Pocket Express Interview With Mitch Albom

The first printing run of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” was 25,000 copies and Doubleday, the company publishing the book by first time author Mitch Albom, thought they’d be lucky if they sold those. But the book, about a dying professor who teaches life lessons to Albom, his former student, shot up to the New York Times Best Seller List and stayed there for a phenomenal four years, claiming the title of bestselling memoir of all time. Since then Albom’s books, which also include best sellers “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “For One More Day,” both published by Hyperion, have sold over 23 million copies worldwide—including 17 million copies of his last three books in the United States alone.

Albom, who lives in the Detroit metro area and is a newspaper columnist for the Detroit Free Press, has had several of his books made into movies. He talked to Red about “Tuesdays with Morrie” and his life since he became famous (he’s still the same down to earth guy he was before).

In the six years following the release of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” you didn’t write another book. That must have seemed like an eternity to your publisher. Why did you wait so long?

The reason I took that long to write something after “Tuesdays” is that I could have written 10 more Morries. But I wasn’t going to do that. Everybody wanted “Wednesdays with Morrie,” but that wasn’t the right thing to do and that wasn’t the spirit of how I wrote that book. I wanted to wait until a story meant something to me the way that “Tuesdays” did. Six years is a long time to sit around, but I was trying to be sincere.

How has your phenomenal success changed you?

Before “Tuesdays with Morrie” I was working as a full time newspaper columnist, a full time radio host and full time on television. I lived in Connecticut three days a week working for ESPN2. It was insane doing all these different jobs and doing them the same way someone would have if they had been their main job. For me to work 120 hours a week was not unusual at all. I’ve changed my priorities. Now I focus on what I think counts more, such as family, friends and being part of a community.

Besides your success, what other impact did Morrie have on you?

Morrie’s perspective is don’t just work for the sake of working to accumulate money, do some good with what you do. My life now is filled with charitable stuff, visiting hospitals, things like that.

When Detroit hosted the Super Bowl in 2006, a program to help the homeless watch the big game inspired you to do more for that population. Can you tell us about that?

I spent the night at a homeless shelter, not pretending to be homeless. One guy said, “Aren’t you Mitch Albom, the writer?” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “What happened to you?” Meaning, I must have fallen so far that I ended up homeless. It didn’t throw him at all that I could be that way. After spending the night there, I wrote a story about it and my hope to raise enough money for better conditions for the homeless for the rest of the winter. I said if we could take care of our homeless for one weekend, then we should be able to take care of them at least until it’s not so cold on the streets. My goal was to raise $60,000. We ended up raising $360,000 in a week’s time.

The money you raised went to S.A.Y. (Super All Year) Detroit: Reaching Out to Detroit’s Homeless, a non-profit that you founded that helps improves the lives of the city’s homeless as well as two other charities. Why is helping others so important?

All helping is fulfilling. When people would come visit Morrie, he’d ask them, “How’s your job going? How’s your divorce?” And they’d end up telling him all their problems. One time I asked Morrie why he was always trying to solve everybody else’s problems. I said, “You’ve got bigger problems than they do,” and he said—and I’ll never forget it—”Why would I take from people like that? Taking makes me feel like I’m dying. Giving makes me feel like I’m living.” That little sentence has never left me. I go down to the homeless shelter for a couple of hours to put food boxes together for homebound people. I’m like wow, it’s Saturday morning and I did something with my three hours instead of just watching TV. It’s a feeling you can’t get anywhere else.

Mitch Albom might never have written “Tuesdays with Morrie,” with all of its life lessons, if his first career choice had panned out. An aspiring singer and pianist, he played with myriad bands in high school in New Jersey. After graduating from Brandeis University with a degree in sociology and wandering through Europe, he landed a gig in a taverna on the Greek island of Crete. Albom talked to Red about his first career and how he became a writer.

Mamma Mia! So you used to be a lounge singer in Greece?

I was a featured American performer singing Elvis Presley and Ray Charles songs. This was so far off the beaten path that I think they thought they were originals that I had made up the songs. I often wondered why I ever left there, because I could have had that job forever. When you’re young, you want to get back home and get started on your career. So I voluntarily walked away from that job and came to New York, where I was just another failed musician.

Your first writing gig was a non-paying job with a free local newspaper. Why did you do that?

I wanted to get into newspaper writing, and there weren’t any paying positions. No one had any money. They said we’ll let you do it, but you have to do it for free. So I did that for six months, then they paid me $25 a week after that. I was curious about the business–just wanted to experience it–wanted to do something creative and see it come to pass. In music, I was writing all these songs, and no one was recording them. At least the paper was printing what I was writing. Then I decided to get a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University.

How did you support yourself during this time?

I would play piano from 10 at night until two in the morning and I tried to get my college friends to come and spend some of their money down there so that they would let me keep my job but it was such a dive that most of them didn’t want to come. I also took a day job writing for a sports magazine. If it had been a business magazine, I probably would have been a business writer instead.

Was there a down side to your books?

My father has watched me put out three books now in which the fathers were bad. In “Tuesdays with Morrie,” Morrie’s father was a real jerk. I wrote “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” and one character’s father beat him. Then I put out “For One More Day,” and the father runs away when the boy is 11 years old. After “For One More Day” came out, my father pulled me aside and asked if there was anything he should know about that had happened when I was young. He had started to notice a pattern because many stories in my books are right out of my life. Everyone just assumes that poor Mitch’s dad was a jerk. It’s completely the opposite.

–Interview by Jane Ammerson, RED Editorial Staff