Irenic Road

Once A Runner Review, Part 3

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Part 1
Part 2

When the reader gets a glimpse of Cass’s internal monologue that isn’t about running, he’s often scoffing at his professors or making condescending observations about low class characters and generally being a flippant ass. “I used to frolic in the salt salt sea, he thought, and now my toes wrinkle white in this hillbilly mud” (154). Oh, put a sock in it. Probably the most famous line in the book declares running “was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free” (102). Free, in what way? Competitive running provides all the meaning and purpose in his life, but it doesn’t seem to offer much happiness, and only fleeting satisfaction. Earlier in the story, Denton, as reigning Olympic 5k champion, steps to the line of a race amid the crowd’s deafening adulation. “As Denton trotted out and wistfully accepted it once more, Quenton Cassidy thought his smile seemed sad indeed” (82). He wins easily. Eventually Denton suffers a career-ending injury; he has run his wheels off. The torch is passed. Later, in a fit of literary parallelism, Denton thinks the exact same words as Cassidy accepts his own victory.
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Once A Runner Review, Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Like most sports stories, Once a Runner is a quest for greatness, covering about one year of competition, climaxing at the “big game” (or in this case, the big meet). Set in the early 1970′s when distance running was taking off with the wider public, the story is nonetheless based around an elite college miler named Quenton Cassidy. Divided into many short chapters, the book is a string of beads on a thread of running, heavily based on Parker’s own experience as a runner for the University of Florida in Gainesville. The majority of the story covers the months from the beginning of cross country season in the fall to the big track meet the following spring.
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Once A Runner Review, Part 1

At long last, I’ve read Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr. About five years ago I started reading it, but set it aside after the first few chapters. I don’t recall exactly why; as an English major, I suppose I had enough reading on my plate. More than anything, it was likely the simple fact that I lived with¹ the Central College cross country team all through college, so I felt little desire to enter a fictional running-based world when reality provided a surfeit of such experiences. Now, a few years out of school, I’m ready to look back at the running life from a more objective– or maybe more nostalgic– perspective. Naturally, I thought of Once a Runner (or OAR, as the true fans call it).
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U2: Magnificent

After reading Jim Fusilli’s review of “No Line on the Horizon,” I had to hear the album myself. I’m no U2 expert, but seriously, wow. I definitely agree this is excellent work. While Fusilli claims it has “no consistent flow and no musical arc” I found it quite unified stylistically. It’s utterly U2, but achieves an expansiveness that is by turns questing and wandering. I’m not explaining it very well, but several of the songs have a spiritual depth that took me aback. Even driving rock tracks like “Breathe” have an element of this. I was expecting Christian and social justice messages, more concrete like “Walk On” or “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but was touched by the subtle insights of “Moment of Surrender.” (Alan Jacobs details a similar reaction here.) “Magnificent” blew me away. It features a soaring riff from The Edge while Bono declares

I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven’t had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue

Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar

It’s a pretty simple song, I suppose, but this glorification of God and acknowledgment of personal brokenness is the fruit of much hard experience.

Jesus tells the disciples at the Last Supper, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”¹ It’s safe to say U2 has fulfilled that scripture.

1. John 15:8