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Pain | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Middleman
Creator: Kristen Hall
Publisher: Tafnews Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $94.06
New (1) Used (3) from $10.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1023896
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 226
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0911521526
Dewey Decimal Number: 615
EAN: 9780911521528
ASIN: 0911521526
Publication Date: September 1, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Book is brand new, and has never been opened. Thousands of satisfied customers!
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Product Description
This novel recounts the senior year of a talented collegiate distance runner named Richard Dubin. Richard's competitive year is a roller-coaster of stunning success and numbing disappointment, and his life is complicated by a steamy relationship he enters into with a beautiful, but unpredictable, woman 10 years his senior. Richard's university is one of the great party schools of the American South and the reader is treated to a series of uninhibited college bashes, featuring copious liquid consumption, naked kegstands, nude relays, andmost daring of allpoetry readings! As the pressures mount, Richard's life begins to unravel. All the forces converge at the Olympic Trials in New Orleans and it is there that Richard comes to the edge of the abyss. Note: adult language and situations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Great Book February 15, 2008
This is a great book. Anyone that has ever been a collegiate runner can relate. Hard training, a miserable coach, nights of drinking- this book describes the collegiate running experience perfectly. And includes a suprise ending.
INTENSE REALISM August 10, 2006
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Though not as uplifting as Once a Runner or as mentally stimulating as The Champion Maker, Pain is a realistic look at the way pressures to excel in distance running can drive a person to the brink. In that sense, it had a tragic feel similar to The Olympian, another running book I liked. As you would expect from a runner of Middleman's caliber, the training and racing descriptions are dead on. He also lightens the dark subject matter with some funny sections involving college pranks, drinking, etc.
 Petty July 31, 2006
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a very negative and petty book, it does not motivate or inspire in any way. It is whiny, plaintive, and boring. I hope you got it out of your system Dan.
The most forceful running book ever written July 20, 2005
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Dan Middleman, who has obviously read John L. Parker Jr.'s "Once a Runner," takes a different approach to the subject of the intensity of distance running that is anything but subdued, and thankfully so. This is a brutally honest and enthralling book that takes readers through the dark side of competitive distance running. Middleman's characters all face the toll of the double-sided card of competitive drive. Middleman focuses dually on the pressure they put on themselves to succeed and the pressure from the weight of the force of running to win in itself. The characters relieve themselves, even if only in a transitory way, by drinking beer like fish swimming through water, even if that itself turns into another problem, as several of the characters suffer from alcoholism. Parker's characters drank, but not like this. Middleman focuses on this aspect of college life more than Parker did, and as a college student myself, I have no doubts that these situations occur regularly just as described in "Pain."
Richard Dubin drinks heartily and runs even more heartily while trying to balance a serious relationship with a girl he is captured by. He suffers from extreme nervousness before races and becomes so jaded from it that his perspectives and personality change dramatically. Many college runners can identify with this, even though they may not take the tenebrous turns Richard does. This is a blunt, realistic, and entirely compelling book that is excellently written without being difficult to read or comprehend. There's not a false ring to it, especially in the narration and the dialogue; even the tragic ending, which will leave you reeling long after you've finished reading the book and carries an unexpected twist, is not farfetched. In fact, it's perfect considering the material that precedes it.
If you loved Parker's classic running novel, then you should check this one out to. Each captures the spirit of running in different ways. Both characters sacrifice themselves for the sport in unbridled, entirely believable ways, but end up with separate outcomes. Both of these novels should be examined for the effects on the competitive distance runner and the possible outcomes of such obsessions. They can be cathartic or ugly, but neither comes without a price before whatever the end result is. This book evinces the varying successes, failures, efforts, and thrashes that come with running, although the characters in the book suffer more than most.
As a college runner myself, I related to much of what happens in this brilliant book, particularly the varying mental states of a high caliber runner. While I am not as talented as Middleman's protagonist Richard Dubin and have not competed on as high a level as he does in this book, I was able to totally understand the struggles he goes through. Once I started this book late one night, I didn't want to put it down. Highly recommeneded.
dream your dreams December 13, 2000
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
dan middleman's account of a nationally recognized collegiate distance runner is hauntingly familiar what many college stars deal with today. the author describes in great detail the intense desire to perform at a level which would earn his character respect and also give reason to choose a life of a professional athlete. we are led on a roller coaster ride from a wild relationship with a woman 10 years his senior to wild parties his fellow teammates have. we experience the maturation from a boy into a man. overall mr. middleman succeeds in delivering a piece which is easy and enjoyable to read.
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