[music] [applause]
- Hello! How many of you have children that you left at
home unable to go trick or treating with you -- because you had to choose between your
beloved children and your friend Liz Gilbert. [laughter] [whisper] You made the right choice.
No, I'm just kidding. I am so happy to be here. Thank you Ann
Patchett wherever she ran off to. There she is. My dear friend. Somebody who paves the way
for so many women writers. A great woman and a great writer, and a great
bookstore owner. Thank you to Parnassus and also to the library for having me here and for all of you for coming
out tonight. It's been such a delight to be on this book tour. So some of you know I wrote this book "Eat,
Pray, Love," that old thing. [laughter] Some of you may have heard of. And it was
really obviously a tremendous fount of blessings in my life for so many reasons to have written
that book, not least of all to have come into a kind of
communion with readers in a way that was more intimate than anything I
ever could have imagined before. But it did present a bit of a problem. Puzzle,
maybe, is a better word than problem. Let's like take the world's problems and compare it to the problem of having written
"Eat, Pray, Love". Problem seems the wrong word to use here.
[laughter] But it was a puzzle as a writer to try to figure
out what you then do. And the feeling that I had after having written
"Eat, Pray, Love" was -- It was not a feeling of paranoia because it was
real and actually rational. The feeling that I had was that whatever I was
going to do next would be inevitably disappointing to people
because if -- whatever it was, didn't matter. It was not going to
be "Eat, Pray, Love" which would be disappointing to people who had
adored "Eat, Pray, Love." And for people who hated "Eat, Pray, Love,"
which was a lot of people. [laughing] It would be really disappointing for them to know
that I still lived. [laughing] And so there was like nothing I could do to
please, you know? And I'm somebody who generally likes to please
and to delight and to entertain. So it was a difficult challenge. And I felt like -- you know, it's hard enough to gin up the energy
to write a book but to do it when the foregone conclusion has
already been established, which is that this ones going to be pretty
disappointing to people, there's a temptation to just maybe move to the
Cotswolds and raise corgis and delphiniums for the rest of
your life. And maybe just not do it anymore. But had I done that, I would have left behind the
work that has given my life meaning and has sewed together everything in my life.
And that would be really tragic for me. Not for the world, but for me. So I pushed
through and I wrote "Committed" and the day that it was published it did feel like I
was lowering a puppy into a chum pool. Just like, [imitating lowering] okay, there you go,
there you go. And I kinda went like this and just let whatever
was going to happen happen and then when it was over and that was that sort
of spell had been broken, what followed was the most euphoric creative
sense of expansive freedom I have ever experienced in
my life. The sense that nothing was owed, that debts
had been paid, that nothing was expected. You know, that nobody was thinking about me.
That the magic had kind of -- bubble had been popped and I could then do
really whatever I wanted. And what I felt that I wanted to do in that big void
that opened up was to write the most ambitious novel that I could possibly
come up with. I wanted to write something that was on the
scale of the novels that I have always loved to
read. A big birth to death epic and I had a novel of
ideas that spans continents, that spans decades, that spans generation and I wanted it to just feel really grand and
monu-freaking-mental. The only problem was, I didn't have an idea for
what it should be about. [laughter] So - but that's incidental, right? The first thing
you have to do is to decide what the scope of
the thing is, and then you have to find out what you can plug
into there. I'm really fascinated with plants. I've become a
passionate gardener recently and I knew that whatever I was going to write
was probably going to have to be about plants or it wouldn't hold my own attention, and so I decided to write my monumental epic
moss novel, as Ann has mentioned. What I'm going to do tonight is just read you a
little tiny piece of it because I would rather talk with you than at you. But it is a reading so I'll just read you a little five-
minute section and then what I really want to do is open this up and make it more of a
conversation, if that is okay with everybody. But in the meantime you have to listen to me for
a few more minutes. It will not be long. Just as a bit of background, the novel is about a
fictitious family of botanical minded people named the Whittakers, who are based on any
number of actual botanical minded people in the late 18th
and 19th centuries, who I studied in order to write this book. The father, Henry, is a poor born lad from just
outside of London from Kew Gardens, who's father is a humble orchard-man and Henry
is dissatisfied with his humble position in life and he's searingly ambitious and goes off into
the world and becomes a great man of botany, breaks the Spanish monopoly on the quinine
trade, becomes a very wealthy man and settles in Philadelphia to essentially
establish the American pharmaceutical industry. He marries along the way a very brilliant Dutch
woman who is the daughter of a family of great Dutch botanists who have run De Hortus
Botanicus Gardens in Amsterdam forever. And so my character Alma is born to these two
very remarkable towering people. Alma herself is a girl of prodigious talents, a
tremendous mind and argumentative personality who chases questions to the ends of the earth
as though the fate of nations depended on the answer and indeed in her mind
it does. She becomes a great scientist and engages with some of the most important
scientific questions of the day. What I'm going to read to you now is a section
about something that happened to our Alma in 1808, when she was a child of eight years.
