The Write Book Buzz

Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom
Random House: $12.95 (paperback)

Reviewed by Nick DiChario

I’m the first person to pooh-pooh bestsellers, especially the ones that everybody falls in love with because they’re so damned heart-warming and life affirming. I’m not a big fan of The Bridges of Madison County, for example, or anything squeezed out of the bleeding heart of Nicholas Sparks. Blatant sentimentality disguised as literature doesn’t do much for my digestive system. So when Mitch Albom (c’mon, a sports guy for cryin’out-loud) decided to get all schmaltzy with his dying old college professor in Tuesdays with Morrie, the mere thought of it made me want to drop a handful of Alka Seltzers in my Guinness and rent the director’s cut of Raging Bull.

The book is the true story of Albom’s relationship with Morrie Schwartz, his professor from Brandeis University in the seventies, and Morrie’s journey toward death from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) twenty years later. I have to be honest. The book isn’t all that bad. It’s lightweight enough to read in an evening—when I say lightweight, I’m talking about content as well as page count—and there are some genuine moments in the book that reveal one of the rarest of all things: bona fide male friendship. Most men are terrified to approach the topic, let alone sit down and actually write about it. Also, if you can get past the corny aphorisms, you’ll find some thought-provoking material in Albom’s book about the culture of death in this country, which frankly isn’t all-too-healthy (forgive the pun).

Of course, anyone who really wants to explore this topic in a meaningful way should look up Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ On Death and Dying and Death: The Final Stage of Growth. There’s also a great book by Studs Terkel, Will the Circle be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, a collection of interviews that will open your eyes to what people really think about when it comes to living and dying in America. These books are not for the timid reader or most of today’s coffee club culture, but they get to the heart of what Albom dances around in his “Runaway Bestseller That Changed Millions of Lives.” (Ick. I hope he didn’t write the cover copy.)

Tuesdays with Morrie will make a great gift for your son, father, or husband, or for the man in your life who is not in touch with the softer side of his masculinity. You can tell him it’s okay to read it because Albom is a sports guy, after all, who is seen frequently on ESPN. Then leave him alone while he reads it just in case he wants to cry over his beer and pretzels. Even guys need that once in a while. Just ask Robert James Waller. Or Nicholas Sparks.

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