Halfway Through 'Again to Carthage,' Is This a Book About Running?

While the action certainly picks up, if you're really looking for a newer running work of fiction, check out Chasing Ghosts.

Read it and the shelf it for a few months and read it again.

I struggled with the book as well when I first read it. Went as far as to give my first copy to a friend. Bought another copy a year later at the NYC Marathon expo only because John L Parker was at the expo selling the book and he signed the copy for me.

I read it again and enjoyed it more the second time.

I think if one is a little older and has struggled with age and slowing down in this sport (aka "father time") its easier to appreciate the book.

One of my favorite excerpts from the book.

"Lit orange now by the last of the sun, Quentin Cassidy cruised down the darkening hillside with languid strides, thinking, "I may be older and I may nap too long, but I can still scald dogs down to Thunder Lake and back". Breaking out into the thin sunlight of an open pasture above his cabin he thought, "I can still have a day like this"."

The first half was a little rough, but the second half is totally worth the first half.

Southbound 35 wrote:

I read it again and enjoyed it more the second time.

I think if one is a little older and has struggled with age and slowing down in this sport (aka "father time") its easier to appreciate the book.

I agree 100%. I read the book when it first came out and did not particularly enjoy it. I was 26. I read it again last year in my mid-30s and it was far more interesting as I related to Cassidy's arch much more.

I didn't understand 'Again to Carthage' until after I had graduated college and began to work two jobs and try to train. In college the book seemed slow to get started, but once I was working two jobs and still trying to train I began to realize what Parker was doing when he wrote this. The long, slow start to the book is intentional I believe, not poor writing or bad plot. It's meant to make the reader feel what Cassidy himself is feeling, that while life is good, and he's comfortable and even enjoying his fishing trips and kicking his coworkers ass in a dumb race, it's not enough to make him content or happy. The reader gets this sense as well, as each chapter drags on we begin to feel the drain of a life lived at the speed of normal instead of the hard as diamonds, let our demons out and wail on pace that we've come to expect of Cassidy. In the end the first part of the book is about the little death every competitive runner and I imagine athlete in general feels when they finally step away from the sport they love and enter the "real" world. It's comfortable, even pleasant, but deep down we know it doesn't light the fire deep inside us like running PR's, taking down rivals, and living the exhausting daily grind that it takes to be the best we can be. It's actually what pushed me back into serious training and part-time work. Stability, comfort, and security that come with a steady pay check are all wonderful, but in the end they are soul sucking if you've spent your early life taking risks, pushing limits, and pouring everything you have into a specific goal or passion. That's what Parker is doing in the first half of the book, at least that's how I took it.

There are some valid interpretations here already. My simple answer is that AtC is less about running than was OaR. It's more generally about human perseverance/chasing dreams/facing adversity and all that jazz.

How could Cassidy lose his friend in Vietnam when the first book wraps up after the war was over and no mention is made in the book?

MPO wrote:

There are some valid interpretations here already. My simple answer is that AtC is less about running than was OaR. It's more generally about human perseverance/chasing dreams/facing adversity and all that jazz.

Denton has finally appeared in the novel to rescue me from the boredom. I'll finish the book then maybe pick it up again when I'm ten years slower.

Don't worry, it will slow down again at the end. The dumb trial plot device from the first book resurfaces in an even sillier form. That and he gets attacked while running the trials 'thon.

Really great book all the way through except the weird doping allegation bit.