‘Eat, Pray, Loathe’? More Reconsiderations of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Travel Memoir, ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 02.11.08 | 2:55 PM ET

Release. Praise. Bestseller. Julia Roberts. End-of-year lists. Oprah. Juggernaut. Now, two years after its debut, comes the next phase: Reconsideration of—and backlash against—Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.”

Today on World Hum, Rolf Potts takes a look at the book through the lenses of gender and “adventure porn.” The New York Post and Jezebel recently weighed in with some unkind words, and last week Stephen Metcalf, Katie Roiphe and Julia Turner debated the merits of the book during Slate’s Audio Book Club. USA Today’s Carol Memmott even chronicled the “inevitable backlash” against a book that has sold gazillions.

Gilbert responded to the backlash in the USA Today piece. She e-mailed Memmott:

I understand people’s objections to anything that smacks of the New Age movement (the criticism being that this kind of loosey-goosey spiritual seeking is a just a free-for-all of well-heeled Westerners randomly shoplifting rituals and symbols from all the world’s more exotic religions). ... Mine is just a simple old human story—of one person trying, with great rigor and discipline, to comprehend her personal relationship with divinity.

Gilbert spoke more about her book last year during an Authors@Google visit.