Her.meneutics: 'Eat Pray Love' Book Club Discussion

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« An Open Letter to Anne Rice | Main | India: It's Complicated »

August 12, 2010

'Eat Pray Love' Book Club Discussion

For all the bad and the ugly in Elizabeth Gilbert's 2006 spiritual memoir, I wanted to hold on to the good. Here's what I found.

Katelyn Beaty

After finally reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s enormously popular 2006 memoir, Eat Pray Love, I could write an entire review about any one of these observations:

(1) The story embodies everything wrong with bourgeois Western spirituality: it’s self-centered, consumerist, and privileged without even knowing it.

(2) Gilbert offers a self-made spirituality, one that encourages readers to “cherry-pick” whatever rituals from various traditions make them feel better, without examining those traditions’ history or ways they flat-out contradict each other. For Gilbert, faith is primarily therapeutic, not theistic. And of course, her faith and mine clash on many points.

(3) If Gilbert talks the way she writes — (lots of parenthetical jokes) and ALL CAPS and italics! — she would exhaust me in about five minutes.

The book (whose film adaptation starring Julia Roberts comes out tomorrow) follows the newly divorced and seriously distraught writer on her trek to Italy, India, and Indonesia in search of psychic healing and spiritual insight. “Eat” takes place in Rome, where the 34-year-old savors the Italian language and an abundance of gelato, margherita pizza, and enough pasta to widen her waistline a couple blessed notches. “Pray” chronicles Gilbert’s four-month stay in a secluded ashram in Muktananda, where she gets up at 3 every morning, learns how to chant Sanskrit and meditate for hours, and meets Richard, her “big Texas Yogi” friend, who always has a well-timed word of advice. “Love” follows Gilbert’s stay in Bali, Indonesia, where — surprise — she falls for a significantly older, wealthy Brazilian named Felipe who calls her “darling” and makes tender love to her for days upon days.

Gilbert has a hard life.

And it would be easy for me to wax self-righteous and analytical about Eat Pray Love, which has spawned a slew of film-related products: a fragrance line, special tourist packages, a three-day blitz on the Home Shopping Network, even a phone app. Yet I wanted to approach this memoir with as open a mind and heart as possible. I wanted to assume the best about Gilbert, to see the goodness that one friend saw: “[U]nderneath many of Gilbert’s Eastern-leaning articulations of theology and worldview is a deeply Christian narrative that involves a fall, a search for God, and an experience of divine grace that is taken not only for the self, but extended to others as well.”

Whether Gilbert’s memoir echoes the biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption is something to be discerned by Christian readers in community. But I think believers, perhaps women in particular, might glean at least one nugget of wisdom from Eat Pray Love:

Simple pleasures point us to God. “[America] is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one,” writes Gilbert while in Rome. “Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure).” Gilbert observes that even when we aren’t working, we are still doing something — and often that something is soul-deadening instead of life-giving, and not even restful.

Gilbert escaped this cycle by moving to a country that more readily embraces cycles of rest — and that clearly celebrates the joy of food and drink. (There’s even an Italian phrase for “the beauty of doing nothing”: Il bel far niente.) After she and a friend travel to Naples to taste “the best pizza in the world,” Gilbert starts thinking about her weight, which has grown steadily on her “No Carb Left Behind” tour. Yet, she writes, “When I look at myself in the mirror . . . I see a bright-eyed, clear-skinned, happy and healthy face. I haven’t seen a face like that on me for a long time.” Later she suggests that “the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity.”

We aren’t meant to live for pleasure alone; God has given us work to do, and that work will tire us. But, for those trying to swim against the tide of our hurried, desperately restless culture, Gilbert’s own Italian Sabbath might help us relax more easily into the Sabbath God has made for us (Mark 2:27). And her no-holds-barred enjoyment of food (one description of “algae-green leaves of spinach, tomatoes so red and bloody they looked like a cow’s organs” nearly brought me tears) might help us just enjoy the simple but essential gift of it. Food didn’t have to be pleasurable, but in God’s grace and design, it is. Instead of scarfing the box of cereal in a moment of stress and hunger — which leaves me feeling gross anyway — I want to eat in a way that recalls the best food God has provided us: “Thou invitest me to Thy feast,” Augustine wrote in his Confessions. “Thou willest to give me the heavenly food and bread of angels to eat; none other, in truth, than Thyself, the living bread, which didst descend from heaven; and givest life to the world.”

This is what I took away from Eat Pray Love. What about you, Sarah and Laura?

