Running is Life: Transcending the Crisis of Modernity

by Bruce Fleming

Overview

Running feels good. It also centers the runner in the world, solves the problems implied by the Cartesian split between body and soul, and establishes an active relationship between the self and others. Running takes the motion we are all born with (that is the essence of life) and with the individual providing the impetus, projects us into the world of others. When we run, we transcend ourselves and place ourselves in the world. Running is Life is set in many places—Cairo, the Eastern Sierras, Las Vegas, New York's Adirondack Mountains, and Barcelona, among others—but always in the moving body of the runner hurtling both through and into the world. Running is Life is both a hymn to human motion and an explanation of its sweetness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761851769
Publisher:	University Press of America
Publication date:	06/07/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	158
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Bruce Fleming is a graduate of Haverford College with subsequent degrees from the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the Free University Berlin and has studied in Paris and Siena. He has taught for more than two decades at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He is the author of numerous books ranging from aesthetics to political and military theory, dance criticism, and literary criticism. He has also published shorter pieces in many quarterlies and magazines, including the Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, Southwest Review, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Village Voice, and the Chronicle of Higher Education as well as scholarly venues. He won an O. Henry short story award; his novel Twilley was compared by critics to works by Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Proust, Thoreau, and David Lynch. In 2005 he won the Antioch Review Award for Distinguished Prose, a career award.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 1. The Problem with Modernity
Chapter 3 2. Running is Life
Chapter 4 3. Running in the Adirondacks
Chapter 5 4. Running on the National Mall
Chapter 6 5. Running in Barcelona
Chapter 7 6. Running in the Eastern Sierras
Chapter 8 7. Running in Las Vegas
Chapter 9 8. Running in Death Valley
Chapter 10 9. The Abandoned Teddy Bear
Chapter 11 Endnotes
Chapter 12 Index
Chapter 13 About the Author