or, as i like to call it, The Benefits of being Rich and Having No Children.
Despite all the buzz that’s been filling the media of all sorts for years about Eat, Pray, Love, i never had any interest in the book solely because of that ominous middle word, pray. A book like this is meant for entertainment and when you see the world one way and the author sees it another, it’s just hard to get anything out of it. However, having read and enjoyed the sequel Committed (which contained very little mention of religion or spirituality) and seeing that the movie was set to come out on my birthday, i decided to give Eat, Pray, Love a shot anyway.
First of all, i was hoping to learn more about why Elizabeth Gilbert decided to leave her marriage. The book does a good job of illustrating how completely incapacitated she was by the unhappiness she felt with her marriage and suggests that there was definitely a very good reason for all that misery, but fails to actually disclose what exactly the problem was. Gilbert says the reasons are “too sad and too personal” to write about, and so she doesn’t. And so i still can’t feel for her at all.
Here’s my problem with this: she chose to write this book. She disclosed a lot of personal stuff in the book (like the page about masturbation that made me want to go bury my head deep in a sand dune). She didn’t want to tell her ex-husband’s secrets, but he hates her anyway so why not go ahead and write about it and maybe help someone else’s marriage in so doing? Her divorce made her miserable, which made her have to go on a spiritual journey, which ended when she forgave herself for destroying her marriage. I see some sort of animal eating its own tail here. And the weirdest part is that she ends up getting married again. I’m sure that all of this is more complicated than i’m making it out to be and i definitely agree that marriages just need to end sometimes, but Elizabeth Gilbert has told me everything about these five years of her life except for what sparked it all and i’m left just wishing to know WHY.
Whatever it was that happened, it made her decide to pursue pleasure, spirituality, and a balance between the two. So she goes to Italy and that’s all fun and good. And then she goes to India and subjects herself to little sleep, little social interaction, a lot of hard work and a ton of chanting and meditation. This is the part i couldn’t relate to at all. Except maybe the beginning of it when she’s all whiny about the whole thing, ’cause that’s what i would feel like, too, in a place like that. But then it gets pretty mystical and i couldn’t help thinking “of course you’re going to start seeing electric snakes and stuff when you do that sort of thing to your brain.”
By the way – i’m going to excuse myself if i’ve used tenses incorrectly here because this is a blog and nobody is paying me for it, but Elizabeth Gilbert bounces from one tense to another in this book with a truly distracting frequency that to me just makes no sense. I think someone needs to go back and edit it one more time.
In Bali she meets a lot of interesting people and falls in love and seems to be a normal person again. Elizabeth Gilbert certainly is good at making friends with people, and i can imagine that traveling the world eating delicious food and talking to interesting people would be pretty great. I didn’t get the whole spiritual bit though, and i think the book was hyped way beyond its actual value. Overall, i’d say it was an okay book.
I did go see the movie on my birthday, and i thought the beginning where she just up and leaves her husband was even sadder on screen than in the book. I felt really sorry for her ex-husband. The spirituality was down-played and some plot elements were added for effect, but i think for the most part the movie was true to the story and, much like the book, all-in-all it was pretty alright. Save your $5.50-9 and get it at the Red Box some day.
When i first heard about Elizabeth Gilbert‘s new book Committed i was instantly intrigued, despite the fact that the mere title of her enormous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love has always prevented me from having the least bit of interest in reading it. The new book was described as a sort of sequel to Eat, Pray, Love, taking up where that memoir left off: with Gilbert getting ready to marry for a second time, even though the globe-spanning travels that inspired the first book were themselves prompted by an ugly divorce. The sub-title is, “A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.” I used to consider myself a pretty big skeptic of marriage, and the review i read also mentioned that the book included a lot of facts and history on the subject of matrimony, so i put myself on the book’s queue at the Des Moines Public Library right away. I was number 36 on the list.
I waited on that list for at least four months, and i tore through the book in a week and a half once it finally became available to me (about a week and a half ago). Although the citations of her resources are vague at best, Gilbert provides a wealth of information about marriage, so the book reads more like a non-fiction than a memoir (YES, i know memoirs are included in non-fiction, but you know what i mean). I told Nathan that if i were ever to write a book, it might be like this one; a lot of vaguely-cited facts, some probably-less-than-accurate yet educated conclusions drawn from those facts, a few not-too-detailed anecdotes, and a lot of musing.