Comments

I loved "Eat, Pray and Love" and was pushed immeasurably in my own walk with God after reading this book. I judged Liz and her messy divorce and subsequent love affair gone awry for being selfish and for lack of a better word mean. I thought she was incredibly narcissistic in many ways too. But the more I read the more I enjoyed her writing which although may have been exhausting for you Katelyn, I found it highly relatable and similar to having my best friend sit down next to me and tell me the story of her past year. I loved laughing and empathizing though I did do my share of eye-rolling. I eventually overcame my judgments of her however, because it was there that I found her desperation for God, a desperation that has been conspicuously absent in my own life. She yearned for God. She woke up early for God. She stayed up late for Him. She got attacked by mosquitoes for him. Perhaps her religious practices aren't ones that Christians normally use to reach Jesus; perhaps some of them are actually anti-Biblical. But at the same time, where is our desperation? Where is our demanding of God to be in our lives and just our demanding of us to know him in general?
In the end I realized I'm just as broken as Liz but likely more ostracized (and a self-imposed ostracism it seems) from Him. I want to pursue and Liz has helped me realize that this needs to happen again.

I read the book and was very disappointing. The basic message was if you don't feel like being married anymore, divorce your husband, take yourself on a long trip, meet someone else and get remarried. I don't recall any remorse on Gilbert's part about divorcing her first husband for no valid reason that even she could articulate, and I feel sorry for him that he has to now watch her become rich and raised to almost "hero" status for this story. What sad values our country has to be so in love with this story.

I too loved this book! I am currently, and for the past two years, going through a very difficult divorce. I related to her feelings of soul searching and to her journey of self-realization. Sometimes it takes a person hitting their own personal "bottom of the pit" for them to understand the need for God in their life. I felt that her journey was a slow coming up for air in which she began to see her life as it truly was.She met God in her own way, as each and every person must. Somehow I believe that God is tolerant of that. His ways are not man's ways. He looks at the heart.
I also enjoyed immensely the Eat part of her trip in Italy. I have been to Italy three times and have fallen head over heels in love with the culture. There, they say that we Americans live to work, and they Italians work to live; so true. They very much enjoy life and their food is superb. I would live in Rome in a heartbeat. If there was anywhere better to begin her journey of healing, I don't know where it is!

Thanks for your feedback, Morgan, Jen, and Nanci. Morgan, I really appreciate your point that Gilbert wore her desperation for God on her sleeve -- she went to great lengths to find him, even if her spiritual conclusions are off. I can't think of a time when I was willing to endure an hour of mosquito attacks to listen to the Lord.

Jen, I resonate with your frustration with Gilbert's lackadaisical attitude about her divorce. She didn't express any remorse about the parting of ways. At the same time, she didn't use the book to vent about her ex-husband. She seemed to just want to acknowledge the pain of the divorce and move on, even if moving on in unhealthy or sinful ways.

This is very personal for me. My daughter-in-law, who is a Christian, read this book and subsequently told her husband that she wants to leave him. They have been married for ten years, and she says he has done nothing wrong and that he is her "best friend."

Needless to say, my son is totally devastated, since she is the love of his life.

This kind of scenario is becoming very common. I know of several other couples who are going through the very same thing.

I have not read the book and will not read it, but it seems to me that Ms. Gilbert is becoming rich and famous by writing a clever book about nothing more than self-indulgence.

i enjoyed EPL..(at least the Eat part:).,,,but share your impressions of it...i found much of it pretty silly. Gilbert's latest book "Committed" was much better, in my opinion, and actually makes a pretty strong case (whether she means to or not) for traditional marriage...

Katelyn,

I appreciate your observation about Gilbert's self-made spirituality. It made me wonder, do you think that her beliefs could accurately be described as in the vein of "moralistic, therapeutic deism"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism

And the reminder about simple pleasures pointing us to God is a good one. I think I'm going to go eat lunch!

First, Anonymous, I feel for your pain. But reading a book like this isn't going make someone decide to get a divorce. Having said that, here is my take. I thought the book was beautifully written. I would like to be able to write like she does. It was clever, funny, engaging. I was touched that she wanted so desperately to find "god," even if it was not the God of the universe, the one I worship. I think Christians can learn a lot from her passion. (She has since lost a lot of this passion except for an occasional yoga class because she realized that to keep up with it was a full time job and she wasn't prepared to spend 12 hours a day doing nothing but meditating.) Toward the end of her 2nd session she really lost me, much like the Beatles lost me when they took this same religious direction. I would recommend the first half of the book but not the second half because of that and because there was more (and fairly explicit) sex than I felt comfortable with in an autobiography. I was interested that she grieved so much over her divorce, because I always thought it was only the people who were divorced against their will who grieved, but she really, really grieved, and that grief spurred her to search for god (as often happens). Of course, after the sex, she didn't need god so much (as often happens). I'm glad I read the book. She introduced me to intriguing characters and beautiful parts of the world and made me think about how someone unlike me might seek after a version of god that they felt comfortable with.

