S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. Today we are talking with author Elizabeth Gilbert about her eat , pray , love journey and what's next for the author. This is Midday Edition , connecting our communities through conversation. You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition , I'm Jade Hindman. Author Elizabeth Gilbert has gone through many transformative experiences and inspired many more to do the same. It's been nearly 20 years since the publication of her memoir , eat , pray , love , and to this day , it remains a cultural phenomenon and shorthand for those embarking on their own journey of self-discovery. Gilbert remains a prolific writer and journalist who has since published eight books , including The Signature of All Things and City Girls. She also speaks on concepts like the divine feminine and creative living. In fact , she'll be speaking at the Balboa Theatre as part of Point Loma Nazarene University's Writers Symposium by the sea , February 22nd. Elizabeth , it is so great to have you here on Midday Edition.
S2: It's so great to be here. Thank you. Jade. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely.
S1: Absolutely. Okay , so you know much of your your writing. It centers around and reimagining the life we could all live.
S2: Thank you for providing me with that. If people ever ask me what what what I'm all about , um , reimagining the life that you could live , I do think that that's what it's about. I think in a in a way , that's what my life's journey , for lack of a better term , has been about. And I think , um , it's true of many people that I know. I think a lot of us were handed expectations about what our lives could be , especially women. I think we were handed expectations from our mothers and our grandmothers , and also from our cultures about what we could be. And a lot of times we've had many people have had what I had , which were sometimes painful awakenings into the reality that we didn't fit into the lives that were handed to us. And there's a grieving that comes with that. There's a fear that comes with that , and then there's this incredible creativity of getting to , as you say , reimagine everything that you can possibly be.
S1: You've mentioned in other interviews that one of the most rewarding things to come out of your book , eat , pray , Love , is what readers took away from it. I mean , to this day when when people post their travel pictures on social media , they often hashtag them eat , pray , love from what I see.
S2: And and the fact that it's still culturally relevant is is such a delight and such a surprise. And and look , women were traveling long before eat , pray love happened and women were getting divorced and women were going on spiritual journeys. And when men were doing all the things that I do in that book , but we didn't have a name for it , you know , there wasn't a name for it. And what I love about the legacy of that book is that when a woman says to you , I'm on my eat , pray , love journey , the entire world knows what it means now , right ? Like it means like she left something behind that wasn't working. She might have left a relationship behind. She might have left a career path behind. She's thrown up the deck of cards and she's going on an adventure , usually by herself , in order to find herself. And I'm just so honored that , like , if I have a legacy at all , it's giving that a name. It's not like people , like I said , it's not like people weren't doing it before , but the fact that we have a cultural shorthand for it now that is universally understood just blows my mind and makes me feel so. I feel so proud of that. Like , what a cool , like what a cool thing to have named. Yeah.
S1: I mean , in the past decade , there's been a boom of self-help books and they remain high on the bestseller list. Eat , pray , love , though , is about your own journey of enlightenment , but over the years it's been framed as a self-help book.
S2: I've gotten a lot of help in my I'm not too proud. First of all , books. I've gotten a lot of help from them over the years , I think. I mean , my intention was to , I guess , to write a spiritual memoir. Um , and , and certainly the self who I was trying to help and the writing of that book was , was me. Um , I didn't have any sense that millions of people would go on that journey with me. In fact , it was a great departure for me from what I had been writing up until that point. And if anything , I thought that this was going to be. It was my fourth book , but my books before that had all been about men. And I was a writer at GQ magazine and at spin magazine and Esquire magazine. And I'd been writing about men for a really long time , which was kind of my bread and butter. So I really felt like I was taking a departure from the one thing I was known for at the time , um , in order to write about a woman's journey. And I didn't think anybody would want to go along with me on it. Um , so I'm happy to let people define whatever they think. That book. To them.
S1: I want to talk about some of the concepts in your other books. I mean , we've talked about eat , pray , love , but going back to your book , The Signature of All Things you once said , it was actually your favorite book to write.
S2: Um , as a as a novelist and as a , as a writer , I think it's a better book than I'm capable of writing. I don't know if that makes sense , but that's how I that's how I look at it. I don't have that feeling with my other books , but I look at the signature of all things , and I'm like , I don't even remember writing parts of this. This is so good. I'm like , who ? How did how did that happen ? You know , like how how in the world did that ? I didn't know I could do that. And that's such an exciting feeling as an artist and as a creator , to imagine that , that you can do work that's better than you think you can. Um , I couldn't tell you what the formula is for how I did that. It still feels really mysterious for me. I mean , I know part of it is that I worked on it for four years , and I did a tremendous amount of research and preparation for it. But once I got writing , something else seemed to take over , and the story really did. Um , I don't know , it's just better than I can write. That's all I can say. And I still think it's a miracle. And I love that , that that we can surprise ourselves that way. Um , you know , maybe it's a metaphor for other parts of our lives where we can rise to higher planes than we thought we were capable of. Um , it's always just amazing to find that out.
