Mitch Albom in Manila

I was 15 when I read “Tuesdays with Morrie. My Literature teacher in senior year high school (hello, Mrs. P!) had raved about the book, and most of us picked up a copy  upon her recommendation. I had not read any of Mitch Albom’s books since “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” though,  so before my scheduled interview with him, I found myself reaching for his latest novel, “The First Phone Call From Heaven” (which I gifted to my mom on her last birthday) over breakfast and finished well before lunchtime.

In “The First Phone Call From Heaven,” the (fictional) small town of Coldwater, Michigan is put on the map by a series of baffling phone calls to several of the town’s residents, all from the deceased, calling from heaven. After serving a prison sentence, Sully Harding returns to Coldwater and is skeptical about the recent turn of events. Sully is determined to find the truth about the phone calls, and in the process finds more than he sets out to uncover.

I must say the novel evoked a sense of nostalgia — it’s been years since I last read an inspirational book, and Mitch Albom’s quality of writing is still as I remember it: clear, clean prose with that trademark emotional tug that has been popular with a wide range of readers all across the world.The mystery component is also a pleasant surprise, as well as the fascinating anecdotes about the history of the telephone and how it has changed human life.

I caught Mitch Albom today right before the National Book Store signing at Glorietta, where a massive crowd was already waiting — some fell in line as early as 4 am, and over a thousand already registered before lunchtime. I was lucky to get a few minutes in; he had two more interviews lined up after mine.

Here’s a transcript of the interview:

Q: When did you arrive in the country? What has been your impression of the Philippines so far?

A: Tuesday night. It’s fantastic — I can’t believe that this many people know who I am or read my books. Everyday is just a shock, and this [today] will probably be the biggest shock of all…. It’s my first time here. I’ve been asked to come pretty much every year since 2003, when “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” first came out. That’s when I started to hear from the Philippines. I wasn’t able to come — you know, it’s very far; I always had a reason not to come. And then after the typhoon, I got asked to come again, back in the fall, like October, November, and I said, “Maybe that’s a good sign that I should go. Maybe I could help out a little with something there.

We’re going to Tacloban on Monday, and as a book blogger you’d be interested in this. I said I want to do something for reading in that area — for one thing I’m already donating 40 boats, each boat has the name of one of my books on it, big yellow boats (me: that’s so cute!) — but more importantly, with the nice people at National Book Store, we’re going to pledge to rebuild 10 libraries in the schools there, and I’m bringing up hundreds of my books to start the shelves.

When I got here, I asked these guys, “Do you want me to call some of my friends in America, who are writers, and see if they’ll donate at least ten of their own books that they’ll send personally, or sign it, and we can put one in each library?” And they said, “Yeah, if you could do that…” And so I made some calls, and so far we have — there’s got to be at least 30 or 40 of them (and this is where I start tearing up and getting sniffly) — Stephen King, John Grisham, Khaled Husseini, Suzanne Collins of the Hunger Games, Jeff Kinney of Wimpy Kid — he’s sending 500 books that he’s signing, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, Lemony Snicket… Everybody we’ve asked has said yes. So we’re going to have a lot of books coming up there to start those libraries. I’ll be there on Monday.

We’re going to pledge to rebuild 10 libraries in the schools there, and I’m bringing up hundreds of my books to start the shelves… Stephen King, John Grisham, Khaled Husseini, Suzanne Collins of the Hunger Games, Jeff Kinney of Wimpy Kid, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, Lemony Snicket… Everybody we’ve asked has said yes. So we’re going to have a lot of books coming up there to start those libraries.

Q: In The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” there was a Filipina character in the story. Having never been to the Philippines before, how did Tala make it into the novel?

A: The book was inspired by my uncle, Eddie, the real Eddie, and he fought in World War II, and he fought here in the Philippines. And when I was a kid, I always asked him, “Did you ever kill anybody?” And he would say, “I don’t know. We were fighting and it was dark; I don’t know.” So when I wrote the book, I said, “That’s kind of a sad thing to go through your life, not knowing if you had harmed somebody or not. And so in the book, Eddie accidentally kills a little girl while he was in the Philippines, and she turns out to be a very important character in the book, she turns out to be the last person he meets.

As for her character, I picked her name, Tala, from a list of Philippine names someone had given me. I didn’t know what it meant — I just thought it was a pretty name. After the book came out, I started getting all of these letters from the Philippines of people saying, “How did you know to pick Tala? It means star — it’s perfect, ’cause it’s heaven, and she’s a star! That seemed to really connect me with Filipino readers, but I have to say it was just an accident; it just seemed like a good name. But that’s how the Philippines came to be part of that book.

As for her character, I picked her name, Tala, from a list of Philippine names someone had given me…  That seemed to really connect me with Filipino readers, but I have to say it was just an accident; it just seemed like a good name. But that’s how the Philippines came to be part of that book.

Q: How did you discover that you wanted to be a writer?

