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The Memory of Running: A Novel
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780670033638
ISBN: 0670033634
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: December 29, 2004
Publisher: Viking Adult
Release Date: December 29, 2004
Studio: Viking Adult
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Editorial Review:
Ron McLarty has joined the ranks of writers of the quirky hero with The Memory of Running. His hero, Smithy Ide, is in the grand tradition of Ignatius J. Reilly of A Confederacy of Dunces and Quoyle of The Shipping News. What these gentlemen have in common is their lumpen-loser looks, their outsider status and their general befuddlement about the way the world works and their place in it. Smithy rises above them because of his self-effacing nature, his great capacity for love, his inability to show it and his endless willingness to forgive.
Smithy is a 279-pound, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, 43-year-old misfit who works in a G.I. Joe factory putting arms and legs on the action heroes. (How did McLarty come up with that?) He is also the most beguiling anti-hero to come into view in a long, long time. McLarty, an award-winning actor and playwright best known for his many appearances on TV in Law & Order, Sex and the City, The Practice, and Judging Amy, has added another star to his creative crown with this novel.
The first sentence of the book is: "My parents' Ford station wagon hit a concrete divider on U.S. 95 outside Biddeford, Maine, in August 1990." This tragic accident eventually claims both their lives. It is on the day of their funeral that Smithy finds a letter to his father about Bethany, his beloved and deeply troubled sister, stating that, "Bethany Ide, 51, died from complications of exposure... and she has since that time been in the Los Angeles Morgue West." Beautiful Bethany, given to taking off her clothes in public places, holding impossible poses for long periods of time, responding to voices that only she can hear, and disappearing for no known reason. This time, she has been gone for many years and now Smithy knows that she died destitute and alone. When he reads the letter, he is drunk, grief-stricken and, despite a house full of people, he is alone. He goes out to the garage to smoke and have another drink and spies his old Raleigh bicycle. He sits on it, flat tires and all, wheels it to the end of the driveway--and--Smithy doesn't know it yet, but he is going to ride a bicycle from Maine to Los Angeles to claim his sister's remains.
On the road he meets the good, the bad, and the really bad. He frequently calls Norma, the Ides' across-the-street neighbor, confined to a wheelchair for years, and always in love with him. He has never acknowledged nor returned her ardor, but he starts to count on her friendship during his travels. Their conversations are sweet and revelatory. McLarty has done a superb job of showing us who Smithy is and who he is becoming. It's a wonderful story told with great poignancy and humor. --Valerie Ryan
Once in a great while, a story comes along that has everything: plot, setting, and, most important of all, the kind of characters that sweep readers up and take them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Well, get ready for Ron McLartys The Memory of Running because, as Stephen King wrote in Entertainment Weekly (Stephen Kings The Pop of King column for Entertainment Weekly), Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians.
Meet Smithson Smithy Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, including Smithys own, hes a loser. But when Smithys life of quiet desperation is brutally interrupted by tragedy, he stumbles across his old Raleigh bicycle and impulsively sets off on an epic journey that might give him one last chance to become the person he always wanted to be. As he pedals across Americawith stops in New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a fewhe encounters humanity at its best and worst and adventures that are by turns hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary. Along the way, Smithy falls in love and back into life.
McLartys novel has already received significant attention for its unusual genesis as an audiobook. Now, in a major publishing event, Viking heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction with his stunning debut, The Memory of Running.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A great trip!
A highly enjoyable travel log through a lost man's quest to find himself. A wonderful read.
Rating: - An Excellent Summer Read
...as well as a great read anytime, with outstanding characterizations, with a suspenseful plot, as well as a touching message. I'm very glad that I purchased this book. Not only have I recommended "The Memory of Running" to my husband, who is a far pickier reader than I am, I have purchased Mr. McLarty's next book, "Traveler," I'm saving it to read next week while I recover from having all my upper teeth extracted. It's that good!
Rating: - Funny and Entertaining
I loved this book. I was laughing through the whole book. You should read this book. IT was serious but yet with such humor throughout.
Rating:  - Now I want to write
Reading Memory of Running made me want to write. If gatekeepers of literature can label this as a bestseller, I know I have a chance at this hack. This text has the traits of soaps, low literature, and bafoonery. I read like it like it was a chore, working out, pushing for the last set of an exercise you hate but should do. Maybe my analogy doesn't work because I exercise for my health since I can't find a reason why I plowed slowly through this. I didn't get any satisfaction. Fiction shouldn't read ... Read More
Rating: - Exceeded my expectations
This book had been on my list - but it took a friend to get me to read it. It has an unlikely hero - a middle aged man who has spent most of his adult life in a dead-end job, drinking and eating himself to a likely early grave.
He is very authentic and endearing as his life is disclosed on his unplanned bicycle journey across the country. The pace of the book is great. This is a good book for those who like a good story about "ordinary" people.
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