S1:
S2: All of these people were people that I invented , um , and who studies moss in in the forests , in the Philadelphia forests , in her backyard. And and through the the study of moss begins to , um , begins to see the same thing that Charles Darwin was seeing in the finches and the Galapagos , um , begins to see the same thing that a lot of evolutionary naturalists at the time were beginning to explore and try to understand , like , what is the origin of these species ? Why is there so much diversity and what is what is the mechanism by which it's happening ? And the question that I wanted to ask was , could a woman with with extraordinary intelligence , who is extremely well-educated , but whose life was very small , um , and all she had to work with in terms of resources and seeing the world was the property that her father owned in Philadelphia , not the Galapagos Islands. Could there be enough , um , evolutionary diversity in that naturalists world that somebody with a keen enough eye could see it and could figure it out ? And and that's what the novel is about.
S1: I want to talk a bit about your recent novel , The Snow Forest. You delayed publication of it after backlash. The story is set in Russia , and the perception of that is something a lot of authors have had to navigate , given the ongoing war with Ukraine.
S2: And I , um , all I can say is that I , I listened , you know , um , and I think. I think that's I mean , you know , I was alarmed at first by the backlash. I felt a sense of being attacked. I was like , wait , wait , wait , how did I just suddenly get in so much trouble on the internet ? Um , you know , this is a book that's set , you know , 100 to 50 years ago in Siberia. It doesn't have anything to do with the war that's happening in the in Ukraine. But , you know , I've learned enough over time to , um , to to shut up honestly and to listen. And when a people who are being oppressed as one voice and I have a lot of Ukrainian readers , I've had a lot of Ukrainian readership over the years , and I feel like I heard from every single one of them , um , in various ways on the internet , just very earnestly asking me , could you not do this right now ? Like , could you maybe not publish a book right now that draws attention to Russia no matter what it's about ? Well , we're just trying to not be killed. This is not helpful. And and , you know , I think I've , I don't know , I guess all I can say is that I've just learned enough to kind of know that if an oppressed people in one voice say , could you please not do this thing , it's going to be harmful to us to just not do it , you know ? Um , so , so as soon as I kind of woke up to that and realized that , yeah , it just the choice became very clear. So so , you know , the book is finished. It's ready. It's got a cover. It's everything about it is done. But it doesn't it just doesn't feel like it's the right time for it. And someday it might be , but I'm not anxious about it. Um , I've got lots of other things to do , and I don't want to do anything that causes anybody harm. I mean , I write books to entertain people and to fill them with love. Not to not to cause harm. Um.
S1: Respect on that.
S2: I'm going to cheat and borrow a piece of advice that's probably 10,000 years old. Um , because , you know , if it's lasted this long , it might have something good to offer. The great Indian text , spiritual text , the Bhagavad Gita , um , has a line that I love and , and and I think sounds kind of strangely modern. Um , but but is ancient and deep and true where it says it is better to live your own life imperfectly. Sorry. Your own destiny. It's better to live your own destiny. It depends on the translation. But I think destiny is the right word here. It's better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live a perfect imitation of somebody else's destiny. And. And I think that's it , right ? It's like you can live a perfect imitation of somebody else's life , and it's. And it can look really good , but it's not going to work. And , and your own life might be messy and complicated and inconvenient. I mean , some of the changes that I've had to make in my life over the years have been so inconvenient , so expensive. It would have been so much easier to just stay on the path that I was on. But it was no longer mine. And , um , I , I , you know , you can kick and scream , but in the end , I think there's only one destiny that's yours. And whatever you have to do to live it , you get to do , um , even when you don't want to sometimes , um.
S1: Sage advice there.
S2: Um.
S3: Um. I'm.
S2: I'm. I'm working on a memoir that's about , um , addiction. My own and. And the addiction , uh , the drug addiction of my my beloved Ria Elias , who was my best friend and then my romantic partner at the very end of her life , who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic , uh , liver cancer , pancreatic and liver cancer in 2016. And during the course of um , of of her dying , became addicted again to to cocaine and to opioids and , uh , and it was a nightmare. And , and I have my own addictions to grapple with , my own codependency , my own sex and love addiction. It's a book about the things that we use and the people that we use to try to not have to feel , um , to try to not have to feel and to try to not have to live our own lives. And it's a very difficult book to write. Um , and I was very happy to get to take a break from it right now to get.
S3: To talk to you instead. It's taken me.
S2: She died almost , uh , over six years ago , and it's taken me this long to even get to the point where I can write it. Um , but but really , on every page , I'm like , why am I doing this ? Why am I bringing this all back up again ? Why am I exposing her and myself , um , in ways that are so vulnerable ? On intimate , and all I can say for the answer is that I'm supposed to , um , I'm supposed to. And so I'm just doing again what I'm told. But some projects are a lot more fun than others. Um , but but once again , this one , this one is what I'm being directed to do. And by directed , I just mean from sources I couldn't even explain or understand or name. But , um , but this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now , so. So I'm doing it.
S1: All right. Sorry to hear about that. But I know that so many will be grateful when that book is released. Me.
S3: Me. I'll be grateful when it's. Yeah.
S2: I already lived it once. Living it.
S3: Twice is.
S2: Really hard. And.
S3: And. Yeah , but thank you for saying that. Yes.
S1: All right. I've been speaking with author Elizabeth Gilbert. She'll be at Balboa Theater on February 22nd as part of Point Loma Nazarenes Writers Symposium by the sea. Elizabeth , it's been such a pleasure talking with you.
S2: Thank you , Jade , and a delight talking with you , too. I wish you all the best.
