Eat, Pray, Love, Like Paris to Me

At the moment, I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Writing a blog post about this book now feels about as timely as writing about how much I love Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impersonation.  I’m not exactly on the cutting edge here, literarily speaking.  There are a lot of reasons why I didn’t read this book until now. Frankly, and this isn’t the most flattering thing to admit, it was the book’s popularity that turned me off.  Too many people were reading it, and praising it.  Oh, and when I say people I mean women.  I’m not adverse to popular culture, but I was suspicious of a book that seemed to appeal to every woman on the planet.  I got a little sick of women talking about it in reverent tones, and I thought, well, she won’t get me.  No, sir, that Elizabeth Gilbert will not find ME such an easy target.

I really showed her, eh?

My wonderful mother-in-law gave me her copy of the book, and it happened to have a quote from Anne Lamott on the cover.  An author’s quote on the cover has never, ever figured into my decision to read a book.  But I love Anne Lamott.  I could go on and on about how much I love her but, for now, suffice it to say that I love her enough to read a book that I was previously indisposed to read simply because her name is in small print on the cover.

From the first sentences in the first paragraphs on the first pages, I have enjoyed reading about the author’s struggles to make honest though painful choices, and then to deal with the honestly painful consequences, and then to find joy on the other side of it all.  The thing I like most about the book is that it is funny (and I do want a book that entertains me), even with all that painful stuff. My second favorite thing about it is that her voice seems true. I have not been divorced, or written books, or traveled as extensively as Gilbert has. Still, much of what she is saying – about balancing ambition with contentment, selfishness with loving others, worldly pleasures with spiritual pursuits – resonates with me. Gilbert is pretty vague about the reasons for which she and her husband broke up, and of course there is more to that story than she tells in her memoir. This isn’t a story about marriage, though. It’s mostly a story about journeys, and listening to the voice within.

While I read the first few chapters, I alternated between smiling about the book (really, I was smiling at the book) and shaking my head at myself for not picking it up before now.  Did I think that my taste in books was so superior that it couldn’t possibly overlap with that of millions of other readers?  Well, yes.  Yes, I did.

This misguided conceit (let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?) has bitten me in the butt a couple of times before.

The first time that I can remember was with Paris (the city, not the heiress, of course).  One can hardly think of Paris without thinking of Movie Paris, or Postcard Paris.  ”Where are you going on your honeymoon?  Paris?  *Sigh* Oh, Paris! How romantic, how dreamy…” Ack!  How obvious!  I would think, “Paris, you may have fooled all those other poor schlubs, but I know that you are just a city like any other… except maybe more aggravating because you are trying so hard to be PARIS, which no city can be.  Being in Paris is probably like walking around on a movie set.  A movie set with gift shops.”

Then, when I was 21, I went to Paris.  I was studying in Florence, and decided to spend a long weekend in Paris with my friend Kerri. Kerri and I stepped off the train at 7am, and walked right into Paris. I recognized immediately that actually, improbably, Paris really was Paris. The morning was misty, and we went directly to eat the most delicious crepes on the face of the planet. I had been in Paris for about five minutes when I lifted my face to the grey sky and told the crumbling facades and bridges that it would be just fine with me if I were forced to stay there forever. We spent sunny afternoons in the parks and gardens (I swear accordion music followed us wherever we went), and then when it rained we ducked into red booths at corner bistros and ordered wine and french onion soup. I had been avoiding Paris because I’d thought it couldn’t possibly be exactly what it seemed to be. Which, of course, is what it was.

In more recent years, I met this fellow at a company where I got a job soon after graduating from college. This fellow was always making people laugh, was always working hard to make his team and his coworkers look really good. And, yes I’ll say it, he was durn cute – tall and lanky, with curly hair and a sweet smile. His major personality flaw? Everyone liked him. Several women at the company had crushes on him, and his going away party when he gave notice was so widely attended (and cost the company so much money) that it was the last one our department ever threw. I began to look at him askance: “I don’t see what all the FUSS is about! Just a guy. Not all that.” I insisted that everyone else had been taken in and, in fact, laughed with my friends at what a phony this guy… this Chris guy… was.

