For me, the marathon readings bring out the pleasure of collective listening to a story unfold and also the pleasure of the many different styles of reading aloud and the ways in which voices can create people, scenes, moods, emotions, and more. Through their manner of reading, one also learns about people and their imaginations. I also love the marathon readings for the sense of common endeavor and esprit de corps: we are all--students, staff, faculty, neighbors--making this work come to life.
"Marathon," presumably mostly means "big," as in roughly 25 miles without stopping, as in a messenger's journey on foot from Marathon to Athens. But in the legend, the original runner, Pheidippides, arrived in Athens with a single two-word message on his lips which he delivered to those in Athens who could hear him about the outcome of the Greeks' war with Persia -- and two very fitting words indeed, not only for the Greeks on that day but also and to this very era for the geeks who put on marathon readings. Pheidippides' words before collapsing: "We won!"
"So we did more literary [works]. The first one was Tom Jones in '92. And we did [reading marathons] for a while, for five or six years ... We had it every year. And then ... the novelty of it wore off a little bit [after Tom Jones] was written up in the Star Tribune. And actually, KYMN from downtown came and did something, ... so it went out on the local radio station."
- Michael Kowalewski
"We had a visiting prof in the fall [of 2025], Tim Burberry, who did the Tolkien Herbert class... [O]n his own, he organized one for The Hobbit. And that was in the fall. But that is a much shorter book. And so it was basically the class kind of and then a few people that joined in, but they didn't need as many people. So, you know, it worked."
-Michael Kowalewski
