2006: For One More Day by Mitch Albom

The Author:

Mitch Albom (1958-    ) was born in Passaic, New Jersey, the son of Ira Albom, a corporate executive, and Rhoda Albom, an interior designer.  He attended Brandeis university, receiving a B.A. in 1979, and an M.B.A. from Columbia University in 1982. Albom embarked on a popular and critically successful career as a sportswriter and broadcaster in Detroit, winning numerous awards for his sports columns.  In fact, his first six books include four anthologies of his sportswriting (The Live Albom (1988), and Live Albom II-IV (1990, 1992, 1995)) and two long-form non-fiction sports books.  His major breakthrough as a popular writer came in 1997 with the publication of Tuesdays with Morrie, documenting his conversations with terminally ill Morrie Schwartz, a former professor of his from Brandeis University.  The book was promoted by Oprah, who also produced a made-for-TV movie of the book in 1999 starring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon.  Albom's first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003), which was a huge commercial success.  He penned two plays, Duck Hunter Shoots Angel (2004) and And the Winner Is (2005). His 2006 novel, For One More Day, was the bestseller of that year.  Since then, Albom has written one non-fiction book, Have a Little Faith (2009), and two 'inspirational' novels, The Time Keeper (2012) and The First Phone Call from Heaven (2013).  Albom currently hosts a nationally aired general talk show, and a weekly sports show.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover/Cover art by Phil Rose

Length: 197 pages
Subject/Genre: Family/'Inspirational' Fiction

For One More Day starts with a prologue in which an unnamed narrator shows up in the small town of Pepperville Beach, and meets Charles "Chick" Benetto, a washed up major league baseball player who had tried to kill himself.  The majority of the novel is Benetto telling his story.  In broad strokes: His parents got divorced when he was a kid, and the dad, who was a jerk and the reason Chick became a baseball player, moved away.  He dropped out of college to play major league baseball, made it to the world series, lost, got injured, his marriage fell apart, his mom died, he became an alcoholic, and now, after finding out he wasn't invited to his daughter's wedding, he decided to kill himself.  His attempt to kill himself is unintentionally bizarre.  He gets drunk and drives back to Pepperville Beach, only to crash into a truck on the offramp and he gets thrown clear of the car.  That he survives is believable, that he survives and is then able to walk to a water tower, climb it, and throw himself off, and survive that, seems more like a gag from the Simpsons.  Anyway, after he throws himself off the water tower he walks to (or hallucinates himself walking to) his childhood home where —Surprise!— his dead mother is there and acting like nothing happened.  Chick gets to talk about how much he missed her while his mother goes around comforting a few people who are soon to die.  

There is a significant difference between sentimental and saccharine, and this novel is exclusively the latter.  It's also unashamedly pandering to a specific demographic, namely mothers.  I realize that sounds weird, but let me explain.  The vast majority of the novel is Chick lamenting not appreciating his mother more. He even fills up a journal listing every time his mother stood up for him and every time he didn't stand up for his mother.  The former includes times when his mother really shouldn't have taken his side (e.g. Chick wanted to invest in a sports bar after his career ended.  His wife points out that Chick shouldn't, as he knows nothing about running a sports bar.  His mother backs him up.  The sports bar is financially disastrous.) and the latter includes a middle-aged Chick regretting every instance of rudeness from his childhood.  I started writing what platitude we were supposed to learn from each of these in my copy.  One example, taking up two pages of a less than 200 page novel, tells us about when Chick was six years old, and his mother made him a rag and toilet paper mummy costume for the school Halloween parade.  It starts raining during the parade, and the costume is ruined, causing Chick no end of embarrassment.  "When we reach the schoolyard, where the parents are waiting with cameras, I am a wet, sagging mess of rags and toilet paper fragments....I burst into tears.  'You ruined my life!' I yell."  So remember, if your six year old child is ever upset at you, he'll regret it deeply when he grows up.  In fact, this entire novel seems to be an extrapolation of "You'll miss me when I'm gone."

Look, I have a good relationship with my parents (Hi, Mom!), and, like any child who ever existed, there were times when I was a real brat.  But I think everyone in my family is well-adjusted enough to not obsess over every temper tantrum I had when I when I was still using training wheels.  Family is important, and I don't mean any disrespect to people who dedicate their lives to their family, but the mother in this novel has absolutely no interests besides her kids.  They are her entire life.  If she did or thought anything that wasn't about them, it didn't make it into the novel.  And this novel panders to this personality.

