Eat, Pray, Review

At my day job, I sell books. In particular, I sell lots of copies of Eat, Pray, Love – I just don’t sell them to guys, at all, ever. So on behalf of men everywhere, I lab-ratted and read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Love, Pray to find out what the XY set was missing. This wasn’t entirely a James T. Kirkian “To boldly go where no man has gone before” adventure; my interest with food doesn’t end with how it is prepared and tastes. Our relationship with food, the choice of what and why we eat what we do is endlessly fascinating.

Gilbert's memoir is divided into thirds -In Eat, I was expecting her to confess a lifelong ill-ease with food; replete with bouts of vegetarianism, veganism, dieting & binging, followed by an obsession with breaking food down into its constituent parts of carb/fat/protein with a Rainman type knowledge of the fat and carbs found in a specific village-made bagel. Rather than confess dietary habits, she uses the titular Eat to explain the circumstances of her divorce.

At 30, the age she and her husband have agreed to start a family, Gilbert is struck with a crisis of existence, setting in motion the events that lead to her eventual divorce. It isn’t that the book is overly ‘chicky’ - There is a ‘Sex and the City’ type of reliance on what her funny and wise friends think of her situation, but that works well with the tone of the book. Gilbert is likable and funny, like an old friend who you call or email occasionally; someone who really gets the small things and can make you laugh at the quotidian but is really overwhelmed by the bigger stuff (yeah, Pot: Kettle you’re black) - But the circumstances of her separation fail to achieve gender neutrality; I cannot imagine her being so generous and forgiving if, instead of her, it were her husband, who decided, on the eve of starting a family, he didn’t really want all that and took up with a hottie actor of all things. Just sayin’, that would have been a different book altogether, but Gilbert is exasperated by her soon to be ex’s lingering hurt.

In quick succession, a divorce decree, a book advance and a breakup with the thespian precipitate a trip to Italy - where she learns to speak Italian, goes off the anti-depressants, gets to know Italy both geographically and culturally. Gilbert makes friends, doesn't have sex, debates the theological implication of protestant and Catholic postal systems and finally eats really well. I believe her when she says the pizza in Naples is worth the trip.

The middle of the troika has the author traveling to India to pray at an ashram. The subject of prayer can be as interesting as any subject. I don’t fault her for not being Thomas Merton or Thich Nhat Hahn (Sorry, the depth of my devotional reading is shallow) but her combination of simultaneously being pilgrim and priest just doesn’t work. Worse - food is not explored at all. Shame too, the land of curry and she’s got nothing. Just as Eat wasn’t solely a diary of meals, Pray, could have addressed what food in a state of fasting and hunger means, it actually lines up well with the spiritual motif.

The book winds up in Bali. Food makes a minor comeback, not as a specific pleasure, rather as vaguely described roots, leaves and other consumables prepared to be a stand in for western medicines; curing, most notably, a yeast infection. Having lost her way in Pray, Gilbert goes back to what she does well - offering an outsider’s perspective of a foreign lands with humor, wonder and acceptance.

At this point the problem is me: I am reading the 29th edition of the paperback, even without accessing imdb or having a subscription to Us, I somehow miraculously know Julia Roberts is supposed to be play Gilbert in the movie. I know this ends well for her, I don’t need to know the specifics, I want to know about coffee, spices, tea, mind-blowingly hot Balinese food, not a kind Brazilian named Felipe. Gilbert chooses to write about Felipe, I really can’t fault her for that any more than I can spite someone their happiness.

Friend of Saucyman, Anne, succinctly points out we all would be happier if we screwed Brazilians and ate more gelato. Added to that, we might become more thoughtful, if like Gilbert, we left all our comforts in an attempt to understand both our inner workings and the world better. Like MFK Fisher’s tales of being a young bride in France, Gilbert’s writing makes you wish you were experiencing the world with her and that is about as good as travelogue gets.

Enjoy the holiday. Saucyman is all new on Tuesday.