Morgan I disagree with you...it takes a lot of courage for women to stand up to men, no matter how close or healthy a relationship with one can be. Liz battled with her decision to leave her husband but in the end did something that would make her happy and more importantly, whole. Too often women are not heard and we cannot live the lives that we want to live because it is "not the right thing to do." But...Liz does this...

E.P.L. is not a Christian book. It is not about Jesus. It is not about the Gospel. It is abut picking and choosing what you, as a spiritual consumer, feels best. I get the whole "get what you can out of it" mentality but really, let's look at this for what it is-pagan.

I don't think anyone is saying EPL is a Christian book. But I think it speaks volumes about peoples' search for spiritual meaning.

I loved this book. I read it a few years ago in my book club and recently read "Committed" as well. The writing was top-notch and that's what made it a winner for me. Also it combined some of my favorite things: food, travel, memoirs and spirituality. I was not a big fan of her do-it-yourself spirituality but this is a very popular trend (some would say many Christians do this unconsciously too -- only practice the things that they agree with). Perhaps if she'd had a Christian friend to point her in that direction at the beginning of her search she might have followed Jesus instead. If I recall correctly, it was a friend who took her to meet her guru. However, I loved her honesty, her generosity of spirit, and her openness to trying new cultures and places. And falling in love with a handsome Brazilian was really just the perfect ending! What I took away was a desire to travel more and experience more of the world -- and to be a better writer too.
PS, I am going to see this movie next week with a friend at one of those theaters where you can eat a meal while you watch the movie. I think that will enhance the experience for sure.

Your making the connection to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is good, Hannah. Both MTD and Gilbert's spirituality are centered on the individual and how spiritual beliefs/practices make them *feel*. MTD struck me as Christian-ish -- an outgrowth of biblical Christianity -- while Gilbert's spirituality showed a high interest in non-Western and monistic traditions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism). Also, Gilbert seems more interested in having a day-to-day connection to God than MTDs do, at least according to #4 on Christian Smith's description ("God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem"). Then again, she only showed interest in God when her life was going to pots. That's probably true of a lot of us.

I highly enjoyed this book, mostly the eat part though, we do need to focus on our simple pleasures in life and find our spirtual meaning in life. I did get a tad bit lost though in the 3rd section of the book.

The book touched me at a time in my life where it was meant to affect me...that's why it took me years to get through it. It was only when I needed her journey to be in sync with my own journey that I felt we aligned with each other. Now that I've seen the movie and cried and laughed and cried through it all...i know why I personally needed to go at the pace I needed to. I love it all. and fully feel it all as well.

Thank you for your review. I just saw the movie; I could not make it through the book. Gilbert has placed Gilbert on the throne of her life, not our Savior Jesus Christ. I am saddened that so many people are being influenced by a book and film that encourage walking on one's own path, instead of His. I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to love, peace, and healing. We do not have access to the fullness of life through our own strength and wisdom. We need Him. I pray that films and books that present Jesus are offered with frequency to the public. That would be a miracle, wouldn't it? But, then, we have a Lord who can do the impossible!

I didn't read EPL, but listened to it on audiobook. Gilbert is a really good writer. I so enjoyed her art. Her descriptions of the people she met, the places she visited, and her thoughts on it all were nothing short of captivating. I plan to buy the book so I can refer to some of my favorite parts. I'm a typical evangelical but didn't feel harmed or in some kind of danger by reading her story. Rather, I felt convicted or perhaps struck by how she could so freely believe that God loves her while I, the christian, struggle to believe it. Thank you for choosing this book; I would never have read it otherwise.

One of my friends saw the movie and told me I "just had" to go see it. But from what I've heard and read about it, I don't think I'd like it. It sounds very self-centered. She said it would "inspire" me. To do what? Leave my husband and run away on a journey to "find" myself? It all sounds so shallow.

My sister liked the book because it advocated that we are responsible for creating our own happiness: "...people universally think that happiness is a stroke of luck...But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it...You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings." I guess I just don't think creating happiness for myself is my goal in life.

I understand that, not having read the book, my criticisms may be unfounded.

The movie is probably self-centered because it is an autobiography and she is telling a story about herself. That is what an autobiography is.

To those of you who commented here about the movie, check the blog tomorrow for Laura Leonard's comparison of the book and the movie.