While I generally try to avoid giving away endings, I want to break that rule here.  After the monologue that makes up the majority of the book, there's an epilogue where the unnamed narrator from the prologue talks about Chick's death natural causes a few years later.  I only mention the epilogue because the last paragraph reveals that the unnamed narrator was Chick's daughter the whole time!  What a twist!  Except, it doesn't change anything.  At all.  Nothing is resolved by this, nothing is changed or reinterpreted.  I guess Albom thought books should end with a twist, so he decided to hide an irrelevant piece of information and reveal it at the end.  Is it a surprise?  Yes, in the sense that no one was expecting it. But no one was expecting it because it was completely beside the point.  It doesn't strengthen the novel in anyway, it just confuses being unpredictable with being original.  So, standard formulaic bull.

Beyond pandering to a specific demographic, Albom had a lot going for him with this book.  Beyond having his own show, there was the Oprah connection.  Her TV movie version of For One More Day, starring Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) and Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist, Requiem for a Dream) came out in 2007.

But more than that, For One More Day was the first novel Starbucks selected for its Book Break program.  According to the linked New York Times article, "Starbucks [was] selling “For One More Day” in about 5,400 stores in the United States..."

So, its success isn't that surprising.  A lot of people bought it, but I don't think you should, unless you fall into the particular demographic Albom is writing for and want to be pandered to.

Bestsellers of 2006:

1. For One More Day by Mitch Albom
2. Cross by James Patterson
3. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
4. Next by Michael Crichton
5. Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris
6. Lisey's Story by Stephen King
7. Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
8. Cell by Stephen King
9. Beach Road by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge
10. The Fifth Horseman by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Also Published in 2006:

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Only Revolutions by Mark Danielewski
What Is the What by Dave Eggers
An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Everyman by Philip Roth

Sources:
Albom, Mitch. For One More Day. New York: Hyperion, 2006. Print.

"Mitch Albom." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web.

Motoko, Rich. "Starbucks Picks Novel to Start Its Book-Sale Program." The New York Times. New 
     York Times, August 8, 2006. Web,

2003-2004: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Author:

Dan Brown (1964-    ) was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where his father worked as a professor of mathematics.  Brown went on to study at Philips Exeter and later Amherst, from which he received his B.A. in 1986.  He moved out to Hollywood to pursue a career in music.  He released a few albums by 1994.  In 1993, he moved back to New Hampshire with Blythe Newlon, whom he married, and taught English at Philips Exeter.  He and his wife co-wrote his first book: 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman.  Brown was credited under the pseudonym Danielle Brown. He quit teaching to work full time in 1996 and published his first novel, Digital Fortress, in 1998.  Angels & Demons (2000) was his first novel starring Robert Langdon.  His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003) was the bestselling novel of the year it was published and the following year.  His next two novels, The Lost Symbol (2009) and Inferno (2013) were the bestselling novels in the year they were published.

The Book:

1st ed. cover/Jacket design - Michael Windsor

Length: 454 pages

Subject/Genre: Religious Conspiracy/Thriller

The Da Vinci Code is the second thriller starring symbologist Robert Langdon, who finds himself caught in the endgame of a centuries long battle between the Opus Dei, a real life Catholic organization, and the Priory of Sion, which in real life was an organization concocted in the 1950s by a megalomaniac would-be cult leader, who had documents forged to connect it to the similarly named Abbey of Sion (alt. spelling of Zion) that existed for a few centuries early in the last millennium.  Despite Brown's statements at the beginning of his book, there is no connection between the modern day and ancient organizations, nor were any of the famous historical figures members of either organization.  His declaration that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate" is also blatantly false. For example, Langdon talks about how the pyramid above the entrance to the Louvre has exactly 666 glass panes, and that this was done at the express command of the president at the time.  Simply put: Bullshit.  Which brings me to my biggest problem with this book.

