Jogging

Sandra Hochman

Description

- ARC distributed to influencers and various trade publications. Large ARC distribution to libraries nation-wide. - Social Media campaign on Facebook and Twitter - Email marketing campaign to over 90,000 Turner Publishing subscribers - Free Book Friday giveaway - Website marketing on TurnerPublishing.com
- Activist, socialite, and artist: Hochman has a wide network of well-known and culturally-important artists, writers, journalist, producers, and many more. She has collaborated with Gloria Steinem on The Year of the Woman (re-released recently by Huffington Films), a film that showcases one of the most pivotal times for feminism in the 1970s. Amongst her friends were Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, and Jack Kerouac. Her first husband was world-famous violinist Ivry Gitlis and she once had a torrid love affair with poet Robert Lowell. Her network extends to some of pop culture's greatest names. - Beloved title in Hochman collection. - Part of a beloved collection: Jogging is a part of Sandra Hochman Collection, which will re-release her critically-acclaimed titles. - Award-winning author: Sandra Hochman has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition Award, and is also the recipient of 1st Metropolitan Museum Award of Merit.

Sujets

• Literary
• Sandra Hochman
• Jogging
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683365181
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

jogging
other books in the sandra hochman collection from turner publishing:
Streams
Endangered Species
Happiness Is Too Much Trouble
Jogging
Playing Tahoe
for children:
The Magic Convention
sandra hochman
jogging
a love story
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
New York, New York
www.turnerpublishing.com
Jogging, A Love Story
Copyright 2017, 1979 by Sandra Hochman. All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maddie Cothren
Book design: Glen M. Edelstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hochman, Sandra, author.
Title: Jogging : a love story / Sandra Hochman.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Turner Publishing Company, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017002568 | ISBN 9781683365167 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3558.O34 J64 2017 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002568
9781683365167
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Ariel, my daughter
Rene Schwartz
Alexandra Schlessinger,
good friends
The gift of Life is the gift of energy. We live through action, movement, change.
Richard Grossman Choosing and Changing
jogging
1.
In his dreams Jerry was making love to the brown-eyed seaweed goddess, his great love from the past: Ursule. She was incredibly beautiful and he entered her body like a sailor sailing home. In the dream she had no age. Then he awakened and found that he was in bed with Lillian, his wife.
He went to the living room. Looked out the window. It was daybreak. The sun on Central Park West made everything pink. He went back to the bedroom and took his jogging shorts and sweat shirt quietly out of the closet so he wouldn t disturb Lillian. Softly he put on his running shoes.
A few moments later he was out in the park. He was relaxing, running at his own pace, slowly breaking into a long run. He felt the high coming, the erotic high. He thought about Ursule. He thought about his autobiography. He began with the miracle, Ursule. When he lived with Ursule by the sea: that was over twenty years ago, he realized, barely believing. They had rented a house in Atlantic City. And they had lived and loved and left. And the sea went on, the green meadows bloomed, his essays were written, the guests were fed and shown around, the drinks were downed and the old painters came to visit. And they lived and loved and laughed and left. They made love on the sand while the moon shone down. Ursule was his sea goddess. He tasted salt water on her breasts and her belly, her cunt. And the summer went on in the sealike place where things bloomed. And he wrote his words, nestled in the wind. And he dragged his thoughts to shore the way fishermen trap lobsters. And he saw the big red lobster claws and he loved them.
He thought of all this while jogging.
In the high he could return to pleasant things.
Nostalgia? The desire to return to the past?
That was then. This was now.
2.
Once Jerry Hess wrote beautiful prose. Now he was beyond all that, beyond the need, too, for money. He didn t even know what his assets were nor what he owed the government. His wife, Lillian, took care of all that. She was always ahead of things . Knew about things before anyone else. The one thing Lillian knew nothing about was motion . When he discovered that he could imitate the agitation of nature by jogging she told him that he was wasting his time.
Why jogging? What does it do for you? Is it the pain that appeals to you? she asked.
I don t feel pain. I m in better shape than you think.
Well, can t you find better things to do with your time? Her face grew hard and obstinate. A fury was building.
Lillian, when was the last time you tried something new?
Why don t you stop finding fault with me, Jerry?
Well, why don t you simply try it? I bought you running shoes.
They were grotesque. Especially as an anniversary present.
Didn t you think they were a symbolic present? Wouldn t you like to run away from our marriage? He was projecting .