Oh, once again, the joke was on me.

I can’t say the exact moment when my feelings changed. There was no crumbling bridge, no misty morning. Just lots of emails and phone calls and, finally, plates of papardelle alla nonna at a small Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. Five years of marriage and one beautiful daughter later, I can say that my feelings definitely did, er, shift regarding that fellow.

So, will I learn to be more open-minded? To tell that cynical voice to stuff it and give the person (or book or city) in question a fair chance? Probably not. It’s delicious finding out when I’ve been so wrong.

Book Notes: The Song Is You

(Look at me, posting on my shiny new blog again already! Yippee!)

I just finished reading The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips.  I had never read anything by Phillips before. His first book Prague: A Novel, which he wrote back in 2003, inspired some interesting discussions, but I never did get around to reading it. The Song Is You is Phillips’ fourth novel, and has received loads of buzz and acclaim. Plus, the nerds interviewed him, and that does pique the interest.

Phillips is obviously very smart.  As in, Smaaaaart. He knows how to turn a phrase and has such a broad and specific knowledge of language that you get the sense he chooses each word with painstaking precision.

His is a case in which an impressive intellect does not always serve the writer or the story.  Phillips’ use of language – which can most accurately be called high falutin’ – distracted me from the story over and over again.  I kept thinking, “Well, he seems mighty pleased with himself over that little diddy!”  I could almost see his self-congratulatory smile as he inked yet another impressive, but precious, metaphor.

More disappointing than the over-inflated language was the main plotline.  In The Song Is You, a middle-aged commercial director named Julian Donahue develops an infatuation with a young singer, Cait O’Dwyer, on the verge of fame.  Julian, cloaked behind hi-tech communication media, becomes protector, adviser, muse, and seducer to the young star.  She represents his second chance at happiness.  For Cait’s part, she yearns for something real and trustworthy in her increasingly false existence.  The two are intrigued by each other, and by the possibilities of their relationship, yet they are simultaneously convinced that the other will become annoyed or bored once they meet in person.  Their desperate need for the other’s affection and attention results in creepy stalker antics, such as breaking into each other’s homes and hotel rooms.  I found these sections – the roundabout conversations and dropped clues and hastily avoided meetings – to be annoying and boring, indeed.

I am not blind to some of what Phillips is trying to do here.  Julian is a sad character, grieving an immeasurable loss, yet giving the impression that he’s healed.  His grief manifests in his need to have Cait be the perfect woman for him, and he for her.  He needs to believe, even when this is clearly make believe, that she understands him, though they haven’t ever met.  Some of it was truly thought-provoking, when it wasn’t aggravating.

All the cyber-stalking (and actual stalking) between Julian and Cait takes place before a backdrop of Julian’s history.  And that history is beautifully, subtly written.  Phillips weaves two love stories throughout the backdrop – the one between Julian and his estranged wife, and the one between Julian’s parents.  Julian’s parents, a soldier and his French wife, share a love of music and pass it on to their son.  Music, for Julian, is not just chords and vocals.  It is his legacy.  It is love.  And love, in the real relationships in the book, is complicated.  It is tainted.  It is broken.  It is repaired.

All this to say that spending the majority of the book hearing about the odd/creepy obsession between Julian and Cait while all these wonderful details swim in the background is as frustrating as listening to an over-zealous George Michael wannabe bang on a synthesizer while Andrea Boccelli sings an aria in the background.  Oh, and what’s that faint sound?  It just might be Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, but I can’t be sure.   (Why the hate for GM?  In truth,  I’ve been known to hum along to “Wake Me Up,” but his energy just seemed to fit here.  To any George Michael fans among my readers, no offense was meant.)