A: I was a musician, and that’s all I ever really wanted to be. All through high school I never wrote anything; I played music. And all through college, I never wrote anything; I played music. When I got out of college, I lived over in New York for a while as a musician. I was working at night as a musician, you know, playing in nightclubs and things and I wasn’t really having very much success, as much as I loved it. Nobody wanted to make my records.

So during the day I had free time, and I was in a supermarket once. They were giving out a newspaper, you know, it was stacked up and they threw it in your bag when you finish at supermarket. I picked it up and it was a local thing, and it said at the bottom, if you want to help our newspaper, we could use some volunteers. So since I had free time, I went over there one day, and I was the youngest person there by about thirty years — everyone else was just retirees. They gave me an assignment, and I’d never written anything before. They sent me to a meeting about parking meters, about the price of parking meters, and why parking meters were going from five cents to ten cents. All I knew about journalism was the movie, “All the President’s Men,” which I had seen, with Dustin Hoffman. I acted like they did, I went in with a notepad and wrote down everything. I guess I must have had some ability as a writer because I wrote  the story, never having written anything, and then the next week, when I was in the supermarket and got the paper again, my story was on the bottom of the front page. I saw my name, and I saw the words, and I got this little feeling that writers get, that I’m sure you have… It’s like, wow, I wrote that? And there it is, I fell in love with writing, and I’ve been in [love with] it ever since.

Q: How did you get your big break in books?

I was a sportswriter, I went back to school and got a master’s degree and all that. I got a job at a newspaper and worked my way up. I was a pretty well-known sportswriter in America and I was doing pretty well as a sports writer. And then one night, just by accident, I was watching television and this program called Night Line came on, and I saw an old professor of mine who I was very close with, named Morrie Schwartz, and he was dying, as you know from reading the book. It was just an accident at that night I was flipping the remote, or I wouldn’t have seen him. I felt so bad because I had promised I would stay in touch with him.

So I called him up and I ended up visiting him again and again. It wasn’t to write a book. It was just, as you saw in the book, to learn why he was so happy and I wasn’t. But at some point, I asked him what he feared the most, and he said he feared the debt he was gonna leave his family because of all the medical bills he had and he couldn’t pay them. He was afraid he would die and his family would have to sell the house… I decided to try and raise money for him by writing a book — that was the only reason I wrote it. Most publishers said no. Most of them said, that’s a stupid idea. Nobody wants to read it, it’d be a boring book. You’re a sportswriter, you can’t write it… And it was only three weeks before he died that we found one publisher who was willing to do it. They gave us the money and I gave it to him. And I wrote the book very simply, it came out, and people just started to read it. They didn’t print a lot of copies; it wasn’t supposed to be a big book. It was supposed to be a tiny book! They printed 20,000 total for the whole world, and people just began to read it, it got handed to them like your teacher handed it to you. It just got out of control. It became what it did and it’s given me the opportunity to write other books.

I ended up visiting him again and again. It wasn’t to write a book. It was just to learn why he was so happy and I wasn’t. But at some point, I asked him what he feared the most, and he said he feared the debt he was gonna leave his family because of all the medical bills he had I decided to try and raise money for him by writing a book — that was the only reason I wrote it.

Q: After writing Tuesdays with Morrie, what made you choose to stay within the inspirational genre?

Before that, all anyone wanted to talk to me about was sports — the game, the athletes. After that, all anybody wanted to talk to me about was that kind of thing. Every discussion was, what did you learn from Morrie? What do you think happens when we die? What’s the real meaning of life? I got asked to speak at universities, funeral parlors, hospitals. I wasn’t going to sporting events; I was already going to all these places. So when time came to write another book, my mind was on these kinds of subjects; it had been six years. All of these publishers who didn’t want “Tuesdays with Morrie” only wanted me to write “Wednesdays with Morrie” or “Chicken Soup with Morrie” and I knew that wasn’t gonna be a good idea. But I really enjoyed the conversation about these deeper topics. So I decided to try a novel and make it like a fairy tale, because I thought, if you were gonna write a novel about the meaning of life or why you matter, you better not make it a deep, heavy book or people are not going to want to read it. So I did the opposite: big theme, fairy tale story. That became “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and after that I’ve been very blessed to write novels on things like that.

Q: Have you ever thought of crossing over to another genre?

Like young adult? I get asked to do that. I think young adult is very intriguing, except I keep saying, well. what’s young adult? How is that different than what I’m doing? You said you read my book in high school; yesterday I met a kid who was 11, and  he’s read three of my books already. I keep thinking, how do I get any younger than I already am now? If I can figure out how young adult is different than what I’m doing I’d be willing to try it, but I don’t think you should just do a genre as if ticking off a bucket list. Like, oh yeah, now I wrote a children’s book. Because first of all, children’s book writers are very talented, and they have a special gift. I don’t have that gift. Just because I have a name, I just go in there and become a children’s writer? That’s not right. And I don’t know that I have a particular talent for young adult, I just don’t know what it is.

Right now, for me, I kind of experiment with that more in the way of screen writing, and play writing. Those are different genres, but they’re my stories, original ideas that I have and write as a script. “First Phone Call from Heaven” we’ll make into a feature film, I’ll probably write the script for that. I’ve written scripts for three of my other movies, I’ve written plays, so I get my varying thing from those.

