After resisting it for two years, reluctant to spend time reading a book I predicted would be exactly what it is, I succumbed to the urgings of several friends, and I have just finished Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Love, Pray.
I enjoyed it. But did I find it to be the de facto 21st Century spiritual journey it is marketed to be? Not so much. (As it has been on the NYT Bestseller list for scores of weeks, and has been re-printed a trillion times, I dispense with giving an overview, and write as though you've already read it since you probably already have.)
At the risk of being relegated to the ranks of legion atheists and anti-spiritualists currently stomping through American letters, (some more amusing than others; to wit, the shaggy, school-boyish Christopher Hitchens, whom, when he is not being paraded around as a cash cow carnival attraction for his publisher, Hachette's Twelve, I imagine stumbling around his home, sucking on ciggies, dressed in a coffee-stained T shirt that says "I Hate Everyone"), I would like to point out the under belly of Eat, Love, Pray.
But first, a disclaimer. Gilbert is a wonderful writer. Faced with a choice between reading Gilbert versus another writer, especially another travel writer, I would likely choose Gilbert for her companionable and witty style. As an innocent reporting abroad, she is inimitable: comical observations of the natives without diminutizing them (Peter Mayle might take note), sensual descriptions of her surroundings, and delight in her good luck to be our eyes and ears.
And, at a rather large book signing in New Jersey, where the usual hazards for authors were in place--audience members who won't cede the floor, sputtering question after irrelevant question at the author once the original has been answered, and worse, the audience member who has come to witness for one and all how much she and the author have in common, in fact, are probably soul sisters!!!--I observed Gilbert taking the silliness in stride, and with grace. I liked her from afar and would be hard pressed to believe it if she were reported to be an overbearing diva in person.
So what's my gripe?
Pilgrim Gilbert was paid to have an epiphany.
Viking/Penguin, her publisher, funded Gilbert's forays into the land of I's (Italy, India, and Indonesia). With the obligation to transform hanging contractually over her head, there was little doubt she'd morph from damaged divorcee into spiritual sophisticate. True, the arrival of Felipe in her life was a nice bit of lagniappe, and a bonus for Viking--here comes the sequel!
But, even before Felipe's arrival, Gilbert was never fully alone. Never--not that we saw. She always knew she was writing for an audience, and so, really was engaged in "performance healing".
What about all the raw, utterly raw, filth that typically gets poured forth into journals during times of crisis? The self-loathing, the anger, the abject terror, the blame, even the morbid but funny observations about ourselves? That is where the real work is done. If Gilbert's account of transformation is even remotely authentic, it must be a sanitized version of what she really penned. To be fair, who wants to buy a book of mentally torqued ravings? Viking would have revoked its advance.
But, thinking in this manner, I couldn't help but wonder if Gilbert has written herself into a trap.
How deeply could Gilbert really have delved, if at all times she was editing her experience? Similar to how studies have shown that people act differently while under observation than they do when in private, I had the sense that Gilbert's book was similar to a spiritual "reality" TV show. Had she written it as a roman a clef, with an "objective" narrator's voice offering perspective, rather than as strict memoir, I would have found it more believable.
According to promotional materials, Gilbert's sequel, Weddings and Evictions, due in 2009, is about marriage to Felipe and, among other things, about her setting up house with him in rural New Jersey. No clue about the evictions part.
As it is under contract, she will have to live up to her reputation for discovering the spectacular in the mundane. But, what happens when things in Gilbert's life get boring, as they inevitably will? No trips abroad, no Latin lover romance (she's re-married, remember), no palm reading soothsayers to explode her consciousness into enlightenment.
(One theory: as a resident of our nation's most populous-per-mile state, the only "rural" I can think she's found in New Jersey are the Pinelands, which, unless she has encountered the Jersey Devil, really makes me think she is setting herself up to test her threshold for boring. If this is indeed where she is, I suspect we will hear much about the Mullica River and the Leeds family's 13th spawn, aka The Devil, and what encountering it has taught Gilbert about herself...I could be wrong, but I am willing to bet you money...)
Reading Gilbert's lovely prose, it's easy to forget that sometimes in life, there is just nothing special about the day. Or, worse, sometimes the meaning we assign the little things turn out to be misguided, or even wrong. We don't really know until we can look back with wisdom.
This is the trap I am speaking of: all those glorious epiphanies Gilbert had...they will fade. Some of them might even become irrelevant. Then what? Will she ever truly experience her life for what it is? Or, will she have to glam it up, ham it up, in order to fulfill her obligation to sell books?
Time is an essential lens for truthful perspective. To continually give the play by play of our lives, or even the instant re-play, we can hamper our ability to appreciate the long view, the one seen only from a quiet place where editors and publishers and readers and friends are not invited.
It brings me back to the woman at the book signing who practically threw herself at Gilbert, so akin did she feel their lives to be. No, no, no. This is not possible, dear woman, whoever you are. Please pull the plug on that fantasy immediately and get back to the work of living your life.
Gilbert's journey is decidedly NOT like most of ours. She might very well be a spiritual person, but to the public, first and foremost, she is an entertainer. She has an obligation the rest of us do not: to instantaneously assign meaning to every detail--or to explain, entertainingly so--why there is no meaning in a detail. She must do this because she must sell books.
Gilbert's memoir recounts a journey, a very entertaining one, but as for the quote she offers to open her book, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth...", it's best to remember that reality shows and reality itself do not necessarily share the same truth. That doesn't make one of them a lie, it just makes it a tad imprecise...
