sweat.
“Thank you all very much for taking the time to attend my reading,” I began. “If I’d known there
would be this many attending I would have booked Fenway Park.” Everyone was hot and irritated by
the confusion, and I thought it best to try to get them to laugh. I took off my jacket and gave my
reading wearing a T-shirt. The audience’s reaction was great—most of them were students—and from
start to finish I could enjoy myself. It made me really happy to see so many young people interested in my
novels.
One other project I’m involved in now is translating Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and
things are going well. I’ve finished the first draft and am revising the second. I’m taking my time,
going over each line carefully, and as I do so the translation gets smoother and I’m better able to
render Fitzgerald’s prose into more natural Japanese. It’s a little strange, perhaps, to make this claim
at such a late date, but Gatsby really is an outstanding novel. I never get tired of it, no matter how
many times I read it. It’s the kind of literature that nourishes you as you read, and every time I do I’m
struck by something new, and experience a fresh reaction to it. I find it amazing how such a young
writer, only twenty-nine at the time, could grasp—so insightfully, so equitably, and so warmly—the
realities of life. How was this possible? The more I think about it, and the more I read the novel, the
more mysterious it all is.
On October 20, after resting and not running for four days because of the rain and that weird sensation
in my knee, I ran again. In the afternoon, after the temperature had risen a bit, I put on warm clothes
and slowly jogged for about forty minutes. Thankfully, my knee felt all right. I jogged slowly at first,
but then gradually sped up when I saw things were going okay. Everything was okay, and my leg,
knee, and heel were working fine. This was a great relief, because the most important thing for me
right now is running in the New York City Marathon and finishing it. Reaching the finish line, never
walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals.
The sunny weather continued for three days straight, and the workers were finally able to finish the
drainage work on the roof. As David, the tall young construction foreman from Switzerland, had told me—
a dark look on his face as he glanced up at the sky—they could finish the work only if it was sunny for
three days in a row, and finally it was. No more worrying about leaks anymore. And the boiler’s been
fixed and we have hot water again, so I can finally take a hot shower. The basement had been off-limits
during the repairs, but now we can go down there and use the washer and dryer again. They tell me that
tomorrow the central heating will come on. So, after all these disasters, things— including my knee—are
finally taking a turn for the better.
October 27. Today I was finally able to run at about 80 percent without any strange sensations in my
knee. Yesterday I still felt something weird, but this morning I can run normally. I ran for fifty
minutes, and for the last ten minutes picked up the pace to the speed I’ll have to have when I actually
run the NYC Marathon. I pictured entering Central Park and getting near the finish line, and it was no