Love Song of the 4 Minute Mile

“A minute was one fourth of a four minute mile, a coffee spoon of his days and ways” –John L. Parker, Once a Runner

Parker’s words constitute an allusion, a reference to a literary or historical event. I think allusions are more than mere references. They must be done for some type of effect. So simply working your favorite book into a conversation just for the sake of talking about it,  isn’t an allusion. It’s simply you talking about your favorite book. For artistic purposes, an allusion must add to the original subject being discussed.

Parker’s sentence is a description of Quenton Cassidy’s relationship with running. In so doing, Parker references “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot: “In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse […] I have measured out my life with coffee spoons […] Then how should I begin / To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways” (lines 47-8, 51, 59-60). The speaker is discussing the abundance of time he thinks he has and by measuring his life with “coffee spoons,” he’s saying that he’s made careful decisions, just as you would deliberately measure the sugar you put in your coffee. With “days and ways,” Prufrock is asking how he should spend this time he’s presumably saved up? What should he do with this life he has?

Now, Parker is not saying that Cassidy is a Prufrockian figure other than both are obsessed with time. The difference is that Prufrock’s fixation on time freezes him, forcing a limpid impotence on his actions and decisions. Whereas Cassidy’s fixation causes him to act, to run faster, to think decisively. The 2 characters are opposites, with their incessant attention to not wasting time being the only thing that binds them. 

Parker returns to time and the Prufrock allusions. So it’s no coincidence. But it’s so that we look at the paradoxical nature of time. For the runner, it weighs and hangs, something that should be shed. And yet it moves so swiftly. It’s on polar ends of the experience spectrum. Similarly, Prufrock & Cassidy are opposites tied together by the tic tock of the watch.