Running: A Novel

By Jean Echenoz

Following his brilliant portrait of Maurice Ravel, Jean Echenoz turns to the life of one of the greatest runners of the twentieth century, and once again demonstrates his astonishing abilities as a prose stylist. Set against the backdrop of the Soviet liberation and post-World War II communist rule of Czechoslovakia, Running— a bestseller in France—follows the famed career of Czech runner Emil Zátopek: a factory worker who, despite an initial contempt for athletics as a young man, is forced to participate in a footrace and soon develops a curious passion for the physical limits he discovers as a long-distance runner.

Zátopek, who tenaciously invents his own brutal training regimen, goes on to become a national hero, winning an unparalleled three gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and breaking countless world records along the way. But just as his fame brings him upon the world stage, he must face the realities of an increasingly controlling regime.

Written in Echenoz's signature style—elegant yet playful—Running is both a beautifully imagined and executed portrait of a man and his art, and a powerful depiction of a country's propagandizing grasp on his fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The New Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781595586674

Jean Echenoz

Jean Echenoz (Orange, 1948) ha publicado en Anagrama trece novelas: El meridiano de Greenwich (Premio Fénéon), Cherokee (Premio Médicis), La aventura malaya, Lago (Premio Europa), Nosotros tres, Rubias peligrosas (Premio Novembre), Me voy (Premio Goncourt), Al piano, Ravel (premios Aristeion y Mauriac), Correr, Relámpagos, 14 y Enviada especial, así como el volumen de relatos Capricho de la reina. En 1988 recibió el Premio Gutenberg como «la mayor esperanza de las letras francesas». Su carrera posterior confirmó los pronósticos, y con Me voy consiguió un triunfo arrollador. Ravel también fue muy aplaudido: «No es ninguna novela histórica. Mucho menos una biografía. Y ahí radica el interés de este espléndido libro que consigue dar a los géneros literarios un nuevo alcance» (Jacinta Cremades, El Mundo). Correr ha sido su libro más leído: «Hipnótica. Ha descrito la vida de Zátopek como la de un héroe trágico del siglo XX» (Miquel Molina, La Vanguardia); «Nos reencontramos con la ya clásica voz narrativa de Echenoz, irónica, divertidísima, y tan cercana que a ratos parece oral... Está escribiendo mejor que nunca» (Nadal Suau, El Mundo). Relámpagos «devuelve a la vida al genial inventor de la radio, los rayos X, el mando a distancia y el mismísimo internet» (Laura Fernández, El Mundo). La acogida de 14 fue deslumbrante: «Una obra maestra de noventa páginas» (Tino Pertierra, La Nueva España). Capricho de la reina, por su parte, «es una caja de siete bombones: prueben uno y acabarán en un santiamén con la caja entera» (Javier Aparicio Maydeu, El País), y en Enviada especial destaca «el ritmo y la gracia de la prosa, una mezcla cada vez más afinada de jovialidad y soltura» (Graziela Speranza, Télam).

Book preview

1

THE GERMANS have entered Moravia. They have arrived on horseback, on motorcycles, in automobiles, in trucks, but also in light horse-drawn carriages, followed by infantry units and supply columns as well as a few small half-tracks, and not much more. It’s too early to see any big Panther and Tiger panzers driven by tank men in black uniforms, which will prove quite practical for hiding oil stains. Overhead fly a few reconnaissance aircraft, single-engine Messerschmitts called Taifuns, but since their orders are merely to confirm that things are going smoothly, they’re not even armed. It’s only a quiet little lightning invasion, a minor annexation, no muss, no fuss, not yet what you’d call a real war. It’s simply that the Germans are arriving and settling in, that’s all.

Those in charge of the operation move around in Horch 901s or Mercedes 170s, the rear windows screened off by tightly pleated gray curtains that obscure the generals’ faces. Officers of lower rank ride in the more open carriages, wearing long overcoats, peaked caps, and Iron Crosses tucked under their chins. Horses carry other officers or haul field kitchens. The trucks carrying troops are Opel Blitzes, and policemen in helmets with metal throat guards are piloting the heavy sidecar Zündapp motorcycles. All these conveyances sport decorative red flags with white circles displaying the rather distinctive black cross that no longer needs any explanation, and which the officers also wear on their armbands.

When this whole crew showed up in the Sudeten Mountains six months ago, the German-speaking population of the area welcomed them more or less warmly.¹ Now, however, having advanced through Bohemia into Moravia, the invaders are meeting with a noticeably chillier reception under a leaden and overcast sky. They enter Prague to stony silence, and no one crowds the Moravian roads to salute their passage, either. The few venturesome onlookers observe this parade with less curiosity than wariness, if not outright antipathy, but something tells them it isn’t a good time to show this, that it’s no joking matter.

Emil is not among these spectators because he has plenty of other things to do. In the first place, having left school three years earlier when his family couldn’t pay the tuition anymore, he works as an apprentice in a factory, no joking matter either. Then, after work, he takes courses in chemistry, with an eye to improving his job prospects. And lastly, whenever he has time to go home, he helps his father out in a garden that is not simply for show, where they must grow what they eat, and that’s no joking matter at all. Emil is seventeen, rather handsome, rather placid, a tall blond boy with a triangular face who smiles all the time, and then you see his big teeth. He has limpid eyes and a high voice; his pale skin is the kind that dreads the sun. Today, though, zero sunshine.

2

SO, IN MORAVIA NOW, the Germans settle in and occupy Ostrava, a city of coal and steel near the town where Emil was born and where Tatra and Bata, two leading companies in that heavily industrialized area, each offer a way of getting ahead: cars or shoes. Tatra designs very beautiful, very expensive cars; Bata manufactures not too pricey, not too bad shoes. Anybody looking for work goes to one or the other. Emil wound up in the Bata factory in Zlín, a hundred kilometers south of Ostrava.

