A few years ago, I con­tributed an essay to a book about run­ning. It was called Die Philoso­phie des Laufens (The Philoso­phie of Run­ning) and pub­lished by Mairisch, a small inde­pen­dent press with excel­lent taste and the kind of lit­er­ary courage that larg­er hous­es often like to claim for themselves.