I read the book and I think its amazing. Personally for me, the spiritual journey began when I took the "Art of Living Course" and since then I have experienced enhanced joy and peace of mind. I just thought I would share this, there is a stress reduction workshop happening at the Concordia University in Montreal this thursday evening. I am going. You should all come and experience how amazing it is. For more info, visit: www.destressmontreal.info

Yes, muse, of course. How kind of you to point that out.

Personally for me, the spiritual journey began I get the whole "get what you can out of it" mentality but really, let's look at this for what it is-pagan. Now that I've seen the movie and cried and laughed and cried through it all...

I have not read the book, nor seen the movie——and don't know that I will——so I cannot address your first question.
But about the second and third: were her year-long travels selfish, and what makes a spiritual quest selfish, I may have an opinion.

The story is not too unlike my own: Back in 1989 I was divorced, and after a few months went to India, compelled by a strong meditative experience in the presence of a guru I'd met here. I wanted to find out more of what that was about. I stayed for four months the first time, remarried, and journeyed there again five years later for six months. I almost changed my mind about going the second time, (actually having my luggage pulled from the conveyer belt at the airport) but my husband seemed to want me to go, so I did depart the following week. My intention was to have stayed only a month or two to attend a gathering and visit my husband's relatives, though my stay was extended to six months. Experiences were both good and, while I won't call them "bad," were those that I could very well have lived without. Yet, I learned something from those situations also.

I was certainly changed in some ways, though it is hard to put into words. I think anytime we pass poverty of such grand scale, we cannot help but be altered a bit inside. (That may be true for not only material poverty, but poverty-of-spirit as well.)

A spiritual quest always has to do with the self. But whether or not a spiritual quest is "selfish" in a negative way, depends on the intentions one goes with, whether one has the approval of those you might be responsible for and what you leave behind, and what one does after one returns.

I could have stayed home and tried harder to reenter the workforce, or have gone for a master's degree instead of trying to locate and learn from any spiritual "masters," and now know that if people look hard enough they can find them right here in the western hemisphere, in the United States of America, and in many different faiths.

I saw dozens of swamis, and learned from some of them, however, if I have to give myself a religious label, I still say "Christian." Christianity is my culture.

Besides the divorce similarity of the story, I also had a nephew that I wrote to from an ashram.

Gee, maybe I should have written a novel...but I had no plot, let alone any point!

Nobody needs to envy that Ms. Gilbert took a year after her divorce and traveled. That sort of choice comes with a price.

You do learn, but spiritual knowledge cannot be exploited.

Switching to green tea may be all you need.

Charmaine

P.S. I also had my picture taken with an elephant.

Another afterthought: if one has children at home they should put their children's needs first, and certainly not run off for any length of time without them. If a person is married, decisions to dart off and learn about "the dharma" should be mutually agreed upon. You cannot pull away and expect to find God if you have broken The Golden Rule in the process. Any encounters with the Almighty in that case might merely be His Mighty Mystical Hand swatting your backside to scoot you home where you belong.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

Posted By: Charmaine French-Allaka | August 19, 2010 11:05 PM

Robyn, I'm sorry. I was being snarky. It's just that I've heard SO MANY comments about how self-centered the book was and all I could think was, of course it is, why is that a surprise, why is that an issue? I didn't mean for you to think I was belittling your comments. I think a later post says it best when it talks about the difference between a biography and an autobiography.

Hello. In reference to Ms. Beaty's comment about Ms. Gilbert saying Americans spend hours of unproductive time "...eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma," it should be admitted that Americans are not the only ones known to ever sit possessed in front of the screen.

I was in India willing to be away from the familiar hi-tech entertainments,and was a bit dismayed when people in one ashram watched the community television everynight after dinner, with shows the likes of MTV blaring.

Another time I was in a more rural area, and was invited to lunch one afternoon outside the little ashram that I had agreed to visit. Food was served in an upstairs cubbyhole-of-a-room, and after climbing the steep stairs, I was positioned in front of a small television set that aired...The Oprah Winfrey Show! And the group of relatives at odds with each other on the program that day were quite a whiny bunch.

When reflecting on the religious "weaknesses" of westerners, ask yourself why everyone else often wants what we have.

Charmaine

A book can be an autobiography without the person whom it is about being self-centered. An autobiography merely is the story of a person's life as told by that person.

It is totally appropriate to say Ms. Gilbert is "self-centered" when referring to how she portrays herself in the book. This conclusion about her character is not a explained merely by the fact that she is writing an "autobiography." IMHO :-)

I don't know why, like a sucker, I let myself get pulled into comments like what "Biblical" posted, that EPL isn't a Christian book and isn't the gospel so therefore it is pagan. Other than the Bible itself, at what point did literature become "Christian?" For hundreds of years, educated scholars read books of any kind, regardless of whether they are "Christian." In the same way, a liberal arts education is intended to give the student wide knowledge and to develop critical thinking skills.

