I just read “Tuesdays with Morrie” the “inspirational” book that has been on the bestseller lists for years and is raved about everywhere.
What a total load of merde.
The “truths” in this book are totally unoriginal.
money isn’t everything; relationships are important; blah blah blah, packaged as wisdom from a dying man - bfd.
The book is sappy and sentimental. The writer - Mitch Albom - is a jerk. And Morrie is an attention-seeking self-promoter, lecturing the world until the day he dies.
(oops, just spoiled the ending)
People who like this book are naive and sentimental - the kind of folks who think that enough gun control laws will make crime go away, and enough welfare will make poverty go away.
Let’s all hold hands and dance in the flower fields . . . yeah, whatever.
Sorry, I give this rant only a 2.0, mostly for the unsubstantiated swipe at liberals at the end. Cheesey sentimentality is not wholey (or even chiefly) the domain of the Left. There are volumes of syrupy Jesus-glurge out there to prove it. Ever had someone send you an e-mail from the perspective of a fetus? I gaurantee you it was not from a liberal.
No, Mitch Albom is, in my opinion, a jerk. When offered to come and speak for our school (“Tuesdays” was required summer reading for everybody) he demanded an extremely, outlandishly high amount of money. In other words, we had to pay him a bunch for him to come out and tell us that money didn’t matter.
But, that aside, I still think the book was good. I don’t know how naive that makes me, but I’ll still say it. Sure, the pearls of wisdom contained in the book have been said over and over again, but that doesn’t take away their meaning. Hell, “Don’t be a jerk” still has the same meaning that it did at the start of things.
I don’t think that it’s an exceptionally amazing book, but it does serve to remind people what matters every now and then. I just wish that good ol’ Mitch would take his own advice.
Yes, it’s sappy. Didn’t the description “A sportswriter learns life lessons from a dying professor” that’s been in the paper for three years tip you off? Sheesh.
I’m not one to read inspirational type books. But there were some things that touched me in this book. And as Cranky implied, I don’t see where, from the text of the book, you can say that Albom is a jerk.
Hell even when he’s on that round table discussion show of sports writers on ESPN, I don’t find him to be a jerk. You must be from Detroit and can read his article daily.
And, IMHO, if you’re suffering from a terminal disease, you have every right to be “an attention-seeking self-promoter, lecturing the world until the day he dies.” (I for one will be there listening to any “nugget” of information I might gain from such a person.) And if people want to listen/read about it, great. If you don’t, you could have easily put the book down after the first 30 pages or so. It’s not like the sappiness snuck up on you at the end.
Jester - all speakers demand money. Albom’s speech fees (that deal with the book) go to Morrie’s fund. If he can get some to pay Mega $$, or someone to pay Mini $$, where should he speak?
Point taken, and I agree. Still, as a student at a school which doesn’t have a whole lot of Mega $$'s to throw around, I think I’ll be all stubborn and needlessly bitter anyway.
Damn nice points about the book, though. I don’t think I would be able to be that nice if I was dying. I’d be more of the curmudgeon type, myself.
Whores and booze?? You gotta be dying to do that?:eek:
Note to self: Stay sober, send away whores, go to doctor tomorrow. See if suffering from fatal disease. If so, find someone to lecture at. If not, get drunk, call back the whores.
I’ve never read this book, but if it’s “inspirational” and “sappy”, it cannot, BY DEFINITION be a potboiler. A potboiler is an exciting adventure story that’s done in a formulaic fashion. Cliffhangers are often associated with pot-boilers.
The phrase you may be looking for is “hackwork”.
or maybe not…
I just looked it up at miriamwebster.com and they define “potboiler” as: a usually inferior work (as of art or literature) produced chiefly for profit
So you’re right, by their definition, but their definition doesn’t match mine.
What I find amusing about the book is that, despite learning all these wonderful life lessons, Mitch Albon is still working overtime on his sportswriting career and neglecting his family and friends, and in general everything he learned at Morrie’s wrinkly (and now decomposing) knee. He confessed as much in an Associated Press intervew a year or two back.
