YOU’RE 21, 25, MAYBE 30.  Today you’re jogging in Boston, crunching the yellow leaves by the Charles River, and you come upon another runner, an Asian man— he looks late-50s, and Beck beats out of his Walkman.  Beck? Late 50s? You run closer.  The man’s watching people; he’s watching you. And you recognize the face, know it from the back covers of the books: Haruki Murakami!  Caught watching the watcher, you stop, while he floats onward, in the kind of spell you find in his fiction.

His new book is a memoir.  Why?

“I wanted to sort out what kind of life I’ve led, both as a novelist and as an ordinary person, over these past twenty-five years.”  In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running—the title a deliberate nod to Raymond Carver, whom Murakami translates and adores—the renowned Japanese author confides details: his post-college years as a jazz-bar owner; his 1978 decision to start running and his subsequent annual marathons; his writing and athletic routines; his decision to become a professional writer; his triathlons and 62-mile ultramarathon. His thoughts on his twin vocations; how he lives; who he is.   Murakami’s writing voice is that of the man beside you on the bus, the man who turns and calmly tells you about his life.  “What is presented here is me, the kind of person I am.” You listen (you read), and slowly, oddly, you realize: Murakami is not talking to you; instead, you’ve become his mirror.  He’s staring at himself, trying to describe the why behind his body, face, and words.

He’s all about the why.  After detailing an arduous triathlon (1,500 metre swim, 45 kilometre cycle, 10 kilometre run), he adds: “Whether it’s good for anything or not…in the final analysis what’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart…even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so.” There: that’s how Murakami beguiles, with bits of wisdom tucked into the congenial voice. He tries to let you inside. His book is confessional.

He refers often to his solitary nature, his early nights and early risings, his daily 3-4 hours of morning-writing and his 1-2 hours running, six days a week.  He says he became a marathoner so he’d be fit enough to write novels for as long as possible. Yes, you realize his focus, his trinity of commitment: love, art, the body.  (Murakami has been married to the same woman for almost forty years.)  He tells you, too, about the inciting incident of his writing life, a moment in April 1978, at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium. Murakami sits alone in the stands, drinking beer. A young American batter has just smashed the ball down the left-field line. “And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what?  I could try writing a novel. I can still remember the wide-open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it.”

Harold Hoefle will read from his new novel, The Mountain Clinic, tonight at Blizzarts, along with writers Katia Grubisic (What if Red Ran Out) and J.R. Carpenter (Words the Dog Knows).

3956 A Boul. St. Laurent, 8 pm.

Katia Grubisic’s poetry collection will be reviewed in tomorrow’s Rover.