Q: Your books are a testament to the power of reading, how books can shape and change lives. What can you say about this?

A: I’m humbled by it. “Tuesdays with Morrie” became what it did because one person handed it to another person. That’s the only reason it became a huge success. It didn’t have a marketing campaign; it didn’t have advertisements. They made a movie of it but at that point it was already on its way.

So it really does show you that if you have a book that readers can embrace, it doesn’t have to be marketed, or have a Hollywood movie attached to it. There are a lot of books like that – look at The Book Thief. That guy wasn’t  famous before he wrote that. But people started passing it around and look what it’s become.

I’m very proud to be handed from person to person; I really believe in the power of the public. The public makes books. Bookstores don’t make books, commercials don’t make books, advertisements don’t make books. You can have a million advertisements but if a books’s not good and it doesn’t connect with readers they won’t take it. Because it’s a big effort, as you know, to invest in a book, to read a book. It takes time, and time is precious, especially today. So unless you really can touch the heart of readers, all the advertising and all the marketing in the world isn’t going to make them sit there and read what they don’t want to read.

I really believe in the power of the public. The public makes books.

Q: Speaking of reading, do you still have time to read books? What are your favorites?

A:  I’ll give you more writers than books because I tend to read a lot by the same person. Some of the writers I really enjoy are Tom Wolfe, Faulkner, Marilynne Robinson — one of my favorite books of all time is “Gilead,” Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Alice McDermott… These are just people who are on my shelf.

Right now I’m reading “Blindness” by Saramago — great book; “The Imperfectionists” by Tom Rachmann; and I just finished “Gone Girl” (by Gillian Flynn).

I read a lot of them at the same time. I travel, sometimes I feel like a light one, sometimes I feel like a heavy one. I don’t finish one book before moving on to the next one, I usually have three or four books going at the same time.

Q: How do you feel about ebooks, though?

A: I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, as one person whose shoulder perpetually hurts from the heavy bag whenever I travel, this thing is amazing — it has a whole library in it. But going like this (mimes thumbing pages) is not the same as this (mimes touching a screen). And doing this (puts a bookmark inside the book) and seeing you have that much more to go, and later that much more to go (mimes making his way through a book) gives a sense of accomplishment, whereas when you’re scrolling along the bottom of those things and  it says you have 1100 more pages and it’s just not the same experience.

For me, in my world, the ebook wouldn’t exist. But I also understand that the world changes. I’m sure there were people who thought that paperbacks were gonna ruin the book industry, and they didn’t. People thought movies were going to ruin the book industry and they didn’t.  So as long as the reading  experience is still the same, if I look over and see a young person and they have an e-reader or a tablet and they’re engrossed, what’s important is that they look interested, not what they’re actually holding in their hand.

Q: What can we look forward to in your next book?

A: My next book is gonna be a novel that’ll come out not this year but the following year. I’m gonna take a little longer while with it. It’s in the music world, and music is really my first love and I’ve never written about music in any way. None of my characters are musicians or anything.

This one is gonna follow this musician who’s kind of unusual and he has a guitar that seems to be magical. Whatever band he gets into, things start changing. And the book takes place after fifty years of his musical life. At his funeral, one person from every band he’s been in starts to speak, and they discover that there was a connection between all of the things.

Meanwhile, it’s gonna span all fifty years of American music from 1950 to 2000. The early rock and roll, folk, disco and all… It’s gonna weave through everything. It will really give me a chance to really write about music. And I’m getting my musical friends — I know a lot of musicians in the States, and very varied ones, from Tony Bennett (very old) to Kid Rock (who lives in my town) to record some messages about him, as if he was real. Like, “Oh, I remember him! He was in my band! He was good!” We’ll make it like almost Forrest Gump kind of thing.

And then after that I’m going to do a non-fiction book about my experiences in Haiti with an orphanage that I operate there and that I go to every month. I watch these kids — it’ll be five years at that point– go from starving and malnourished and uneducated and lonely and left almost to die to blossoming, wonderful kids.

I just talk about what that’s like, and it’s a very, very special thing to me. It should be very uplifting for anyone who’s ever thought, “I’d like to go someplace to help.” I was the last person on earth you would think would do that. I just fell into this. I don’t have kids, so I suddenly became like a father to 40 children. I didn’t even know that kids peed the bed until I went down there and (sniffs loudly) “What the h– is that?” It was 40 beds that had been peed in. It should be both funny and heartwarming.

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I didn’t expect Mitch Albom to be so personable and charming, and it was a great experience to find that the person is even more inspiring than his books!

Got a bunch of books signed — my mom was tickled pink to find it was his actual signature and that it was dedicated to her:

I hope the 4,000-strong crowd at yesterday’s signing all went home happy, and that Cebu fans enjoy their day with him today.

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The First Phone Call from Heaven, 4/5 stars

Big thank you to National Book Store for arranging my interview!