I loved the book. I’m not a huge fan of modern-day memoirs because frankly i don’t find other people’s lives to be as interesting as they do, generally speaking. But this book is different; it’s more like looking inside Gilbert’s mind as she researches and ponders the topic of marriage and gradually finds a way of looking at it that makes her feel comfortable with getting married again. She isn’t a psychologist or an anthropologist or an expert on (or at) marriage, but she apologizes for all that and the book is what it is. One thing she is certainly good at is getting people of very interesting walks of life to talk about any given topic, and the conversations she has with people in far-away places about marriage are fascinating. She also includes a section about not having babies, and i was particularly interested in what her mommy friends had to say both for and against having children. Some were surprised by how much happiness having children brought them while others told Gilbert that it wasn’t really worth it even though they love their children dearly. And then there are the facts: that even though people think the childless will die alone and miserable, the happiness of people polled at the end of life is not dependent upon whether or not they have children. I found that fact encouraging, and i enjoyed Gilbert’s praises for “The Auntie Brigade.” There are a lot of us childless aunties out there, and we’re important.
The one thing i thought was lacking in this book was a little more intimacy. Gilbert doesn’t go into a lot of detail about her relationships, particularly the one that ended in a nasty, devastating, ugly divorce. What went wrong there, one wonders? One would think that a person who is so skeptical of marriage on account of having been the victim of divorce would analyze that failure thoroughly in her search for peace. The only concrete thing she says about it is that he wanted babies and she didn’t, and that she was twenty-five when they got married. She says that last bit as though it were explanation enough for why the marriage failed. Uh, excuse me?! You really need to clear that one up for me, Elizabeth!
The book is supposed to be a memoir, and it’s ultimately about Elizabeth Gilbert’s search for reassurance that getting married is the right thing for her to do. Personally, i was left biting my lip for her a little bit, because the conclusion she reaches is wobbly at best. She hasn’t analyzed her first marriage and deep down she seems to still hate the whole idea of marriage. It seems to me that in the end she just put a fresh coat of paint on a rotten attitude. But – that’s her problem, i suppose. Maybe this book just doesn’t quite convey the full extent of her mindset. Either way, i really enjoyed the majority of what she had to say.
I don’t think the book really changed my mind about marriage at all – i was already a cautious fan, by which i mean i don’t think marriage is for everyone but i’m pretty sure it’s for me – but it certainly made me think about a few things and informed me of some cool tidbits. Like, for instance, the fact that (statistically speaking) age 25 is the dividing line between marriages that are pretty likely to fail and those that endure. I’ll be 25 and Nathan will be 26 when we get married, so we’re sort of squeaking past that line. We’ve also got the advantages of: being of the same age, ethnicity, economic class and education level; not wanting babies; and having similar jobs. Our disadvantages are: not being strongly religious and not having a huge network of friends.
So, let’s hang out more, okay?
I just finished my fourth book of the year (and no, i’m not reading at the same clip i was last year, but hey – i’m reading): The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God and i want to recommend it to everyone. It’s a kind of response by Carl Sagan to William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, which is a famous old book that i have not in fact read.
This is not a militant atheist manifesto like The End of Faith or God is not Great. If you’ve ever watched The Cosmos, it reads more like a few episodes of that. In fact, it contains some of the same content. If you have not watched The Cosmos, you really ought to. You can stream it on Netflix or Hulu and it’s educational (if occasionally outdated) and fantastic. It’s not about God, it’s about – you guessed it. If you’re unfamiliar with Carl Sagan entirely, he’s also the guy who wrote Contact. I didn’t understand the flick as a kid but man, do i appreciate it now. Ok – watch this, this is a sweet song composed of auto-tuned clips of Carl Sagan:
He was a brilliant scientist who was extremely passionate about astrophysics and the possibility of life beyond Earth. This particular book was published by his widow Ann Druyan after his death, and it’s actually a transcription of a lecture series he gave on how the idea of God fits in with the scientific perspective. It’s really thought-provoking, and it makes you feel like you’re auditing a fascinating course at an Ivy League school for free. There are even visuals and Q&A sessions included. Almost makes me want to go back to school… 
Reading this book, i saw a lot of the same ideas that Dawkins likes to talk about, but i think here they’re presented in a more approachable and open-minded manner. I don’t know why they decided to make The God Delusion blindingly shiny-metallic/day-glo orange considering that nobody wants to be seen reading it in the first place. But if you’re even the least bit curious about how anyone could be passionate about the fact that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God, nobody will sneer at you if they see you with your nose buried in this one.
Since i’ve procrastinated and am now left with three posts to write today, i’m going to keep my books post rather short. I’ve already written about every book i read this year, so you know what my opinions of them are. I only finished nine books this year (and re-read two) but i started several others, and for me this is a pretty significant increase in reading. I haven’t read this many books cover-to-cover since high school. Reading has finally gripped me, and i think my mother must be proud.