Stop questioning and cross-examining me, Jerry. If only you would stop asking me question after question. It s like being in court these days even when I come home from court.
As you wish, he said.
She walked up and down the hallways of the apartment with an air of concealed anxiety. Suddenly she looked at the man she had lived with for twenty years. She had a soft expression, recognizable as her mixture of remorse and tenderness at inflicting unwitting sorrow upon others. She smiled at him. It was the face of the old Lillian. The Danish girl he had fallen in love with and married. But he knew that face would not last. Once more the peculiar shadow of her discontent would cast itself over the fourteen-room apartment, over the relationship. Another scene would follow. There was a deep ache inside Jerry Hess. But it wasn t sorrow. Rather, it was the ache of a man who publicly has everything. An exhaustion of the spirit took over his body as he sat in a grey velvet chair quietly smoking a Gauloise and looking at his wife.
A forty-two-year-old bounder with large blue eyes and thick blond hair, no wrinkles, small nose, high cheekbones, muscles in shoulders, thick chest hairs, flat stomach, runner s thighs, all the senses sharp-thriving arteries and veins that led him to this question: Who am I? The handsome, urbane art merchant, walking through crowds, surrounding himself with finished people who have adapted themselves to who they were, moving through living rooms, dinner parties, restaurants, offices, art galleries, moving over the track of Central Park, the West Park Racquet Club, The Turtle Bay Swimming Club in the United Nations Hotel, the Century for lunch, the discotheque after dinner, Cachaca, Studio 54, eating at Melon s, banking at Morgan Guaranty, shopping at Gucci, walking down Madison Avenue, the word handsome shining over him like a cloud ( masculine might be more the word)-smelling of something hidden which women pick up, the strong smell of a virile man, a man still young and carefree, a man strong in the legs-with a nimble lexicon, a man who punned, who liked good books and good wine-who treasured his desk, his opera tickets, his son, a man who heard voices in shells, who was tough and quick-tempered, a man who liked to run, who knew what to do with himself on Saturdays, stalking under the sun, a man familiar in the boot of Italy, the handprint of France, the dots of Japan, a man who walked down the streets, in the sunlight, smelling of health and good nature, a man laughing at the fables of his life, feeding on sunshine, sadness banished under the mask of suntan, an idle peddler out for a walk.
The eye. The nervous eye. Or was it a Nervous I and the body was trying to tell him something? Jerry knew that he should listen to the body. Jerry Hess seldom looked in the mirror. When he did spy on himself he wasn t disappointed in what he saw. His body was strong, the body of an athlete. He had played Shakespearean roles at Harvard before he left and his voice was his outstanding feature. It was a cheerful voice, deep and never unhappy or whining. It was a voice that gave confidence to hesitant clients. It was never hard, or pressured. It was not a voice that betrayed confusion. Once, when a client was accompanying Jerry Hess to the airport, discussing the purchase of a rare C zanne-a tulip in a vase-the client had been struck with the seeming perfection of Jerry Hess s life. Driving back to the city, the client asked the chauffeur, What is the secret of Jerry Hess s confidence? Why is he always so happy? The reply came: It s because he has no problems, sir.
Jerry s hands were the hands of a peasant, and it was in his hands that his strength showed. They were hands that liked to stroke large dogs, hands that when he had held his baby son were gentle; they were also hands that had plunged through a window and given, on occasion, black eyes and split lips to bums who had tried to rough him up. Wherever he was seen, at art auctions, at gambling casinos in Europe or the Bahamas, at ski resorts, there was a passionate strength about Jerry Hess that attracted both women and men. He had a touch of the brute in his face.
Jerry had gone for a medical checkup. The best in the city, Dr. Tustmaker was not a man to mince matters.
Your body s great, Jerry, but there s something that I don t like. You complain about a twitch in your eye. How long has that been going on?
I told you. I ve been twitching away for about a week.
It s the classic case of anxiety, Jerry. Stress. I don t like it.
And you think I like it?
You ve got to cut out whatever is bothering you.
OK, first I ll get rid of Lillian. Then I ll put all my art in storage. But suppose after all that I m still twitching?
OK. What s bothering you?
I m thinking of making a lot of changes. They re exciting, but frightening.
We pay for change just as we pay for material things. If yours is a change with a sense of purpose it can be exhilarating. (God, doctors are often so boring, Jerry thought. So sure of everything.)
But it s not clear to me yet exactly the changes I want to make. Jerry was putting on his clothes. You see, for me the first gift of life is the gift of energy. We live through movement, action, change. I think that change should be sought by everyone in search of self-realization and self-fulfillment. Change is the way we build a future. My problem is I don t know exactly what I want to change yet. I know that change is no