作家为何对跑步情有独钟.docVIP

作家为何对跑步情有独钟“一步步跑下去，可成千里之行;一页页写下去，可成鸿篇巨制。”跑步因与写作之间存在诸多相似点而为许多作家所青睐。跑步不仅让他们得以放松身心，也为他们创造了一个与自己独处、能自由想象的全新世界。借由跑步，他们获得了写作灵感，获得了继续前行的体力与耐力，也获得了许多快乐。From Homer’s The Iliad to A. E. Housman1）’s poem about an athlete dying young， there’s no shortage of literary depictions of running. “Move， as the limbs / Of a runner do，” writes W. H. Auden. “In orbit go / Round an endless track.” There’s also a long tradition of writers leaving their pens or screens behind to stride along roads， tracks， and trails. Jonathan Swift， according to Samuel Johnson， would “run half a mile up and down a hill every two hours” during his 20s. Louisa May Alcott2） ran since her youth： “I always thought I must have been a deer or a horse in some former state，” she wrote in her journal， “because it was such a joy to run.” Despite this correlation， The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz recently lamented how few books capture the mindset of the runner in descriptive terms， citing Thomas Gardner’s new collection of essays Poverty Creek Journal as the best exception.Freedom， consciousness， and wildness： Running offers writers escape with purpose. When confronted with “structural problems” in her writing as the result of a “long， snarled3）， frustrating and sometimes despairing morning of work，” Joyce Carol Oates4） would ease her writing blocks with afternoon runs. For Oates and many other writers， running is process and proves especially useful for the type of cloistered5）， intensive work they do. But in many ways running is a natural extension of writing. The steady accumulation of miles mirrors the accumulation of pages， and both forms of regimented exertion can yield a sense of completion and joy. Through running， writers deepen their ability to focus on a single， engrossing6） task and enter a new state of mind entirely―word after word， mile after mile.While on sabbatical7） in London in 1972， a homesick Oates began running “compulsively; not as a respite8） for the intensity of writing but as a function of writ