It’s not that I’m all that stubborn. It’s not that I’m even all that crazy about running. If I totaled all the miles I’d ever run, half were aching drudgery. But it does say something that even though I haven’t read The World According to Garp in twenty years, I’ve never forgotten one minor scene, and it ain’t the one you’re thinking of: I keep thinking back to the way Garp used to burst out his door in the middle of the workday for a five-mile run. There’s something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we’re
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