I don’t get why people cap on my man Mitch Albom for his books. He’s got a new book coming out this week titled For One More Day which is about a suicidal alcoholic who is granted one more day to spend with his dead mother.

I have read both of Mitch’s other books and watched both of the movies made from them and I have to say that I came away a better and more reflective person for the experience. In Mitch’s interview with Entertainment Weekly this week, he said:

I’ve always been mystified. Since when did sentimental become a bad thing? Everybody’s favorite movie is a sentimental movie–It’s a Wonderful Life, or The Wizard of Oz. Nobody’s favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everbody’s favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books? Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.

There was always something that bothered me about the styles of literary criticism I was asked to mimic in my creative writing lecture courses; they all seem so disconnected from the reader. I mean, why else read a book unless it has something to do with you?

I guess you could apply the same reasoning to religion as well. In most religious sects, it is blasphemous to say that practioners can become just like the icons who founded the faiths. Try walking into a Catholic church and announcing to everyone that you’ve had an epiphany that you are just like Christ–you will likely be hanging on the wall right next to the wooden Christ next Sunday’s mass.

But what’s the point if it doesn’t touch you personally? But then again, institutional instruction is all about putting you in line, putting you in place, giving you an identification number and making sure that you holler out that there are three lights when there are really only two (obligatory Star Trek: The Next Generation reference for those that have a pair to hear).

I often pissed off my professors because I would write about how the books affected me instead of how it commented on the state of lesbians or Indians or the souls of black folk. Piss on it. If it doesn’t affect me, it isn’t worth reading or writing about.

Mitch Albom’s books affect people on a deeply personal level and critics and criticism in general have no more effect on the average person than what color cellophane is used to wrap the leftover caviar at a million dollar a plate fundraiser in Beverly Hills.

Folks, if it doesn’t bleed then I don’t read. And I will be reading Albom’s new book.

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