All this to say, I'm glad we are discussing a "pagan" book using our "Christian" lens. When you walk out the door of your home, people are not divided neatly into Christian and pagan. Being able to think critically on a concept or phenomenon that is so prevalent in our culture, helps to build our faiths rather than detract from it. I think excessive labeling of Christian and pagan stems out of fear of the unknown. Is your faith that easily shaken?

_________________________________

In a post above "Robyn", says "It sounds very self-centered. She said it would "inspire" me. To do what? Leave my husband and run away on a journey to "find" myself? It all sounds so shallow."

I've not read the book nor seen the film, so I don't know if Ms. Gilbert says outright that she "left her husband to find herself," or if that is just some reader's conclusion.

I do know that in my own similar case, back in late 1989 when I was divorced, afterwhich I then planned several months for a trip to India, it wasn't to "find myself," but more to see what the meditation road to "union with God" was about. I'd heard it was healing! That still has to do with the self, and not just the Hindu higher "Self" but the individual ego-self, because, as pure an intention it may be, the one seeking is still YOU wanting to grow or to be closer to God.

I didn't leave a husband in order to go "find myself" in a foreign country; we'd been separated and on the verge of a permenant split for at least a year. He'd already dated others during a separation. The divorce was finalized. My trip to India was more to pick up the pieces of a self that had been badly bruised during a disappointing marriage, not so much to "find myself," but to heal, and maybe experience the "Self." I didn't run off leaving any distraught ex-husband behind.

That may have been Ms. Gilbert's case too, though since I haven't read the book, I don't know.

In the author's defense, for whatever reason she went, she has the right to put her experiences in story form, whether it is religiously syncretistic and pagan or not.

Charmaine French-Allaka

Have a nice day.

____________________________________________________________

Before anyone misinterprets (seems that happens frequently in commenting on the internet), when recalling that, "My own trip to India was more to pick up the pieces of a self that had been badly bruised during a disappointing marriage, not so much to "find myself," but to heal, and maybe experience the "Self." I didn't run off leaving any distraught ex-husband behind."

The paragraph is recollecting how the inner self, or the emotions, felt bruised. Not speaking of a literal physical bruising.

Also, I had been attending Christian churches before being in India and staying within Hindu ashram environments. I was familiar with Christian scriptures about spiritual salvation being available "only in Jesus name." Still felt the call to travel strongly enough that other dreams were put on hold.

Prior to packing my suitcase, my father had suggested that perhaps I just "go to Hawaii for a month." Maybe that would have been a more soothing destination, but anyone who has been to India knows what being there instills, even with the difficulties and irritations while getting around in such a different place.

On second thought, maybe I'll go to the library and breeze through the book. Like how the mandala beads are shaped into the word "pray" on cover.

Charmaine

Hi - just posted on the book myself....

http://glutenfreekrums.blogspot.com/2010/08/eat-pray-love-my-take-my-very-long-take.html

...and so was delighted to find this post and some similar and contrasting ideas. As I wrote in my post, I read it to get a pulse on the "sort of secular seeker" and then found myself relating to Ms. Gilbert in several ways. I also found it agonizing to "watch" what seemed, at times, like the true God revealing Himself to her, and her continuing to resist the real source of healing and forgiveness.

It might be nice if you set your discussion boards up so that it was easier to tell who is saying what.

You've got names over posts without any lines, and it looks like the post goes more with the name over it than under it. The faint line is there, then the correct name, underneath the post.

If it looks on a "google" like a person is saying something that someone else has written, you could be sued!

You might want to redesign that, so people can more easily identify who is saying what.

For instance: I did not say anyone was being "snarky," and do not even know what the word means. The writer who wrote that was the one above a comment of mine. Names are getting mixed up.

This is a Christian website (?), and thus one would expect proper intentions and motivations of the editors or bloggers, without posting set up to make another look stupid.

Thank you,
Charmaine

Visit leavingsiddhayoga.net to get the real story on SYDA, Siddha Yoga, Muktananda, Gurumayi Chidvilasanda; the ashram Elizabeth Gilbert stayed at in Ganeshpuri, India.

On the leavingsiddhayoga.net site, under "Articles", scroll down to The New Yorker magazine article 'O Guru, Guru, Guru. It says it all.

Thoroughly corrupt cult Elizabeth Gilbert visited. Why didn't she mention any of this in her book Eat Pray Love?

West people might not always recognize that it is cult actually, rl haven.

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