Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

FilmClub: dilluns 30 de maig a les 19 h a la Biblioteca Mestra Maria Antònia.

BookClub: dimarts 31 de maig a les 19 h a la Biblioteca Mestra Maria Antònia.

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About the book

To paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray." But maybe some of us have to go astray to land eventually on target.

Take Mitch Albom. As a young man graduating from Brandeis University, he made promises easily. Keeping them was another story.

"You'll stay in touch?", his sociology professor Morrie Schwartz asked him on graduation day in 1979. Mitch answered his favorite professor, his mentor, his friend, without hesitation, "Of course."

Fast-forward sixteen years to Mitch's life as a successful newspaper sports columnist and broadcast journalist. Adept at juggling phone calls, faxes, interviews, problems, often it seems while driving too fast to another appointment on an overloaded docket, Mitch has a wonderful wife but no time to spend with her, a beautiful house to spend with her, a beautiful house on a hill, a stock portfolio, and a brother he hasn't talked to in years. He lives on a deadline –too fast is the only speed he knows.

Then, one night, tired from another day into which he crammed too much work, he sits in front of the TV, channel-surfing, and catches the crest of Nightline. And there's his old teacher and friend Morrie Schwartz telling Ted Koppel he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's disease, and that he's learning how to die. Mitch hadn't seen Morrie since graduation day at Brandeis.

Best-laid plans indeed.

The author

Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is the author of six previous books. A columnist for the Detroit Free Press and a radio host for ABC and WJR-AM, Albom has, for more than a decade, been named top sports columnist in the nation by the Sports Editors of America, the highest honor in the field. A panelist on ESPN's Sports Reporters, Albom also regularly serves as a commentator for that network. He serves on numerous charitable boards and has founded two charities in metropolitan Detroit: The Dream Fund, which helps underprivileged youth study the arts, and A Time to Help, a monthly volunteer program. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.

The hero

Morrie Schwartz

Morrie Schwartz wrote his own epitaph: "A Teacher to the Last." Born in 1916, he graduated from New York's City College, and won a fellowship to the University of Chicago, where he earned both a master's and PhD in sociology. In 1959, he began a lifelong career teaching sociology at Brandeis University.

He continued teaching classes after he was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 76, incorporating what he was learning about the meaning of life as he faced impending death. When ABC’s Nightline producer heard of his classes, Ted Koppel flew to Boston for the first of three interviews with Morrie. The shows were among the highest rated ever for Nightline.

Morrie Schwartz's final "class" with Mitch Albom was the week of his death. Morrie was 79.

The film

Director

• Mick Jackson

Cast

• Jack Lemmon – Morrie Schwartz
• Hank Azaria – Mitch Albom
• Wendy Moniz – Janine
• Caroline Aaron – Connie
• Bonnie Bartlett – Charlotte
• Aaron Lustig – Rabbi Al Axelrod
• Bruce Nozick – Mr. Schwartz
• Ivo Cutzarida – Armand
• John Carroll Lynch – Walter Moran
• Kyle Sullivan – Young Morrie
• Dan Thiel – Shawn Daley
• Christian Meoli – Aldo
• John Billingsley – Sports Fan #1

Other books by the same author that you can find in English at the Public Libraries of Catalonia (link):

• For One More Day

There are two books in Catalan and Spanish by our hero, Morrie Schwartz.