Books | Alan Sillitoe, channeling the angry young football man

Alan Sillitoe’s work was on the syllabus in my short-story class as a college freshman. Naturally, the story considered most representative was “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,” consisting of a teenage cross-country runner’s interior dialogues upon liberation each day from the Borstal fetters (“I’m a human being and I’ve got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me …”).

But a fresh assessment on Sillitoe’s 80th birthday today suggests that the short story “The Match,” which takes its tone from the terrace gloaming at Notts County’s Meadow Lane, might be the best introduction. (Mar 4)

Books | Murakami runs from soccer, to the distance

As a sidebar to the Feb 29 entry (“A multihued archipelago, tuned to soccer’s harmonics”), part-time Hawai‘i resident Haruki Murakami reflects in a recent Spiegel Online interview on his sporting interests and their relationship to his writing (“When I Run I Am in a Peaceful Place,” Feb 20). (Mar 1)