(Mom has become a recurring theme in my end-of-year posts. Maybe i should continue referring to what i think she thinks of me in the two to follow.)
Early this year i became sort of fascinated with pregnancy. Since my latter two years of college, i’ve had quite a few dreams in which i am pregnant or have a very tiny baby, so that’s probably what got me interested. That and reading dooce and subsequently watching videos on momversation, and also just being at that age where a lot of people i know are starting their adventures in procreation.
So i read a couple of tales of pregnancy; Accidentally On Purpose and It Sucked and then I Cried (dooce’s book). I learned all kinds of things, like what an episiotomy is and what post-partum depression is like and how very, very little sleep new parents get – and good stuff, like that giving birth can be an almost spiritual experience that may make you feel even more deeply connected to your husband. And guess what? I’m never, ever having a baby. EVER. I got really tired of hearing about the whole thing, especially what’s coming out of either end of a baby at any given moment. I’m definitely over it.
The other topic that my reading this year covered was, of course, atheism. For a while there i was really passionate about it and i enjoyed writing about it until my writings garnered what i maintain were some really unfair accusations. And i noticed that i was really pissing off some of my close friends and relatives, and i was forced to realize that i don’t have the power to change the way people think about things. I decided that it just isn’t worth damaging personal relationships to keep trying. Religion is a topic i really wish people could discuss and talk freely about, but the world isn’t ready yet. I’ve given up on being passionate about this, just like i gave up on being passionate about liberalism and vegetarianism and environmentalism in the past because i realized that it was not making me happy, it was making me miserable. Wanting to change the world is a miserable thing, so this year i want to focus on what i love about it, and read more on that.
After reading Angels & Demons on a whim back in 2007 within the whirlwind (for me) span of a single week, i hadn’t given much thought to Dan Brown’s other works despite having enjoyed the book. I had seen The Da Vinci Code movie and have now seen Angels & Demons as well, but i didn’t actually anticipate wanting to read another Dan Brown book. However, several weeks ago as i was driving to Ankeny for class, i heard an interview with Dan Brown on NPR regarding his latest addition to the Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol. I learned that the man wakes up at FOUR every morning and writes seven days a week, 365 days a year (“even on Christmas”). Maybe it’s just the fact that i’m taking a break from nonfiction, i don’t know, but from that moment i felt compelled to actually purchase the new book, hardcover and all, and devour it as quickly as possible. Which is more or less what i did.
Two weeks after purchasing the book, i found myself unenthusiastically getting through the last forty pages of The Lost Symbol. Up until that point it was a regular Dan Brown page-turner; formulaic but entertaining with a nice little twist toward the end that i didn’t see coming. The one thing that really bothered me was the usual heroine scientist’s discussions of her research in the field of Noetic Science which would, once published, prove beyond a doubt that people are more than just flesh and blood. People have souls and can use their mind-power to alter matter outside of the body, and God most definitely exists. I asked myself why that pissed me off, and i decided that if such research was actually published, i would learn about it and grant it whatever it did in fact prove, but at this point i can’t conceive of any science that could do any such thing. The mere idea is a little aggravating.
The last forty pages of The Lost Symbol really drove the metaphysical point home, though. Apparently the thesis of this action-packed work of fiction is that God is within all of us, and our belief in him is what has always unified people and will bring peace to the world (never mind the fact that there are very peaceful people – and whole cultures, in fact – who don’t believe in any god).
My first thought was, okay, whatever, this little fiction book, like many other things, was not created with people like me in mind. Perhaps Dan Brown is trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of believers with this book by emphasizing the importance of religious belief in general and no particular church (especially not the Catholic church) in particular. But, then again, i know a lot of religious people who might be put off by the idea, maniacally pursued by several of the book’s main characters, that God is literally in us; that we people are all gods or can become gods. Not that i think anyone will ban the book from their libraries for that reason, nor that atheists, who are perhaps the latest victims of Brown’s feather-ruffling novels, ought to. I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing Dan Brown could have written about religion or God without rubbing somebody out there the wrong way. And after all, it’s only a novel.
As far as the book goes, i wasn’t as enamored with it as i was with Angels and Demons, partly because i’m not familiar with Washington, D.C., whereas i had enjoyed the memory-lane tour of Rome in the latter book. The Lost Symbol seemed to drag a little at first. Robert Langdon was tricked into solving the puzzles this time, and dragged his feet for half the plot line accordingly. Once things got cooking, it was fun to read. I’d say it’s definitely worth a week of your time, especially if you’re patriotic and have your own particular brand of faith.