Short Takes
January 3, 2010
Consumer Warning: Elizabeth (‘Eat, Pray, Love’) Gilbert’s New Book
Elizabeth Gilbert memoirs begin in crisis. In Eat, Pray, Love, she’s on her bathroom floor at three in the morning, desperate to end her marriage. In the just-published sequel, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Felipe — the Brazilian she loves too much to marry — is detained by Homeland Security as he tries to enter the United States and, six hours of interrogation later, is jailed and deported. (In fact, not really “deported”, because he had a valid visa, a business in America and no criminal past; Homeland Security just decided he was coming to America too often.)
How can Felipe re-enter the United States? Well, if he and Liz were married… Now, if you or I were writing Committed — hell, if almost anyone were writing it — it would be a closely reported narrative exposing the policies of our government in a time when terrorists seem to enter our country freely and grandmothers are strip-searched. It might include a meditation on love separated and love expatriated. And, I suppose, it would explain how two people who were marriage-phobic came to love the knot.
Committed, I am astonished to say, is not that book. Not even close. There are a few memorable vignettes, but it’s mostly a skim-the-surface tour of marriage through the ages. It lacks wisdom. It’s dull. There’s nothing to connect the reader to Gilbert. But Viking is unleashing a Palinesque million-copy first printing, and American women are about to be buried under the hype.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
[For those in the Cult of Liz, who surely believe I’m a jealous hack trying to damage a writer with a golden reputation, you might consider the first review I encountered. It describes Committed as "a strained book that’s part travelogue and part journal entries, but which mainly reads like a Western Civ term paper that was written at the last minute.” And the New York Times review? Dreadful: "She makes writing a book sound like busywork… the strain is as palpable as the voice is cute, and the drama is virtually nonexistent."]
December 4, 2009
Making An Entrance
U2, Fergie — and Mick Jagger. If you watch nothing else, watch the first 30 seconds for Jagger’s entrance. Maximum excitement, maximum presence. And a life lesson: This is how it’s done.
November 23, 2009
How To Save The Book Business
Literary pundits have been weighing in on the ills of publishing, so I thought I’d take a shot. I’m a little tougher than most — as I write in the first sentence of my screed, “Book publishing has been trying to commit suicide for all the decades I’ve been writing, and now it’s finally getting some traction on that project.” My piece appears in Publisher’s Weekly, but you can read it here.
November 23, 2009
The Times of London’s ‘Book of the Decade’
Atop a list of 100 books, The Times declares, "It is our book of the decade; but it will outlast that judgment, too. It is a work of force and dark brilliance, a perfect expression of the early 21st-century’s terrors —- and of the hope we must all have that we shall not destroy ourselves, nor yet be destroyed." Yes, it’s this, the book you don’t want to read. November 17, 2009
Head Butler Holiday Project: Suffer the Children
The New York Times reports that hunger in America is at a 14-year high –and it’s 14 years only because the government didn’t start tracking hunger until 1995. That’s 49 million people who “lack consistent access to adequate food”, up 13 million from a year ago. One figure that leapt out at government officials — and at me — was the number of households in which children faced “very low food security”. It’s 506,000, which is up from 323,000 the previous year. 506,000 is the population of Oklahoma City! That’s just unacceptable to me. (As are the figures in my city: 1.3 million New Yorkers rely on emergency food.) So….in previous years, this site has approached the holidays with the attitude that, along with gifts, it’s good to share with people who could use some help. And I created lists of worthy causes, many suggested by you. I’ll share them again, but this year, I’d like to focus on feeding kids. If you have favorite hunger programs, please let me know. I’ll post my suggestions soon.
