Eat, Pray, Love: A Literary Scam

Here's a story that is definitely on the down-low. The movie Eat, Pray, Love, based on Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of the same name, has just been released on DVD. Gilbert has appeared on Oprah twice, and the world is currently gushing about the author's profound spiritual, life-changing experiences. It is this year's "must read" for every user on Match.com. It is the guide for unhappy wives who need to get the kinks out of their troubled marriages and lives. There's only one problem. The memoir is a scam.

A few years ago, Gilbert found herself in an unhappy marriage and had a fling, only to be dumped by her boyfriend. The husband contested their divorce. But the light bulb went off in Gilbert's head. She sent a proposal to a New York publisher and asked for $200,000 to execute the following plan: Go to Italy and indulge her carnal passions, then move to India and meditate when all that eating and drinking and lusting didn't satisfy her quest. When the rigors of meditation became too demanding, she would then move on to a third country, where she would find true love. (No wonder every woman on Match.com loves this mess.) She did indeed find that "true love" a few years ago, only Mr. Right is still somewhere in Indonesia, unable to gain admittance to the United States while his New Jersey wife collects one check after another. It is rumored that she is writing another book on the immigration issue. How convenient.

This is literary prostitution. Gilbert wrote a memoir in which the outcomes had already been chronologically manipulated for the literary marketplace. Unfortunately, the average person seeking enlightenment doesn't have an extra two hundred grand to eat, drink, pray, and get boinked "on schedule."

America is trying to find its soul right now. No one needs Ms. Gilbert's connect-the-dots memoir to help them along the road to enlightenment. The spiritual journey was nothing more than a nonfiction book proposal and should have been marketed as fiction. How many marriages has Gilbert wrecked by planting the seed that escape is the path of wisdom?

Literary Fiction: A Disappearing Genre?

It's no secret that literary fiction has taken a backseat to genre fiction. Thrillers, crime, romance, and chick lit are riding high in the literary marketplace. There's nothing wrong with that. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, and later I devoured the novels and short stories of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. A good story is a good story.

But great literary fiction needs to be published as well. Can anyone who still values books and literature imagine a world without Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and many other great writers. In the latter part of the twentieth century, authors like Bellow, Heller, Updike, and Vonnegut told us who we were. They were surgeons who dissected popular culture and showed us where in society the malignancies could be found. Perhaps more than any other writer, Kurt Vonnegut showed the folly of humanity with dark satire in the same vein as Mark Twain. In the mean-spirited year of 2009, when shouts of socialism disrupt town hall meetings, we need writers who can diagnose the illnesses of the age.

The literary marketplace has been downsizing since the year 2000. Fewer books are being published, and when literary fiction begins to be excised from fall lists, the literary landscape becomes downright Orwellian. Thus far, small presses aren't picking up the slack because of tighter budgets. Most small presses and indies are always dancing perilously close to the edge of solvency. New York conglomerates and their subsidiary houses need to publish literary fiction, even if it sinks to the midlist. They need to make a profit, but they're still interested in ideas, aren't they?

We need literary surgeons. You heard it from Cat.