Runner path

Anything written with transparency and a lack of self-consciousness has a shot at being a good read, providing the author can follow subject with verb, has gone through some life experiences, and has a bit of talent and wit. Dean Ottati does and has all this in The Runner and the Path. On the surface this brand-new book is only tangentially about running, in that the author’s main themes are set against the backdrop of some mighty good San Francisco Bay Area hoofin’.

What are Ottati’s themes? That the unexamined life is not worth living (which we’ve known for 2500 years) and that making a wheelbarrow full of money and being vice president of a Fortune 500 company does not absolve one from that. In his own self-examination Ottati unearths problems, and while in Chapter One they are small enough to be relegated to the JV squad of his life’s concerns, they grow as the book rolls forward.

It’s hard to describe the good in putting one foot in front of another if you take on the subject of running straight up. To capture its currency in words you’ve got to talk around it, to sneak up on it. Describe what you see when you run, and the way problems resolve themselves during your run. The fact that these good things happen against the backdrop of loping along a singletrack will dawn upon the reader. As the chapters in Ottati’s book accumulate the reader can discern that running is sometimes the lubricant in life, and sometimes the glue, depending on what is most needed. This is an effective tactic for transmitting the value of running.

In the end, of course, the book is all about running, in that the book succeeds in elevating running above the level of "tool" or "necessary evil" and to the place of spiritual importance it deserves. To what would I compare The Runner and the Path? If you’d like to place it alongside another title in the bookshelf of your mind I suppose I’d stick it against Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though Robert Pirsig, while writing "down" to the level of an "age-group" philosopher is still not as homespun as Ottati. Pirsig is a philosopher looking for Quality in life, and Ottati is an MBA looking for it.

If I have one regret about this book, it is that it could easily have been written as a novel, like "Zen," and I might have liked it better that way. On the other hand, Ottati’s transparency seemed to require him to write it autobiographically.

This is my first-ever book review. I don’t especially want to be a book reviewer and didn’t ask to be one, but Garth Battista of Breakaway Books sent me this hot off his press. When I received it I thought "Oh, no," because as a rule I hate this genre, and besides what can you say about running? It’s an avocation of mine, but so is breathing and love and such, and I don’t rely on books for explanation and guidance in matters like these.

But the publishing world has been going to hell lately, and in some curious and tragic flip upon itself the industry seems to be feeding us TV dramas written in novel form, rather than the converse. So, being between good reads, I decided to take up this one.

Near the book’s finish the author concedes that his wife told him he ought to omit the book’s introduction or, failing that, to make it an afterward. She was correct, and I had the lucky fortune to do that without being told. I figure if a book is properly crafted I should be able to start at Chapter One and that’s what I did and always do. (I read the introduction after I finished the book.)

If you hate these sorts of books as much as I do, then you’ll be happy to know your safe reading this, one of the few running books that elegantly breaks the mold. It is published by Breakaway Books, and can be purchased for $15.70 through Amazon.com.