Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love

I read something decidedly trashy, yet a classic in its own way: Elizabeth Gilbert's 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Reading this book in 2023, I'm struck by how accustomed to this sort of content we are now (YOLO, solo travel, wellness retreats, going to India to find yourself). I'm sure that a large part of it - the way we think of and talk about travel now - is linked to Eat, Pray, Love.

I wasn't sure what to expect when reading it, given its cultural legacy and cringe-y rom com film adaptation. But the writing is good, and I was surprised and delighted by Elizabeth Gilbert's adventures in Rome. 

Or should I say unadventures? Because all she did in Rome, really, was practise speaking Italian, read the local newspaper, and wine and dine herself. There is nothing more restorative than good food and some light reading. During the ''Eat'' part of the memoir, I thought Gilbert was at her greediest not with pizza but with the Italian language. 

I had always wondered what it was that drew people to new languages (like Jon with his Spanish) but Eat, Pray, Love gave me some insight into the aesthetic pleasures of certain languages. Italian, according to Gilbert, was a made-up language largely drawn from Dante, who wrote in a Florentine dialect, only embellished with a poet's ear. That's why, she wrote, spoken Italian has such a satisfying rhythm. There's a beautiful scene where she goes to a football match and has an eargasm from a neighbouring Italian uncle's screams and hollers, which she described as a string of flowers. (On that level, I am drawn to the musicality of Bahasa and gutteral polysyllables of German.)

The book sagged noticeably in Act 2, ''Pray'', where Gilbert stayed in her guru's yogic ashram. It's hard to care about anyone's spirituality, let alone whoever she's adopted as her personal guru. I can't help feeling that people who pray are stupid fools - this is of course my secular western Enlightenment/The Age of Reason sensibiities showing. 

Anyway, the best part of the ashram was Richard from Texas, who was the only character with a sense of humour. Everyone else just seemed stupid and wannabe-holy. On that note, why is it that Gilbert seems to like every single person she meets - and prides herself on being a people person? I would imagine a lot of problems stem from this lack of quality control.

After a whole lotta nothing, she gets out of the fucking ashram and goes to Bali for a crash course in the Balinese Matrix. Per Gilbert's theory, the Balinese organise themselves with a strong sense of where they are within their families and communities, so presumably un-rooted, flaky flitters like her do not fit in. Sure enough, she gets scammed by her bosom Balinese friend - which is what anyone with a white saviour complex absolutely deserves.

Then she starts fucking the Javier Bardem character and gets a UTI, and wow, that's supposed to be ''Love'' I guess. I never got a handle on his redeeming qualities apart from the fact that he likes (to have sex with) her, which, again, goes back to the lack of QC. It was deeply unsatisfying that after a year of doing all this stuff, she still did not find a way to relate to people that was not needing/being needed.

This made me think of 2 other examples of the White Woman Self-Transformation genre: Julie Powell's Julie & Julia and Cheryl Strayed's Wild. All 3 books were annoying in roughly the same way: gosh,so much self-obsession. Girl, you're eating steak fried in butter or standing in the middle of the awe-inspiring Pacific Crest Trail, and all you can think about is whether others find you sexually attractive or successful - WHY!!!!?? Some things are just wasted on people.