If you are the least bit skeptical of 'facts' like the above, if you have a passing knowledge of art history, if you can intuit the difference between a fringe theory and a widely accepted position, then Robert Langdon comes across as a well-educated hack.  He's more likely to host a reality show, right between Ghost Hunters and Alien Mysteries.  Hell, even his specialty is bullshit.  'Symbologist' doesn't even make etymological sense, and he's only called that because 'Art Historian' doesn't sound impressive enough.

   
I actually read both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons when I was in high school, and they're pretty much the same novel.  There's a massive conspiracy tied to a religious organization and its history, Robert Langdon, with the help of a beautiful young woman has to solve a mystery, Brown does everything he can to shout that 'untrustworthy guy with a grudge' is the bad guy, but instead it turns out that 'guy beyond reproach' is the bad guy, roll credits.  I'm expecting The Lost Symbol and Inferno to follow this formula as well. Because if it works once, why not run it into the ground?  

But why did The Da Vinci Code work?  Or more accurately, why did it sell a metric shit ton of copies?  Good old fashioned controversy and lying.  Pretty much everything about the book and all the discussions treat the conspiracy fever dreams as accepted historical fact.  To quote the dust jacket from my copy: "The late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others....The Da Vinci Code is simultaneously lightning paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail."  [bolded words mine]*   As to the first claim: Bull shit.  As to the second, the book has tons of research and detail, but much of it inaccurate.  The book garnered so much controversy (and therefore attention, and therefore sales) because it presented itself a true and radical reexamining of history, rather than a second-rate conspiracy thriller. The premise, in case you've managed to stay unaware, is that Jesus Christ had a kid, and that the Priory of Sion has always protected the descendant, as well as the holy grail, which is actually the body of Mary Magdalene.  Side note, the 1950's Priory of Sion, created by a man named Pierre Plantard, who claimed that it protected the descendants of the Merovingian dynasty (which is 5th-8th  century Northern European) which he tied to the medieval legend of the last great catholic emperor, all of which he claimed to be.  In 1982, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln published The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which was largely based on the forgeries of Plantard, and added the idea that Christ's descendants moved north and became the Merovingian Dynasty (*cough* Bullshit *cough*).  Anyway, despite being a fictionalized version of a fictionalized version of an easily debunked hoax, the public treated the claims in the Da Vinci Code as something  more than, to repeat myself, bullshit.

Anyway, as I'm sure you know, The Da Vinci Code was given a film adaptation.

The film includes Ian McKellan, Audrey Tautou (Amélie) and stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon as he attempts to beat Forrest Gump's record for historical revisionism.

I have two more novels in this series to read, and I'm going to read them with the view of Robert Langdon as an educated loony and the novel as his unsubstantiated claims.  As for my recommendations to you, just watch Ancient Aliens.  At least that will only take you 45 minutes.

*As I was copying this out, I noticed that some letters in the dust jacket are bolded.  If you put all the bold letters in order, you get "Is there no help for the widow's son," a phrase tied to freemasonry, the subject of his next novel.

Bestsellers of 2003:

1. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
2. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
3. The King of Torts by John Grisham
4. Bleachers by John Grisham
5. Armageddon by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
6. The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy
7. The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson
8. Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell
9. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
10.The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

Bestsellers of 2004:

1. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
2. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
3. The Last Juror by John Grisham
4. Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
5. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
6. State of Fear by Michael Crichton
7. London Bridges by James Patterson
8. Trace by Patricia Cornwell
9. The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
10: The Da Vinci Code: Special Illustrated Collector's Edition by Dan Brown


Also published in 2003-4:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Runaway by Alice Munro
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley

1950: The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson

The Author: 

Henry Morton Robinson (1898-1961) was born in Boston, the oldest of eleven children.  Upon graduating high school, Robinson served in the U.S. military for two years.  He then attended Columbia University and began publishing poetry, his first book, Children of Morningside, being published in 1924.  That same year, he received his M.A. and went on to teach at Columbia.  

He produced volumes of poetry, novels, and non-fiction works in the following decades.  In 1944, Robinson and Joseph Campbell released "The Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake."  The Cardinal, published in 1950, was Robinson's most successful work.

The Book:

Length: 579 pages
Subject/Genre: Catholic priests/religious fiction

The Cardinal follows the story of Father Stephen Fermoyle, a priest from a working class Boston family, from his first assignment through his rise to the position of Cardinal.  

