Tuesdays with Morrie

I fucking hate this book.
I hate it.

This is the sort of literature that (according to some idiots), ‘glows’, ‘shines’, has ‘heart-warming wisdom’…and so on. Don’t be fooled by this. The book was recommended to me years ago in my school book-club by some blinking fool and if I see him again, I’ll probably take a ‘piece’ of his mind.

The story is about the author, Mitch Albom’s, college mentor and soon-to-die professor, Morrie Schwartz. Morrie has Lou Gehrig’s disease and talks of it on the Nightline program with host Ted Koppel. Albom, who had lost touch with this important figure in his life, is moved and decides to pay the old professor a visit; a visit that was to become weekly and rekindles their student-teacher relationship in discussing the ultimate subject: life.

Yes, you guessed it. Plenty of mutterings in this “class” like the following;
"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."
"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling."
"When you're in bed, you're dead"
"We must love one another or die."
"Love wins. Love always wins."

I don’t want to sound like an asshole or a pessimist but everything old Morrie speaks of is so basic and fundamental that it makes one puke. And this is a book that has sold nearly a million copies. Mitch Albom is a cheese fiend and is also responsible for other dire works such as The Five People you meet in Heaven. I just hope he is not one of these people I’m supposed to meet. You can tell from this steady churn of ‘heart-warming’ stuff that he is the sort of guy who is not living in this dimension. A lot of people remark that the book has helped them change their lives…these people have holes in their heads. What the fuck kind of change is such a book going to bring in you, oh I know, ‘sigh: love is like a light hope in us that can erase all pain: sigh: like, death is not the end, it is the beginning…’ That sort of rubbish.

Sure, Morrie must have been a great guy and all and it was quite sad what happened to him but you really gotta ask yourself, ‘Am I buying this because a dying man is going to impart me life’s biggest lesson?’
And if the answer is yes…
Then you’re dead to begin with.