Why Mitch Albom wrote 'Tuesdays with Morrie'

MANILA – Bestselling author Mitch Albom rose to fame in 1997 for his book “Tuesdays with Morrie,” which recounted the time he spent with his 78-year-old sociology professor.

Not surprisingly, “Tuesdays with Morrie” is also the book that is closest to his heart.

Recalling why he came up with the book, Albom said he only wanted to raise even a small amount for his sick professor, Morrie Schwartz, and that no one, including himself, thought that it would be such as success.

“I just wrote that to pay his (Morrie’s) medical bills. It wasn’t supposed to be a big book, nobody in America expected it to be a big book, the publisher didn’t expect it to be a big book. I was just trying to help pay his bills,” Albom said in an interview on the ANC program “Headstart” aired Thursday.

“Most people told me it’s a bad idea. The publishers refused to take it, [they said] it’s boring, it’s depressing [and] you’re a sports writer [so] you can’t write a book like that,” he added.

But Albom, who used to be a sports columnist, was not afraid to take the risk for the sake of his teacher.

“I just kept pushing and saying I want to do this, I want to help pay his bills. So we found one publisher three weeks before he died and they agreed to publish it. They only published 20,000 copies, which in America is a very small book, and they thought that would be it. And I thought that would be it.

“So when ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ started to grow and become this huge thing and it went on for years, nobody could’ve expected it.”

Since then, Albom has never looked back. As he wrote new books – his latest being “The First Phone Call from Heaven” – the bestselling author said he did not worry about how these would be received by the public.

“From that point forward, I didn’t know what to expect if I wrote a book. It was silly spending a lot of time worrying about it because you can put all this effort into trying to make it a hit, as you call it, and it would go the opposite direction,” he said.

What Morrie taught him

Albom said it was Schwartz who helped him “find a part of myself that could have been lost.”

“Morrie had this way of breaking people down because he was so honest and he wasn’t worried about being embarrassed by what he said. He asked questions like, ‘are you happy?’ Or ‘why do you think this is important?’ He really cut right through a lot of that hardened stuff, he allowed me to find a part of myself and that was a wonderful thing,” he said.

Albom said that through Schwartz, he was able to learn the importance of giving and making an impact on another person’s life.

“Morrie never read a page of ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’ He never saw the cover, never held it in his hand, but he’s being studied even as we’re speaking, including here in the Philippines. You never know [that you will make a huge impact] by being kind to someone… Because that’s what happened, he was being kind to me. He invited me in while he was dying, to come see him every week. He was just being kind to an old student of his. I tried to do something, to be kind to him, to help pay his medical bills, so I did this book. One person read it and gave it to somebody, and gave it to somebody, and now here in the Philippines, we’re talking about it even if he’s not here.

“So I try to encourage people that this is what happens when you do something for other people. You might not ever know, you might die not knowing that it will have an effect on somebody,” he said.

Albom went on to share how a quote from his late professor has greatly touched his life.

“When Morrie said to me, ‘giving is living.’ I still remember him saying that because I asked him, ‘why are you so nice to everybody who comes in? Why do you always ask how they’re doing and what their problems are? You’re dying and you only have a certain amount of time left, why don’t you just let them talk to you about it?’ And he said, ‘because that’s taking and it’s reminding me that I’m dying. Giving makes me feel that I’m still living.’ And he said, ‘giving is living.’ I thought, wow… it really is true, especially when you get older.”

Applying the things he learned from Schwartz and from the other people he has met, Albom recently visited the country to help build libraries in typhoon-hit Tacloban.

He was also able to get the support of his fellow bestselling authors as they have committed to give books to these libraries.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Mitch Albom revisits heavenly theme in new book

NEW YORK -- Best-selling novelist and popular sports journalist Mitch Albom returns to a familiar theme in his new book "The First Phone Call from Heaven," exploring what people find most meaningful in life when confronted with mortality.

His latest book of fiction follows the reaction of people from a small Michigan town claiming to receive phone calls from loved ones in heaven. Sully Harding, a town resident, is skeptical and conducts his own investigation.

Albom spoke to Reuters about the significance of the human voice, Alexander Graham Bell and religion.

Q: How did you come up with the plot?

A: About the time that I was considering starting the book, my mother suffered two very bad strokes and lost the ability to speak. She is still alive and I can go sit with her, although I am not sure whether she realizes it is me. Not hearing her voice any more is striking because the first voice you hear is that of your mother. I began to realize the preciousness of the actual sound of a person's voice.

I noticed how many people, after someone dies, will not erase phone messages because they just want to hear the voice. That became the basis for my wanting to do something with the human voice. What if you got to hear it again? What kind of comfort would just the voice be? That led me to phones.

What if someone or a bunch of people get a phone call from heaven but in a limited environment? Would anyone believe that? How would the world react? I sprang off from there.

Q: How does religion influence your fiction writing?

A: I am certainly not a religious writer and do not espouse any religious beliefs. Whenever I do write stories that nudge in the area of faith or belief I try to do so in a way that is not dogmatic or particular to any one religion. Most religions have some concept of afterlife and what happens next. Those are elements in my stories.

I often get way too much credit. I am just a storyteller. The only difference is that maybe my books have a little more hope, but I am still trying to write an entertaining story without hitting anybody over the head with a message. If I don't have good characters and interesting things happening, no one is going to finish the book.

Q: Can you discuss your research behind Alexander Graham Bell and how his story weaves into the plot?

A: I had already started writing when I began to wonder how the telephone was invented and maybe there was a paragraph I could use somewhere. As I read more about the subject, I became consumed.

The background behind the telephone is incredibly emotional and almost inspirational, and I saw enormous parallels with the story I was writing.

The phone was invented out of love to find a way for Bell's deaf wife to speak. When I read about the first phone call, it contains the sentence, 'Come here I want to see you.' The original idea behind the phone was not simply talking but bringing people together, which is one of the book's underpinnings.

Q: What would you like readers to take away from the book?

A: Human voice and contact should not be taken for granted. Make sure if given a choice, be present and with somebody. Second, if something is a miracle to you, it still is a miracle. It does not matter whether science disproves it or the whole world believes otherwise. I think little miracles happen all the time.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com