Running for Your Life: Killing Commendatore by Marathoner-Novelist Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami’s “Killing Commendatore” breathes life into the notion that a novel in the right hands is an enduring inspirational art form.

Just try to make a movie out of “Killing Commendatore.” It cannot help but be a lesser product than the original: the novel, any more than you can do justice to what Marlon James does in his novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” of what George Saunders manages in “Lincoln in the Bardo,” or Richard Powers in “The Overstory.”

Murakami, the marathoner, is in for the long haul. What informs a work of art, the painting?

If the world is unknowable what risk is the reach of the fantastic in literature? Especially as it relates to that which we have not words: horrors of war; depths of romanic love; the power of empathy; the inevitability of evil intent.

Sit down with this book and savor it all. You won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Cars and Manners