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Adam Haslett
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Tuesdays With Morrie: Summary and book reviews of Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, plus links to an excerpt from Tuesdays With Morrie and a biography of Mitch Albom.
Tuesdays With Morrie An Old Man, A Young Man & The Last Great Lesson
by
Mitch Albom
Hardcover: Sep 1997,
192 pages.
Paperback: Oct 2002,
208 pages.
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.
Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly
An emotionally rich book and a deeply affecting memorial to a wise mentor,
Kirkus Reviews
Award-winning sportswriter Albom was a student at Brandeis University, some two decades ago, of sociologist Morrie Schwartz. Here Albom recounts how, recently, as the old man was dying, he renewed his warm relationship with his revered mentor. This is the vivid record of the teacher's battle with muscle-wasting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. The dying man, largely because of his life-affirming attitude toward his death-dealing illness, became a sort of thanatopic guru, and was the subject of three Ted Koppel interviews on Nightline.
That was how the author first learned of Morrie's condition. Albom well fulfilled the age-old obligation to visit the sick. He calls his weekly visits to his teacher his last class, and the present book a term paper. The subject The Meaning of Life.
Unfortunately, but surely not surprisingly, those relying on this text will not actually learn The Meaning of Life here. Albom does not present a full transcript of the regular Tuesday talks. Rather, he expands a little on the professor's aphorisms, which are, to be sure, unassailable. Love is the only rational act, Morrie said. Love each other or perish, he warned, quoting Auden. Albom learned well the teaching that death ends a life, not a relationship.
The love between the old man and the younger one is manifest. This book, small and easily digested, stopping just short of the maudlin and the mawkish, is on the whole sincere, sentimental, and skillful. (The substantial costs of Morrie's last illness, Albom tells us, were partly defrayed by the publisher's advance). Place it under the heading Inspirational.
Death, said Morrie, is as natural as life. It's part of the deal we made. If that is so (and it's not a notion quickly gainsaid), this book could well have been called The Art of the Deal.
Robert Bly, author of Iron John
This is a sweet book of a man's love for his mentor. It has a stubborn honesty that nourishes the living.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, coauthor of Everyday Blessings and Wherever You Go, There You Are
A deeply moving account of courage and wisdom, shared by an inveterate mentor looking into the multitextured face of his own death. There is much to be learned by sitting in on this final class.
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Tuesdays With Morrie
Robert Bly, author of Iron John
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