Eat, Pray, Grow Up Already

(A book I loved and hated at once)

Eat, Pray, Love is a beautiful book because any book that is about love, God and finding yourself is a beautiful book, assuming it actually manages to be about those things instead of some close-but-not-quite variant. This book manages to be about those things, so it is beautiful. That said, however, it is not perfect or even close to it.

Elizabeth Gilbert, as a writer and narrator, has some annoying habits. She is a highly self-conscious narrator, making lots of distracting sarcastic comments. In the first section of the book, she seems uncomfortable with the fact that she is writing about God and love, so she tries a bit too hard to be light and funny. Phrases like “A rebel poet-Yogi from Yonkers. God’s own sexy rookie shortstop” (18) are entirely too obvious attempts at staying young and trendy when you’re really feeling a bit scared about writing about God and your divorce at age 35. That kind of writing might work for “Sex in the City”, but that’s because the show is all about sex, which is somewhat different from a search for enlightenment. The voice here simply does not ring true.

Throughout the book, Gilbert reminds us that we are indeed reading a book, and that she is, in fact, writing a book, and that she is a writer of books, a book writer from New York, and that she has sifted through several possible titles for this book, the book she is writing, which we are reading. Forgive me, but I don’t give a damn what you thought about calling the book. I really don’t.

Gilbert’s attempts at false lightness become grating early in the book, as on page 37, she describes a gelato stand called “Il Gelato di San Crispino.” She then says, “I’m not sure, but I think this might translate as “the ice cream of the crispy saint.” Um, are you kidding? Surely she is only pretending not to recognize the name Saint Crispin. You’re not allowed to visit Italy and not even recognize the names of saints. You don’t have to know who each saint is, but this mistake is like hearing the name Bob Barker and asking, “So, is he like, a dog trainer?” No! Bad writer!

Somewhere between page 58 and page 59, between dinner with the eclectic Giulio and Maria and friendly conversation with Luca Spaghetti the Italian tax accountant, I have a realization: She doesn’t have a job. The rest of us have to get through life’s traumas while holding down a job and having tedious conversations with friends and concerned relatives. We have to manage our budgets, pay our own bills and cook our own dinners because who (in reality) eats rich gourmet dinners every night? And she’s seeking God in a plate full of pasta on someone else’s dime? Hrmph.

Now I have to skip briefly to the end of the book because it is so highly unsatisfying. To be quite honest, Felipe the 52-year-old Brazilian gives me the creeps. I realize that at this point in the book, our pal Liz has made some major progress, she feels practically enlightened, and she has bought a house for a near stranger, but I just don’t buy it, especially when she falls in love with this guy whom I can only picture looking something like the father from the Adams Family. And then he says, “That’s enough, darling. Come to my bed now,” which in my world, would get a man promptly set on fire. What I want to say to her right now is this: Honey, I understand that you haven’t gotten laid in a real long time, but please for the love of that god you just found, do not marry this fucker. I suppose that if she says she really loves him, then she means it. Maybe the character development is just severely lacking here, and I hope it is, because the other option is that she is deluding herself, or rather, her serious need to get laid and be utterly worshipped for a while (and we do all have that need) is deluding her. But one way or the other, I simply don’t buy how great this guy is supposed to be.

Anyway, back to India. This section is all about meditation, prayer and enlightenment. Gilbert spends a lot of words on the experience of meditation, on trying to explain how meditation works, and on her personal experiences with prayer. I’m just not sure that many words should ever be spoken or written about meditation. The more words you pour onto a topic like that, the more the conversation turns into a long-winded “Look at how enlightened I am.” Gilbert’s narration is perched right on the border between sharing a spiritual experience and sickening her reader with self-absorption.

I say that, and yet, I liked this section. Little nuggets of information and ideas throughout the book turn out to be helpful: Write a petition to God. Choose your thoughts. Dedicate the difficult practices of your life to someone who could benefit from the energy you are expending. These are all good ideas. And her descriptions of how meditation feels are, at their best, really lovely. It’s just that she sometimes gets a little too self-indulgent, or perhaps she is trying to meet a page requirement set by her publisher, so she’s filling in the blanks with lots of pretty words.

And on to Bali. This section of Gilbert’s journey feels, at times, superfluous, and after the elevation she describes at the Ashram, it’s difficult to believe her naivety as she romanticizes certain ideas about Balinese culture. She describes the attitude of placing one’s community over the self as creating a peaceful and positive environment for all. She then must acknowledge that the practice of arranged marriage can result in horrifying abuse for the women given away by their families. But she pads the realization by saying, “When this system works – which it does in this healthy society almost all the time – it produces the most sane, protected, calm, happy and balanced human beings in the world.”

I had a hard time truly grasping the meaning of phrases like “rose colored glasses” until I read that statement. Even while acknowledging that the whole country of Indonesia is corrupt from the highest official to the guy who puts gas in your car, she says, “For now, all I can say for certain is that I love the house I have rented and that the people in Bali have been gracious to me without exception … what I’m here to do is work on my own equilibrium, and this still feels, at least for now, like a nourishing climate in which to do that.” She says this after bribing a local official to illegally extend her visa so she can stay and finish writing her book, you know, this book, the one we are reading, which she wrote.

All in all, Eat, Pray, Love is at times quite beautiful although occasionally embarrassing. It is by turns enlightened and naïve. But the one thing I really want to know is this: When she leaves her fantasy world, when she has to start working on the next book, meeting with editors and so forth, when she’s busily traveling around the world to keep up a relationship with her Brazilian lover, will the world still look rosy? I hope it does, for her sake, but I don’t really want to hear about it anymore.

Find the book here: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia