Read This, Not That: "Eat, Pray, Love" versus "Lit"

I'm about to commit what many readers will consider heresy. Here goes:

I don't like "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

You probably did. You may be among the legions of readers who have made this book not just a bestseller, but a talking point, a book so popular that Gilbert's ex-husband's "talkback" memoir (titled "Displaced") is instantly recognizable, and the currently in-production film adaptation starring Julia Roberts gets near weekly play in celebrity magazines. 

I'll give you this: Gilbert writes like a dream. Her way with syntax and sentences is enough to make the most hardened book critic swoon (and I know of at least one hardened book critic who has). However, I've never been able to throw out substance for style, and it's the substance of Gilbert's reminiscences that troubles me. 

First, her substance is rather too substantial: At 352 pages, the book could easily have been trimmed to about 275 without a bit of its story left behind in Indonesia. Second, her spirituality from start to finish seems to be of the "dry clean only" variety (i.e., too delicate to withstand vigorous handling). Third and perhaps most important, Gilbert's narcissistic worldview ruined the book for me. A full discussion of what bothered me would take a long time, but let me try and state it succinctly by talking about Gilbert and spirituality. To her, spirituality is all about a relationship between her and God. To most truly spiritual and evolved people I know, spirituality is about a relationship with God that takes the form of helping others (NB: I am not including myself in the category of "most truly spiritual and evolved people). 

It's a crucial difference, and one that I might not have noticed if Gilbert weren't writing about enlightenment on every other page. This is my message to the memoirist: Pay attention to your message. No matter how lush your setting, how beautiful your writing, how intense your state of grace, if you forget about why you're writing what you're writing, you and your reader will be lost.

Mary Karr, who may in some measure be blamed or honored (depends on what you think of memoirs in general!) for the past decade's surfeit of memoirs covering all manner of lives and lifestyle choices, is coincidentally back this month with a new volume about her life, as is Gilbert (whose new book is called "Committed"). "Lit" details Karr's slide into alcoholism ("Cherry," her second book, was about her promiscuous teen and young adult years) while she was married and the mother of a young son. What I like about Karr is that she never allows her commitment to honesty to come second. If there's a passage that needs to be stark, it's stark; no curvy, pretty language magic will be worked. 

Before you get the idea that I don't like gorgeous writing, let me say that I believe there's a place for it, and that place is by and large in fiction. A person who chooses to write about her own life and call it so must be as honest as possible, or what's a memoir for? If you're simply going to tell yourself lovely stories, well, that's enjoyable -- but it might as well be a novel.