Memoir: Eat Pray Love

"These are some days from my life. There was no writing in those days, but they made the writing that came after possible." --David Bergen, "And You Arrive on the Other Side With Nothing" from Writing Life

Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, Eat Pray Love, is not about writing, but about the days that made writing possible. In the aftermath of a painful divorce and the break-up of a love affair, Gilbert fashioned a year-long pilgrimage for herself, to the countries of Italy, India, and Indonesia.

In Italy she pursued pleasure: "There are so many manifestations of pleasure in Italy, and I didn't have time to sample them all. You have to kind of declare a pleasure major here, or you'll get overwhelmed. . . . I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really--in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato)."

Then to India, where she undertook devotion, spending four months in an Ashram: "I arrive right on time for the 4:00 AM meditation session which always starts the day here. We are meant to sit for an hour in silence, but I log the minutes as if tey are miles--sixty brutal miles that I have to endure. By mile/minute fourteen, my nerves have started to go, my knees are breaking down and I'm overcome with exasperation. . . . An Ashram is supposed to be a place where you come to deepend your meditation, but this is a disaster. The pressure is too much for me. I can't do it. But what should I do? Run out of the temple crying after fourteen minutes, every day?"

Finally she landed in Bali, Indonesia to find balance, with no further plans than to revisit a medicine man she met two years earlier: "I don't know exactly what I'd imagined it would be like to meet Ketut again, but I did hope we'd have some sort of super-karmic tearful reunion. And while it's true I had feared he might be dead, it hadn't occurred to me that--if he were still alive--he wouldn't remember me at all. Although now it seems the height of dumbness to have ever imagined that our first meeting would have been as memorable for him as it was for me. Maybe I should have planned this better, for real."

I devoured this book in three days, one for each country. I was riveted by Gilbert's humour and self-analysis, her love for the people she meets and the geography around her, her paradoxical mix of humility and confidence. And she tells a ripping good story about connecting with God and healing the soul.

For a clearer glimpse into her writing life, try this lecture that Gilbert gave at the NYU School of Journalism:

What do you do if the right words don’t come to you, a student asked, during the question-and-answer period after Gilbert’s talk. “Don’t be fooled,” said Gilbert. “[Writer’s block is] a trickster sent to keep you from what you’re meant to be doing.” It comes to sap your confidence, she insisted. Gilbert confronted this trickster at an artist’s residence in Wyoming in 2004, while writing her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. For her first drafts, she confided, “I’m a plough mule, not an artist.” Facing down writer’s block, she said, “I will plough one row, turn around and plough another row, and all those rows are pages.”

I'm tempted to be jealous of this woman, but I'm opting for gratitude instead, thankful that she lived this year of her life and then wrote it all down for the rest of us.

What Makes a Good Author Blog?

Yesterday I mentioned MetaxuCafé as a good place to find author blogs. The Internet Writing Journal also has a list of Best Author Blogs, and there's also a big list at Authors' Blogs.

So what makes for a good author blog? This article on The Author's Dilemma: To Blog or Not to Blog, has a few suggestions:

It is a combination of factors which create a "perfect storm" of blogging. Great author blogs are frequently updated. They are interesting. And they are well-written. Many authors complain that they don't have anything to say, that their lives aren't that interesting on a day to day basis. But that's entirely the point: it's not your life that has to be interesting. But how you write about it must be interesting. And the way to do that is to let you personality shine through. Are you a grump in the morning or most of the time? Then rant and rave about subjects in the news. If you can make it funny, so much the better. But if you're not comfortable writing humor, then don't. If you feel strongly about a serious issue such as the environment, for example, then by all means share that passion with your readers. Before you get too worried about alienating your readers, remember this: You can't please everyone, so don't try. People are attracted to passion in writing. Write with passion and your readership will grow.

Frank Sennett at the Spokesman Review observes that:

Some authors treat blogs as nothing more than a cog in the book marketing machine. But many take a comprehensive approach to the medium, interacting with fans, commenting on current events, detailing their writing process, ruminating on characters, posting tour diaries and even sharing personal anecdotes.

In that same article, Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com says that he loves authors' book recommendations:

"The glimpses into other writers' personal lives are fun, but the thing I like most about my favorite authors' blogs is their willingness to celebrate OTHER authors that they admire," Hogan said via e-mail. "It's not just about promoting themselves, but acknowledging that we're all enthusiastic readers, and we're all looking for the next awesome book to read."

I have a lot of fun digging up the blogs of obscure and emerging writers, and I'm particularly interested in their stories about the writing life for Wrestling the Angel. If you've got a favourite author blog to share, please tell us about it in the comments.

Memoir: The Crack in the Teacup

Joan Bodger was a writer, storyteller, and Gestalt therapist who wrote a classic volume on British children's literature (How the Heather Looks) based on travels through that country with her husband and children. Her memoir, The Crack in the Teacup, is a powerful narrative full of amazing stories and symbols, as she tells her life and interprets it through the myths and fairy tales she loves. Her journey through childhood, marriage, and tragedy into a blossoming old age is captivating.

Canadian Literature has a review of The Crack in the Teacup as well as Bodger's third book for children, The Forest Family.

I first read this book just a few months after Bodger died in August 2002, and I've never been so excited or affected by a memoir. You can read a moving account of her last days written by her friend, Diane Wolkstein.

Memoir: The Black Veil

I picked up Rick Moody's memoir, The Black Veil, after I heard an interview with him on CBC radio. As a past sufferer of depression, I'm always interested in reading about other writers who have dealt with mental health issues and addiction, and I was intrigued to find out about Moody's experience in a rehab/psychiatric hospital.

The book is subtitled "A Memoir with Digressions", and the digressions have to do with Moody's investigation of a key figure in his family history, Joseph "Handkerchief" Moody, the man on whom Nathaniel Hawthorne based his short story "The Minister's Black Veil." The writing is very lyrical and stylized, with long sentences and repetitive turns of phrase, and Moody seems to obscure more than he reveals, in keeping with the symbol of the black veil that he explores from many angles:

Maybe it's simply the case that concealment is essential to identity, that, notwithstanding the cultural trends toward reality-based programming, notwithstanding talk shows and talk radio and their confessional opportunities, we need a part of us that will never be known, so that the more we reveal, the more we are enveloped in veils, layers that refuse to be known, additional integuments of guilt and concealment, such that any memoir is a fiction, an arranged narrative, a bildungsroman, just as many fictions are veiled memoirs; the two identities, the two narrative strategies, concealing and revealing, depending upon and excluding each other by turns.

Drawn in as I was by the book, I learned more about Moody's search for identity than I did about his panic attacks and depression, which were described, but not ascribed meaning. Perhaps a refreshing change from "triumph over adversity" narratives that presume to make sense of every experience. I appreciated how Moody presented a corner of his life and remained almost as mystified by it as the reader.

Then, halfway through my reading, I discovered that this was the book that Dale Peck reviewed for The New Republic, in which he so infamously skewered the author with the opening line, "Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation." I'm thankful that I had forgotten or not made the connection, since it allowed me to come to the work fresh and make my own judgment.

Rereading Peck's review, I am reminded again of how much writing is a matter of taste. One reason I don't like writing reviews is that I don't enjoy critiquing books that are well written but not to my personal liking. They don't speak to where I'm at, but that doesn't mean that they won't appeal to others.

And as writers, I believe this issue of taste helps us take criticism or bad reviews in better spirit. Once we have achieved a certain skill or standard of quality, any rejection beyond that simply means that the work has not found its true audience. Even Peck admits as much:

The Black Veil asks us to consider its subject � the aforementioned Hiram Frederick Moody III, a.k.a. Rick � as a postmodern tragic hero, ironic as well as iconic, America's Battered Inner Child-cum-Messianic Storyteller. Every page practically cries out: love me despite my flaws.

Well, I don't. Perhaps this denotes a failure of empathy on my part, or an indication that I am not the intended audience for Moody's musings.

Whatever else it might be, The Black Veil is a truly original product of its author. And at this moment in time, it was a narrative that I connected with. Your mileage may vary.

Memoir: The Best Day the Worst Day

The Best Day the Worst Day is a memoir by writer Donald Hall, about his marriage to Jane Kenyon, the poet who died of leukemia in 1995. He begins the narrative at the moment of Kenyon's death, and then tells the story of her year-long illness, interspersed with flashbacks to their meeting, courtship, and married life.

I find it difficult to describe the experience of reading this book, one of the best I came across last year. Any list of highlights I've tried to compose only distracts from this harrowing but tender story.

So what you should do is read this excerpt from the book, titled "Eleven Days", at NarrativeMagazine.com. And then read The Best Day the Worst Day itself. Best to let Hall speak for himself.

Biography: Invisible Writer

I'll admit, I'm fascinated by Joyce Carol Oates. I've read Greg Johnson's excellent biography, Invisible Writer, twice over. And yes, my obsession has much to do with her incredible productivity, but also with her passion and energy.

From my journal, March 1999, when I read Invisible Writer for the first time:

The biography has been fueling my unrest and my frustrated longings. JCO's large, half-lidded eye stares up at me from the cover all day as I try to work. The book is long (402 pages), filled with details of her writing life and her stories, maddeningly inspirational at a time when I want to fling the volume aside and make my typewriter clatter, clatter, the way she did. I feel like a nun who has mistakenly drunk a bottle of aphrodisiac. Of course, of course I want to be her. I want novels to pour out like rivers from my typing fingers. I want to be able to write a book in six weeks and then throw it away. I want to have written thousands of pages that will never see the light of day, if it means that from that apprenticeship a small book will survive, get noticed.

These are the things I envy, the things that set me panting with desire: to write and write and write, exhaustively, and to believe, to have something to say, to be able to draw on something passionate inside me. Even this little page, which I've stolen twenty minutes for at the beginning of the day, hasn't quenched my thirst, it's just set it on fire. O God. Let me write.

For a more, ahem, objective review of Johnson's book, check out this one at the New York Times.