Tablet Magazine is a project of Nextbook Inc. About Us | Contact | Terms of Service | RSS
By Marjorie Ingall | Aug 23, 2010 7:00 AM | Print | Email / Share
Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love.
Sony Pictures
I would rather sit on a stoop in the rain than see Eat Pray Love. In fact, I did just that. Last weekend, my kids were attending a drop-off birthday party at a movie theater, which not only spared me from having to sit through Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore but allowed me to attend a movie all by myself. Four out of five moms agree: Getting to sit in the dark theater, with no one tugging on you, eating trans-fat-laden popcorn, is one of the greatest joys in life. But the only movie playing at the same time was Eat Pray Love. So, I went to sit on a stoop in the rain to wait for the end of Kitty Galore.
You see, I read the book. And it infuriated me. I loved the beginning passionately, then felt increasingly angry and hoodwinked as it went on. The Elizabeth Gilbert who went to Italy to rediscover food and sensory pleasures after the breakup of her marriage was hilarious and witty. I loved her description of the "gorgeous flower-chain of curses" tossed onto a soccer field by an old Italian man watching the game. I loved that she was an unabashed word nerd like me, telling us that the word for fan in Italian is "tifoso," derived from the word for typhus"”"in other words, one who is mightily fevered." I loved that she lusted for her young Roman conversation partners but knew that acting on that lust was a mistake.
Oh, I knew Gilbert had done some stupid things in the past. But she owned them. I respected the way she was cryptic about what killed her marriage"”she was protecting her husband. I liked the way she was rueful about her self-destructive passion for a younger actor/writer/poet/yogi. When Gilbert took off for Italy, leaving both ex-husband and lover behind, I rooted for her. I rejoiced as she began to eat again. I wanted to suck down plates of pasta with her and giggle over glasses of Barolo. She was my buddy.
But then she left Italy. She went to India to learn how to pray. And I started to turn on her. At first, I made excuses for her inability to write about faith and grace with the same charm she conjured up when she wrote about food. After all, Anne Lamott had the same trouble in Traveling Mercies; it's hard to make something as internal as spirituality feel immediate. The writing-class rule is "show, don't tell," but how do you externalize belief? The book began to feel labored. When Liz wrote about her difficulty meditating and being silent, her self-deprecation started to come off as cutesy. The chattiness I'd loved in Italy was starting to feel glib.
And then one scene pulled the yoga mat out from under me completely.
It's the scene in which"”spoiler alert"”Gilbert has a revelatory, out-of-body meeting with her husband's spirit on an ashram rooftop. She and her husband's spirit forgive each other, and it is beautiful. The divide between them is gone. Suddenly, his anger and hurt evaporate, because she and he have transcended their earthly selves and their souls have communed.
I was infuriated by Gilbert's creation of a situation in which she's been absolved, in which her husband's soul has done something the man himself could not. It felt like the laziest sort of self-justifying hippie nonsense. I think you have to live with people not liking you. And it's hard for people like Gilbert (and me), people who really want to be liked, but that is the real work, accepting that not everyone will like you. It's harder than creating a transcendent moment in which the other person really does forgive you, even if he doesn't know it consciously.
Of course, I can't know that Gilbert's ex's spirit didn't meet hers on the astral plane. But I think it’s much more challenging and meaningful to accept that you may never receive absolution. It is braver"”and I think more Jewish"”to do everything in your power to make right the wrong you've done and still acknowledge that forgiveness may not be granted. It's miserable to live with loose ends. It's prettier to conjure up resolutions. But it isn't authentic.
I finished the book because I am a masochist, but I was seething. So much self-examination to so little end! Maybe I just can't escape my earthly Jewish guilt and perpetual ambivalence about everything. I realize that Elizabeth Gilbert isn't Jewish, and she's more than entitled to her own freeform spirituality. But it made me start thinking about how Judaism is more about community than self-acceptance. Ours is not a full-on feel-good religion, like Gilbert's version of Christi-Bu-ism. But neither is it self-aggrandizing pablum. I do believe the world would be a better place if we spent more time turned outward than inward.
I think back to when I lived in San Francisco and heard so many High Holiday sermons about self-forgiveness"”so much talk about forgiving ourselves, so little emphasis on apologizing to others. I think the reason I'm more comfortable with the word "religion" than the word "spirituality" is that religion involves doing rather than just thinking and feeling. Meditation and silence aren't enough. Healing the world"”the actual, physical world"”is a more lasting goal.
I don't want to be too hard on Gilbert. I actually think she did heal the world"”her book made people happy. (Not me. Other people.) That's nothing to sneeze at. Helping readers forget their troubles for a while, letting them in on a life of world travel and adventure, is a mitzvah. I understand that the real Elizabeth Gilbert is a lovely and charitable person. I am glad that she"”another spoiler alert"”found love again, and I don't begrudge her a kid-free footloose life, a gazillion dollars, or the privilege of being played by a toothy movie star with lots of hair. But I still think the Jewish takeaway is that Eat Pray Love's spiritual vision may be a nice place to visit, but we shouldn't want to live there.
More in: Anne Lamott, Books, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, India, Italy, Julia Roberts, memoirs, movies, spirituality
My book group read the book, and at our meeting not a one of us was enthralled. But you nailed her, not maliciously, but accurately. Thanks, always love your columns.
oy margorie, you graciously and diplomatically did not use the words “narcissitic” and “self-absorbed” and all their synonyms. one of the worst tell-alls/love me love me love me books i have read in years.
ok, I read the book, too, but haven’t seen the movie. She goes to italy to focus on food, but doesn’t learn Italian or Italian cooking, and hypes the glory of meeting a few ordinary tourists and locals who can (!) ride a motorcycle – it is good writing, but not adventure. Her story is supplemented by a few weeks scrubbing temple tiles and then, when the romance of that fades, falling in love with someone who is burdened by a life divided by several continents as well as the offspring of previous marriages – what a joke that she presents this as a great way to end up. Take the money and run.
This reminds me of the value of asking people to forgive you around the time of the high holy days, a tradition in some Jewish communities. Asking is a request that takes an outward effort and it may not get you “liked.”
Marjorie Ingall is an good writer. She captured me with her own sense of awareness. I did not read the book or see the movie but I enjoyed Marjorie.
Thank you.
I do not understand why I am actually finishing this book. Is it because I don’t think it can get any worse? It does. Is it because she writes in such a way that anyone with a eight grade education can read it, or, is it because I hope the final chapters make up for the previous ones? Well so far they haven’t.
I do not know what sex has to do with prayer. I do not know what witchdoctoring has to do with self realisation. And as for promising to be celibate for a year, it was an idle promise which she broke when she was supposed to be meditating with her Bali medicine man.
Does it give food for thought? Yes. How come the book got published?
Missed reading the book but, the review and comments by those who have, made me feel glad I hadnt. Yet, it was on all best seller lists for a long time.
Mirinyc
Hey, Marjorie,
You did the mitzvah of making us think, and that’s more valuable than making us feel better (in my view, anyway). I really appreciated your point about being turned outward rather than inward — I think American individualism has gotten so implicated in selfish consumerism that we may never get them untangled, and that means we have a real mess on our hands — as well as the point about religion being about doing. So many folks these days say the term “religion” makes them uncomfortable whereas “spirituality” does not, and that’s a shame for just the reason you state. Like Heschel said, religion should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
I, too, read the book for a book group. Loved Italy, liked Bali, hated India (not the country, just the section of the book). Thanks for helping me to understand why it didn’t resonate with me the way it did for others.
Read Full Article »