When You’re in Bed, You’re Dead
Tuesdays with Morrie, 1997. Sports columnist Mitch Albom reconnects with his old college professor after he learns that the man is suffering from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). What begins as a sympathy-ridden guilt trip down memory lane concludes as the final lesson among a myriad of life lessons taught from teacher to student.
I haven’t had the chance to sit down and write about anything I’ve read lately due to school (though I will make an effort to write about a really stellar ethnography I read recently for Cultural Anthropology). Despite the fact that I’ve two unfinished books waiting for me in the wings, I started Tuesdays on Saturday night. Albom’s bare-bone way of unfolding the pretty and the ugly facets of dying is admirable and a true delight to read, but I couldn’t get past the preachy-ness of it all. I realize this is to be an eye-opener to all the materialism and superficial lives that Americans, if not every human being on the face of the earth, lives his life, but… perhaps it is because as a member of the masses, I and my peers are force-fed such violence and righteousness that it all becomes drivel and bitter regurgitation, but I felt that the message of Tuesdays to be old and uninteresting. It was the same ol’ “live your life with no regrets; live life with love, not leverage!!”
If anything though, I realized two things. 1) Morrie is one awesome dude and 2) damn… I wish I had that sort of relationship with any of my college teachers / professors. To be able to call each other “Coach” and “Player”; to be familiar with each others’ relationships and innermost thoughts. Yes, I have a mentor, but I’ve never opened up to her as Mitch did with Morrie. Their relationship seems almost too good to be true. I know it isn’t impossible, but with the alienation and the impersonal modes in which we all operate today, such a close ‘de-facto family’ relationship seems almost like a fantasy (well, it is a fantasy for me bahaha).
Loved the way Albom interwove the 90s contemporary headlines to juxtapose the severity of Morrie’s situation (and the progression of his inner decay) with the mundane, almost pathetic cult-like, fetishism that exists within America–it’s obsession with the OJ Simpson case, babies in garbage cans, murders over homosexual admiration, etc. etc.
Overall, a good read to pass the time. Though I was not as touched as I hoped to be, Tuesdays was sweet and simplistic in language while totally complex in nature. Albom succeeds in bringing the lightness and the glow that surrounds death.
On a sidenote, I’m listening to the “Nine” soundtrack, and jesus beezus! It’s awful! Whoever arranged these songs practiced some god-fuckery beyond imagination.