He’s a boarder at the technical school and a factory hand in the rubber department, which stinks so much everyone tries to avoid it. The workshop where he started out produces 2,200 pairs of crepe-soled tennis shoes every day, and Emil’s first job was to trim those soles to one size with a toothed wheel. But the movements were tiring, the air unbreathable, the pace too swift, the slightest imperfection punished by a fine, the least little delay taken out of his already meager salary, and he was rapidly overwhelmed. So he’s assigned to the preparation of shoe lasts, which is no less arduous but smells less awful, and he can handle it.

All that goes on for some time and then things look up a bit. Emil’s endless studying pays off with a job at the Institute of Chemistry, something of an improvement. Even though he’s only brewing cellulose in a freezing shed packed with carboys of acid, Emil likes that much better. Of course he would prefer laboratory work, improving viscose or developing artificial silk, but he makes it clear in the meantime that he’s happy where he is. So happy that the chief engineer, pleased with Emil, encourages him to take courses at the graduate school in the evening. A nice little career as a Czech chemist is slowly taking shape.

Only one problem at the factory: always eager, understandably, to sell still more of the shoes they export throughout the world, and not content with having pushed the rationalization of their industry as far as possible, the bosses at Bata also wish to publicize the company name by every possible means and through every imaginable medium. Among other initiatives, they’ve organized their own factory soccer team, which will carry the Bata colors from stadium to stadium. Emil doesn’t pay much attention to all that but unfortunately, every year Bata also organizes a footrace called the Zlín Run, in which all the technical school students must participate, rigged out in jerseys bearing the firm’s name. And that Emil just hates.

He loathes sports in general, anyway. You could almost say he looks down on his brothers and pals who spend their spare time kicking a ball around like idiots. When they force him to play the occasional game, he does so grudgingly, clumsily, hasn’t a clue what the rules are. Even while feigning interest, he looks off into the distance, trying discreetly to avoid the ball, the trajectory of which he can never figure out. And if the thing unfortunately lands at his feet, Emil gets rid of it with a huge kick in any direction at all, and all too often toward his own team’s goal.

So, the Zlín Run, Emil couldn’t care less about it, participates only under duress, tries hard to get out of it—but in vain. Even though he limps around every year for an hour before starting time, claiming an exemption because of some grievous injury to his ankle or knee, no matter how enthusiastically he winces and moans, the doctors never fall for it. He’s got to run. Fine, he does. Emil is all the less inclined toward sports in that he has inherited his firm antipathy for physical exercise from his father, who considers it a sheer waste of time and—above all—money. A footrace, for example, now that’s really the cream of that crop: not only is it perfectly useless, Emil’s father points out, but it also requires the repeated resoling of shoes beyond what is strictly necessary, thus straining the family budget.

This budget (carpenter father, housewife mother, seven children, no money), Emil knows it well. On the subject of sports, Emil agrees with his father who, by the way, would rather have seen him be a schoolteacher than a factory hand. Emil was ready to take the examination, but ever since the eighteenth century, schoolteachers in Czechoslovakia have traditionally been cantors whose chief task is to make children sing, to have them listen to and learn about music. Emil, alas, sings like a bleating trombone: a non-starter. Which left Bata.

Bata where, aside from that unpleasant business with the Zlín Run, Emil’s future would be shaping up nicely, but the thing is, the Germans have turned up. Nazi flags have taken over the city: standard-bearers are parading around its squares, along its streets, even into the offices of the shoe factory, where they seize control as they do everywhere. They cut off funding for laboratory research, suspend any trials in progress, forbid all experiments. For Emil it’s back to studying for his exams and,

Reviews for Running

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Running" is a fictionalized account of the life of the Emil Zátopek (1922-2000), who reluctantly took up competitive running in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a young man, and became one of the premier long-distance runners of the mid-20th century, winning gold and silver medals at the 1948 Olympics, three gold medals at the 1952 Olympics, and setting world records in nine different events.Zátopek's running style was most unorthodox, which Echenoz describes in detail in this brilliant passage:"Emil, you'd think he was excavating, like a ditch digger, or digging deep into himself, as if he were in a trance. Ignoring every time-honored rule and any thought of elegance, Emil advances laboriously, in a jerky, tortured manner, all in fits and starts. He doesn't hide the violence of his efforts, which shows in his wincing, grimacing, tetanized face, constantly contorted by a rictus quite painful to see. His features are twisted, as if torn by appalling suffering; sometimes his tongue sticks out. It's as if he had a scorpion in each shoe, catapulting him on. He seems far away when he runs, terribly far away, concentrating so hard he's not even there—except that he's more than than anyone else; and hunkered down between his shoulders, on that neck always leaning in the same direction, his head bobs along endlessly, lolling and wobbling from side to side."Videos of several of Zátopek's races on YouTube are readily available, which would make any running coach cringe in horror.Zátopek is hailed as a national hero, and joins the Czech army, which uses him as a tool to promote communism. He is restricted from traveling abroad during the Gottwald regime, and his comments to the press are censored and rewritten by the party. However, he has a good life, with a happy marriage to another Olympic champion, and a good career, until public comments in support of Alexander Dubček during the Prague Spring of 1968 led to his dismissal from the Communist Party and internal exile.The descriptions of Zátopek's running style and accounts of his most famous races were excellent, and the highlights of the book for me. His life in communist Czechoslovakia is covered in lesser detail, especially his exile after 1968. I would have liked more detail into his personal life outside of running, but I suspect that these details were not available to Echenoz or were sanitized by communist censors. However, "Running" was a fabulous and quick read, and is highly recommended.