First, my aunt mentioned this book, Eat Pray Love, to me, said it was inspiring and gripping, said she couldn't put it down. A series of other clichés to say that it had changed her life, or at least provided for good reading on the couch on a Sunday. I love my aunt, but I didn't quite trust her judgement on this one enough to read it. Then, I saw a writer in Houston from the Creative Writing program reading the book in the what-seems-to-be the new center of literary hangout hipness in town - Antidote Coffee on Studemont - where it seemed half "the Program" now lives, writes and commerces in trade secrets. So this writer was reading Elizabeth Gilbert on the plant-decorated patio, gravel underfoot, next to a professor in "the Program." She said to the professor that the book was a respite, a place to rest, relax and renew. Also said that initially she was not interested in the book because it was the typical white women goes to Third World countries and then writes a book about them. But then, she was sucked in and ended up loving it, being changed by it, finding herself in it. Sorry to get all Oprah, but you get the picture.After hearing this second person go on about it, I borrowed my aunt's copy. Well, here's my report: it made me think of something I heard the distinguished essayist Eliot Weinberger say a few weeks ago at a translator's conference. To paraphrase: "I read international literature, because contemporary U.S. literature all too often has become the story of a man or woman sitting next to the pool, deeply upset and heartbroken because of a recent divorce." For me, Eat Pray Love is exactly this. American woman of a certain class and privilege survives difficult divorce, receives six figure book advance to travel to the three I's (Italy, India, Indonesia), finds her own navel repeatedly in other countries, and comes back to sell the tale (and sell the tale after that one). Her story inspires millions.
Now I am certainly not against international travel or searching for yourself or getting a divorce or being inspired or any of this. But the book (like so much popular contemp lit) seems chock full of unexamined privilege, a frightfully isolated and narrow worldview, and a naiveté that is depressing. The book makes me what to read a kind of anti-Eat Pray Love with writing in translation by people in Italy, India and Indonesia. Now that book I would buy (Come on Open Letter! Come on Words without Borders!).
3 comentarios:
It's interesting to see this idea proffered over and over again to the reading public as a legitimate way to view other nations: as looking glasses. A transformer that legitimizes, because now it's worse: there are many people who think to never travel and "awaken" is to not be alive...to not be human...
It seems weird and sad to me, as one who actually has friends and experiences that border on authentic (sometimes, i admit, mundane ones at that!), to consider that these other locations only exist for some people as places to "go," not places to stay or places where people live and live sometimes very boring lives. These locations (take your pick) are often so reified by the "soul seeker" that the more authentic the experience there, the more avoided it is. To never have lived in a squalid apartment because you *must*, to never have had to struggle in that place is to commodify the location as a way to be born again and which rings very false for me. Perhaps this is because I once thought of the "foreign" as just that, a thing to be experienced, like a movie or a scene, which you later can get out of, escape from. The curative value of these experiences seems only truly complete when you can no longer escape.
To put a period to my rant: I'm very glad that I did some growing up/growing abroad, that I learned to hate another place that for a time I couldn't escape from, to give up on it, and then come to love it again. Perhaps that makes me an eat sleep pray sucker. I'm hoping it distinguishes me somewhat.
you hit the nail on its head, jp. i am in complete agreement with you. why is it that when white, privileged , middle class people undergo some sort of trauma (trauma that is sometimes shared by most unprivileged lower-class individuals) it becomes worthy enough to inspire, to print and to share. i also agree with Weinberger's view of contemp lit. i'm so sick of the mid west bitching and whining about suburbs, their divorces, and other mundane yet necessary developments of their lives. yet, i'm also sick of minorities being forced to exploit their own conditions because that is what is expected of them. instead, i'd rather read poets and writers who embrace technology and begin a new tradition, a digital poetics. check out my blog entry about this necessary change.
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