volvió a usar para llevarlas al colegio. Adaptaciones de transición se diría.
Carreras como el dakar pero a pie. (por organización y cuidados de andar solo por kms) cada tantos kms tenés check points, puntos de control, con médicos y demás. en los médanos de Omán llegó a hacer 62 grados entre médanos, y -8 de noche. En el polo sur eran -32.
Eventos solidarios siempre para mi país. Como fui siempre tan patadura es una manera de representar al país. Siempre llevo la bandera. Omint, Shimano, Gatorade, Gaes, todos van apoyando la causa.
Lleva recorridos 25 000 kms. El mundo son 40 000
Donaciones fueron cerca de 5 millones de pesos. Yo no tengo ni casa propia.
Textos de cualquier campo de conocimiento vinculados a las humanidades, sean científicos o artísticos (no ficcionales), cuyo objetivo sea problematizar y reflexionar sobre un tema específico.
La participación en este concurso es GRATUITA. Los autores podrán presentar solo una obra, que deberá tener entre 100.000 y 250.000 caracteres con espacios incluidos. Serán rechazadas aquellas obras que no cumplan estas características.
Comedy and ultrarunning have alike that they don't care for the normal standards of life, or points of view. They just go crazy.
When I was a kid and a comedian came on TV, I would just freeze and stare at them. Being obsessed with comedy felt very liberating, because it didn't have to do with the real world. You know, a Mad Magazine, you would start reading it and you're going,
"Well, these people don't respect anything." And that just exploded my head.
It was just, like, you don't have to buy it.
You could say, "That's stupid." "This is stupid."
Then, one day, my friend's older brother told us there was this place in New York where young guys were getting on stage and doing stand-up comedy. Not like the guys on Ed Sullivan with tuxedos and cigars, just young, crazy people. Once I saw that this was going on, that there was a world, I went, "Oh, I want to be in that world. I don't want to be in the real world." So, I came into the city in 1976.
Reading TAR, this is funny
The cotton-ball syndicate was always one step ahead.
ANT Short Reading List (7)
After reading Latour's 2005 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
Archibugl 2003 Debating Cosmopolitics
Handley 2000 Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution. A Celebration of Design from Art Silk to Nylon and Thinking Fibres
Hughes 2004 Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture
Lemonnier (ed.) 1993 Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures since the Neolithic
Madsen 1991 Chanel: A Woman of Her Own
Strum 1987 Almost Human: A Journey Into the World of Baboons
Strum & Fedigan (eds.) 2000 Primate Encounters
Bibliography
Abbott, E.: Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions (illustrated by the author; with an introduction by Banesh Hoffmann), Nueva York, Dover, 1992 [rrad. cast.: Planilandia, Madrid, Guadarrama, 1976].
Akrich, M.: "The De-scription of Technical Objects", Shaping Technology-Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (eds. W. Bijker y J. Law), Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992, pags. 205-224.
: "A Gazogene in Costa Rica: An Experiment in Techno-Sociology", en Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures since the Neolithic (ed. P. Lemonnier), Londres, Routledge, 1993.
Alpers, S.: Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988 ltrad. cast.: El taller de Rembrandt. La tibertad, la pintura y el dinero (trad. J. Collyer), Madrid, Mondadori, 1992.
Anderson, W.: Diderot's Dream, Baltimore, John Hopkins University. 1990.
Archibugl, D. (ed.), Debating Cosmopolitics (New Left Review Debates), Londres, Verso Books, 2003.
Baxandall, M.: Patterns of Intention: On The Historical Explanation Of Pictures, New~Haven, Yale University Press, 1985.
Beck, U. y Beck-Gernsheim, E.: The Normal Chaos of Love, Londres, Polity Press. 1995.
Biagioli, M. (ed.): The Science Studies Reader, Londres, Routledge, 1999.
Bijker, W., Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs, Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1995.
Bijker, W. y Law, J. (eds.): Shaping Technology-Building Society' Studies in SociotechnicaL Change, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992.
Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P. y Pinch, T. (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1987.
Bremmer, J. y Roodenburg, H.: A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992.
Callon, Michel. "Struggles and Negotiations to Decide what is Problematic and what is not: The Sociology of Translation". En Knorr K. R. Krohn & R. Whitley, 1981, pags. 197-220.
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Callon y Bruno Latour (1981), "Unscrewing the Big Leviathans. How Do Actors Macrostructure Reality". En Advances Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro and Macro Sociologies (eds. K. Knorr y A. Cicourel), Londres, Routledge, 1981, pags.277-303.
Handley, S., Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution. A Celebration of Design from Art Silk to Nylon and Thinking Fibres, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Hughes, T.: Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Hughes, T. P.: Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1983.
: "The seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera", Social Studies of Science, 16/2,1986, pags. 281-292.
Jullien, L The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, Cambridge, Mass., Zone Books, 1995.
Keating, P. y Cambrosio, A.: BiomedicaL Platforms: Realigning the Normal and the Pathological in Late- Twentieth~Century Medicine, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2003.
Kummer, H.: In Quest of the Sacred Baboon (trad. M. Ann Biederman~ Thorson), Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995.
Latour, B. y Strum,S.: "Human Social Origins. Please tell us Another Origin Story! ", Journal of Biological and Social Structures, 9, 1986, Rags. 169-187.
Lemonnier, P. (ed.): Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures since the Neolithic, Londres, Routledge, 1993.
MacKenzie, D. y Wajcman, 1.: The Social Shaping of Technology, 2.a ed., Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1999.
Madsen, A.: Chanel: A Woman of Her Own, Nueva York, Owl Books, 1991.
Strathern, M.: Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays in Persons and Things, Londres, Athlone Press, 1999.
Strum, S.: "Agonistic Dominance among Baboons an Alternative View", International Journal of Primatology, 3/2, 1982, pags. 175-202.
: Almost Human: A Journey Into the World of Baboons, Nueva York, Random House, 1987.
Strum, S. y Fedigan, L. (eds.): Primate Encounters, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Thevenot, L.: "Which road to follow? The moral complexity of an "equipped" humanity", en Social Studies of Knowledge Practices, (eds. J. Law y A. Mol), Durham, Duke University Press, 2002, pags. 53-87.
Thompson, c.: "When Elephants Stand for Competing Philosophies of Nature: Amboseli National Park, Kenya", en Complexities in Science, Technology, and Medicine (eds. A.-M. Mol y ]. Law), Duke, Duke University Press, 2002.
Yaneva, A. : "When a Bus Meets a Museum: To Follow Artists, Curators and Workers in Art Installation", Museum and Society, 1/3, 2003, pags.116-131.
SPORTS | Two-Hour Marathon. Can It Be Done?
Cover PhotoIn Bekoji, Ethiopia, Chala Tulu, 14, got ready for a VO2 max test, which measures the maximum amount of oxygen a runner can use. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times
Two-Hour Marathon. Can It Be Done? Trying to understand what it takes to break the barrier, and to identify the athlete who might be able to do it.