I've read several books about priests or religious professionals so far on this list, and while Robinson's prose may be the nicest, I'm not that fond of the story for a few reasons.  I'm going to compare this to a couple other novels I reviewed, 1913's The Inside of the Cup and 1941's The Keys of the Kingdom.  The Inside of the Cup deals with its protagonist coming to reexamine and reinterpret his faith.  While Father Fermoyle has challenges thrown at him, there's (at most) a little uneasiness on his part, but he learns a valuable lesson and moves on.  Generally speaking, Stephen Fermoyle is a good guy who cares about everybody and wants to make the world a better place.  The same is true of the protagonist in The Keys of the Kingdom, but the protagonist of that novel is not always able to overcome the obstacles set before him and, because of this extreme honesty and kindness, does not climb higher in the church.  The big problem I have with The Cardinal is that Father Fermoyle doesn't really face much resistance. Things just work out because he's a nice guy.    

Of course, that may be the point.  When doing research on the novel, I usually saw it referred to as "inspiring."  Assuming this isn't just a case of the phrase 'inspirational literature' being synonymous with 'religious literature,' it's easy to see why people liked it. It's a story about a good man who, through being good and honest, succeeds.  It's an affirmation of the values we are told to cherish.  More than a few of the reviews I read included people saying that it made them want to be a priest when they were kids.  

There is a sense of nostalgia running through The Cardinal, and not just because it's set in the first half of the 20th century.  It's clear that Robinson had a love for the church and this shows in his writing.     

While I've not been able to confirm it, the claims that Stephen Fermoyle is at least partly based on the cardinal Francis Spellman seem reasonable.  At the risk of going on a weird little tangent, there's a pretty vicious letter that Hemingway wrote to Spellman after Spellman had a bunch of seminarians break a gravediggers strike in 1949.

My Dear Cardinal:   

In every picture that I see of you there is more mealy mouthed arrogance, fatness and over-confidence.   

As a strike breaker against catholic workers, as an attacker of Mrs. Roosevelt, I feel strongly that you are over-extending yourself.  It is very bad for a Prince of the Church to become over-confident.

I know that you lied about the Spanish Republic and I know why you lied.  I know who you take your orders from and why such orders are given.  You are heading a minority group in the United States, to which I was a dues-paying member, but you are heading it with arrogance, insolence, and the fatness of a Prince of the Church.

The word in Europe is that you will be the next, and first, American Pope.  But please disabuse yourself on this and do not keep pressing so hard.  You will never be Pope as long as I am alive.


Being a religious novel, The Cardinal does take up some controversial topics, most notably abortion.  Specifically, abortion when giving birth would definitely kill the mother.  Putting aside the rest of the debate on abortion, and just focusing on this specific circumstance, it's clear how it would be a morally contentious point with no easy answer.  Unless, of course, you're Stephen Fermoyle, in which case the answer is unquestionably to let the mother die.  This view plays a major part in an important plot point.  I don't mean to get hung up about it, but the issue is not handled well in the novel at all.  

That bit of unpleasantness aside, the book kept selling, and was the #4 best seller in 1951.  A film version was released in 1963, starring Tom Tryon (I've never heard of him, either).

The Cardinal is well-written, and if you're looking for a religious, inspirational story, then this should work for you.   

Also Published in 1950:

Isaac Asimov - I, Robot

Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles

Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End

C. S. Lewis - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Sources: 

Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Scribner. Supplement 7: 1961-1965. Print.  

Hemingway, Ernest. Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917-1961. New York: Scribner. 

      1981. Web.   

Robinson, Henry Morton. The Cardinal. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1950. Print.

1935: Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas

The Author:
            Lloyd Cassel Douglas (1877-1951) was born in Columbia City, Indiana, the son of a Lutheran minister.  He became a Lutheran minister himself in 1903 and married Bessie Porch in 1904.  Between 1903 and 1911 Douglas preached in Indiana, Ohio, and Washington D.C. From 1911 through 1915, he was director of religious work at the University of Illinois.  After that, he preached at various churches around the United States and Montreal, retiring from the ministry in 1933.

            His first successful novel was 1929’s Magnificent Obsession.  He remained extremely popular for the rest of his life, appearing on Publishers Weekly’s  top ten annual bestsellers list thirteen times from 1932 to 1953, taking the number one spot four times. 

