No guru, no method, no teacher

February 6, 2005
Mitch Albom in the flesh

Mitch Albom in the flesh

Mitch Albom has sold millions of books but blanches at being told he's a self-help writer. He speaks to Luke Benedictus.

Complete strangers often approach Mitch Albom and ask whether they can give him a hug. His presence can trigger grateful tears from middle-aged men, while Oprah simply adores him. The American author has forged this emotional connection through two books, Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People you Meet in Heaven, books that are credited with bringing spiritual inspiration to millions.

Yet although his work has special resonance for the bereaved and terminally ill, 46-year-old Albom insists compassion is a quality he only developed late in life.

"If you'd met me 10 years ago I'd have been the last person who'd have been able to comfort you," Albom says from Detroit.

"Before, when someone would even start crying I'd get antsy. If you'd stuck me in a hospital room I'd have wanted to leave because I just hated everything about being there; I couldn't even stand the smell. Now, by necessity, I've become a different person."

Back then, Albom's life was driven by ferocious ambition. He juggled a number of high-profile media roles as a radio talkshow host, a TV sports commentator and an award-winning columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Always working at breakneck pace through a whirlwind of deadlines, Albom dedicated himself to professional achievement. He describes himself back then as a self-absorbed workaholic who "traded lots of dreams for a bigger pay cheque".

Regaining contact with his old sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, changed everything. As a student at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Albom was close to his professor and promised to keep in touch after graduating. But for 17 years it didn't happen. By the time the pair were reunited, Schwartz was dying of motor neurone disease.

During Schwartz's final months, however, the pair attempted to make up for lost time. Every Tuesday, Albom would fly more than 1000 kilometres from Detroit to Boston to visit his old professor. Schwartz's willingness to share the insights he had gained over the years prompted Albom to quiz him on the big questions - death, fear, ageing, family, wealth. To help pay the professor's mounting medical bills, Albom decided to publish their discussions. The resulting book, Tuesdays with Morrie, sold more than 6 million copies around the world.

The book's extraordinary success hinged on two main factors. First, through its emphasis on the importance of love and community, Tuesdays provided a sharp critique of America's capitalist values. The book struck a chord with dissatisfied men such as Albom himself by challenging the idea that work and material wealth were the way to personal fulfilment. Second, the book had a universal appeal in its willingness to tackle the subject of death with extraordinary honesty. For Schwartz believed that only through a sober awareness of our mortality can we appreciate the value of life. "My whole world really shifted after that book," Albom says. "Instead of people coming to talk to me about sporting events, suddenly people wanted to discuss life, death and what might happen afterwards."

Albom, as played by Hank Azaria, left, with Jack
Lemmon as Morrie Schwartz in theTV movie adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie.

Albom, as played by Hank Azaria, left, with Jack Lemmon as Morrie Schwartz in theTV movie adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie.

He made drastic changes in his own life. He began doing charity work at hospices and hospitals and cut back his professional commitments to spend more time with his wife.

Yet vestiges of the hard-nosed reporter still remain. Albom is still clearly uncomfortable at being dubbed a self-help writer.

"I don't really look at myself that way," he says. "There's always a pocket of people who say, 'Well I learned something from the book; it's got to be self-help'. So then they throw it on a pile with Chicken Soup (For the Soul). I'm not a guru and would never want to be."

He cites this as the reason why he refused to turn the book into a franchise despite being inundated with business opportunities. He declined to write a follow-up Wednesdays With Morrie, or churn out fridge magnets and bumper stickers displaying Schwartz's philosophy in bite-sized nuggets. "Part of the reason I wrote a novel was to get away from all that," he insists. "So no one could say, 'Oh well you're doing the same thing again'."

Except that for all his protests, Albom is effectively doing the same thing again with his novel The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Sure there are differences in form - Five People is a magical fable whereas Tuesdays was a factual account. And the books also have strikingly different protagonists - Schwartz is a wise academic while Eddie, the hero of Five People, is an uneducated blue-collar worker. Thematically, however, Albom's novel covers familiar ground, as issues of life, death and the importance of community surface once more. "A lot of the themes are connected," he concedes.

Five People begins with Eddie's death: the 83-year-old is killed in a fairground accident. He wakes up in Heaven, which is not an idyll of fluffy white clouds but a place designed "to make sense of your yesterdays". There Eddie is introduced to five people from his past who each deliver spiritual lessons, most of which cropped up previously in some form or other in Tuesdays with Morrie.

The novel is not as convincing as Albom's previous book. Much of the emotional power of Tuesdays stemmed from the fact that it was a real-life tale. It got away with its strident moralising by acknowledging that its purpose was primarily instructive. A novel, however, is a less suitable medium for delivering lectures. The narrative of Five People is peppered with Forrest Gump-style folksy cliches, like "strangers are just family you have yet to come to know". As these build up the book takes on an increasingly mawkish hue and reads like a spiritual self-improvement manual despite the fictional facade.

Nevertheless, Albom's hugs are still very much in demand as his popularity continues to soar. Last year his TV adaptation of Five People attracted 24 million viewers in America.

And while Albom remains uneasy about the self-help label, he accepts that he always aims to write books that will teach and inspire. "Personally I like to be able to close a book and say, 'Not only did I enjoy the story but I got something out of that too'," he says. Albom's popularity suggests countless other readers like to do that too.

Morrie Albom is guest at an Age Dymocks book event at 6.30pm on Feb 16 at the Victorian Arts Centre. Tel: 9660 8500.