The Runner: A slim book that doesn’t run very long

Alright bad pun. But in this new novel by David Samuels, The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue—this should be interesting.

“In the early 1990s, Princeton University erased from its records the grades and race times of sophomore Alexi Santana, a self-taught star runner with a colorful history. The Ivy League university had to erase its records because, in fact, Alexi Santana never existed. He was the invention of a 28-year-old drifter with a criminal record named James Hogue,” the AP article states.

Publishers Weekly notes, “Though Samuels has a gift for contextualizing people and events, he misses his mark in this repetitive and fragmented profile. He is so taken by his elusive subject, whom he calls a convicted fabulist, that he lets Hogue, a compulsive liar and criminal with repeated offenses, off the hook far too easily. To Samuels, Hogue's behavior is as harmless as the youthful lies the author formerly told strangers on airplanes. But the lie and the con are not one and the same, and the reader winces as Hogue cons his way past Samuels's otherwise intelligent grasp.”


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