The Book:

            Green Light starts with the stock market crash in 1929, signalling the beginning of the Great Depression.  The protagonist, a doctor named Newell Paige, is preparing for surgery with his friend and mentor, Dr. Endicott.  The latter, shaken by his financial loss, makes an error in the surgery, resulting in the death of the patient, one Mrs. Dexter, with whom Dr. Paige had grown close over the preceding weeks.  Dr. Paige, hoping to save Dr. Endicott’s reputation, takes the blame and runs off under an assumed name. 

            There are two major plotlines and a few subplots.  The other major plotline deals with Mrs. Dexter’s daughter, Phyllis, who falls for Dr. Paige, meeting him under his assumed name.  But both major plots and almost all the subplots are tied together by Dean Harcourt of Trinity Cathedral, whose philosophy and advice spur on the novel’s other characters. 

            His philosophy is frequently treated by the other characters as a groundbreaking revelation.  This philosophy is essentially just a rephrasing of Boethius’s philosophy in regards to free will and divine providence*, which Douglas, having spent decades as a minister, would be well aware.  While this philosophy would certainly help console the millions of readers who lost everything they had and were struggling just to stay afloat, I find it a bit disingenuous that Douglas would so heavily borrow from Boethius without so much as mentioning the philosopher’s name anywhere in the novel.

            But the philosophy is like mortar and the characters bricks.  It keeps everything connected but is not as substantial.  The characters are, generally, relatable yet pretty superficial.  Dr. Paige’s decisions at the beginning of the novel are perplexing, to the detriment of the whole, but eventually are more understandable, and relatable in retrospect.  Unfortunately, the characters don’t seem to develop as much as instantly change, as if Dean Harcourt had flipped a switch when he talked to them.  This complete 180 in terms of how the characters think and behave is one of the least relatable aspects of the novel.

            I was, however, impressed by the structure.  It drifts between the main storylines with their subordinate subplots, tethered together by Dean Harcourt and his philosophy.  Douglas manages this frequent shifting without seeming unfocused which is not an easy task. 

            It’s well structured, but everything else about it seems pretty average.  Don’t construe this as an insult, as it puts Green Light above many other bestsellers (and leagues above The Eyes of the World).  Its success was largely a matter of the time in which it was published.  There’s a reason the title of the work of Boethian philosophy Douglas uses was The Consolation of Philosophy: it attempts to put the troubles of the individual in perspective, as part of the necessary greater good, which, during the Great Depression, would strike home with a lot of people. 

            But this philosophy wasn’t unique to Douglas, and there wasn’t much to keep this work relevant (although I’d be remiss not to point out how little dated it seems).  In 1937, a film version of Green Light was released, starring Errol Flynn as Dr. Newell Paige.

If you’re wondering what impact the film had, suffice it to say that it’s not present on Netflix, Hulu, or Rotten Tomatoes. 

            I wouldn’t say that Green Light is a bad book, rather it’s thoroughly ok.  I wouldn’t try to dissuade anyone from reading it, but it’s not something I would be quick to recommend, either. 

*Specifically two of Boethius’s answers to age old theological questions.  The first being “Why would bad things be allowed to happen to good people and vice-versa?”  Boethius’s answer (and Douglas’s Dean Harcourt’s) is that the perils a person is faced with offer the person a chance to develop more fully, to improve.  The second, more metaphysical question, is “How can there be an omniscient deity and free will?”  Douglas doesn’t mention the omniscient deity part, but uses essentially the same answer: Humanity is being drawn towards progress.  While the fate of the individual may be negative, the fate of the whole is moving in the right direction.  In Boethian terms, the overall scope of human progress towards some goal is the divine plan (Douglas’s Harcourt calls it “The Long Parade”).  This is, of course, a drastic oversimplification, in part due to the limited space here, and in (larger) part due to my own fairly limited knowledge of the subject. 



Also Published in 1935:

T.S. Eliot - Murder in the Cathedral
George Santayana - The Last Puritan
John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat

Sources:
Douglas, Lloyd. Green Light. 1935. New York: Avon. 1972. Print.

Kunitz, Stanley. Twentieth Century Literature: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern 
            Literature. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company. 1942. Print.