After selling 9 million copies of her book in 30 languages and inspiring a movie that grossed $47 million, we can agree “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert has it good.
However, critics and readers are debating just how “good” the literary account of her spiritual journey is for readers’ perception of happiness.
For those unfamiliar with the contents of the famous novel, here’s a little synopsis: 30-something Gilbert suddenly discovers she is unhappy in her marriage and leaves her posh and cushy New York City life to pursue true pleasure, spirituality and balance on a year-long journey through Italy, India and Indonesia.
The criticism most popularly fired at her book, and now the movie, is that she is a washed up, white, upper-middle class woman of privilege flaunting her fancy travels and making unnecessary claims as to what constitutes true self-discovery.
B---h magazine passionately labels Gilbert’s novel as part of a growing body of popular “priv-lit” — literature for the privileged (think the “Sex and the City” novels and Oprah’s new book, “Stories from Oprah”). Joushunda Sanders and Diana Barnes-Brown assert, “Books, blogs, and articles saturated with fantastical wellness schemes for women seem to have multiplied, featuring journeys (existential or geographical) that offer the sacred for a hefty investment of time, money, or both.”
Is skepticism and dismissal really the way to approach Gilbert’s bestseller, though?
Anyone who has read the book should have picked up on the idea that chasing down your personal demons is grueling work that causes introspective pain, whether you are eating exotic pasta or warming your kids’ frozen fish sticks for dinner.
It’s undeniable that traveling around the world is an option overwhelmingly inaccessible to most, but that’s why we pick up her book; she did something unexpected and extraordinary. Literature is a means of escape and transcendence that allows a reader to imagine a life alien to his or her own.
Gilbert isn’t responsible for the value judgment her readers place on her narrative; she is simply a storyteller taking part in the literary process. If you don’t want to hear it, don’t buy it. Moreover, if you think her writing should be considered invalid because she is rich and white, then have fun defending most of the literature in the English cannon over the last several centuries.
Slate magazine’s Katie Roiphe get’s it right in her 2007 review of the book:
“There is an undeniable intimacy in her tone, an authentic effort toward honesty that disarms criticism. She is after the kind of connection with the reader that you have with someone you sit next to on a plane, to whom you tell your life story, and never see again.”
You can choose to lean over that armrest, smile warmly and open this bestselling novel, or not.
To ponder is to fulfill the purpose of literature, regardless of the degree of privilege the author is associated with.
Send your self-discovery budget qualms to anna.bethancourt@asu.edu