And this happened on her father's estate. in Philadelphia, which is the finest estate in the
New World. This is the really fun thing about writing fiction. I haven't written fiction in 13 years and I had
forgotten the devilish joy that comes from saying something like, "He was
the wealthiest man in the New World". Because I said he was the wealthiest man in the
New World. [laughter] And if you can plausiblly make a case that
Henry Whittaker in 1808 was the wealthi-- then he was, you know? And that's like the sort of joy and delight and
freedom of fiction. Another thing, I was allowed to decide about
Henry is that his years of travel in tropical and deserted places had left him with
so many lingering illnesses that he could no longer travel. He was a man of
arranging rapacious appetites and could never be bored. And so he demanded
that the world come to him. And he had the power and influence to make
that so. And whenever anybody interesting came through
Philadelphia he would lure them to his estate, which was called "White Acre". So Alma not only spends her life being very
overeducated by her mother, being exposed to all these great botanical ideas,
having the best greenhouses in the new world, at their property, 'cause I said they did, but also has some of the greatest minds in the
world coming through here. So this is the Lyceum in which she is raised. And this is an event that happens in 1808 that she will later recall as having been the
pinnacle of her childhood. [reading from book] It was late summer of 1808, and Henry Whittaker had acquired a new
telescope. He'd been admiring the night skies through his
fine new German lenses, but he was beginning to feel like a celestial
illiterate. His knowledge of the stars was a sailor's
knowledge -- which is not trifling -- but he was not up to date on the latest findings. So when Maestro Luca Pontesilli, the brilliant
Italian astronomer, who came to Philadelphia to speak at the
American Philosophical Society, Henry lured him up to White Acre by hosting a
ball in his honor. Pontesilli, he had heard, was a zealot for
dancing, and Henry suspected, correctly, that the man
could not resist a ball. This was to be the most elaborate affair the
Whittakers had ever attempted. The finest of Philadelphia's caterers arrived in
the early afternoon and set to assembling the elegant meringues
and mixing the colorful punches. Tropical flowers that had never before been
taken out of the balmy forcing houses were arranged in tableauxs all over the
mansion. Then suddenly an orchestra of moody strangers
was milling about the ballroom, tuning their instruments and muttering complaints about the
heat. Alma was scrubbed and packed into white
crinolines, her cockscomb of unruly red hair forced into a
satin bow nearly as large as her head. Then the guests arrived, in billows of silk and
powder. It was hot. It had been hot all month, but this was the
hottest day yet. Anticipating the uncomfortable weather, the
Whittakers did not commence their ball until 9
o'clock long after the sun had set, but the day's
punishing heat lingered. The ballroom quickly became a greenhouse
itself, steaming and damp, which the tropical plants enjoyed but the ladies
did not. The musicians suffered and perspired. The guests spilled out of doors in search of
relief, lounging on the verandas, leaning against the
marble statues, trying in vain to draw coolness from the stone. In an effort to slake their thirst, people drank a
good deal more punch than they had perhaps intended to drink. And as a natural result, inhibitions melted away, and a general air of light hearted giddiness took
hold of everyone. The orchestra abandoned the formality of the
ballroom and set up a lively racket outdoors on the wide
lawn. Lamps and torches were brought outside,
casting all the guests into turbulent shadows. The charming Italian astronomer attempted to
teach the gentlemen of Philadelphia some wild Neapolitan dance
steps, and he made his rounds with every lady too. All
of whom found him comical, daring, and thrilling. Pontesilli was supposed to have delivered a
lecture that night with elaborate illustrations and
calculations explaining the elliptical paths and velocities of
the planets. At some point in the course of the evening,
though, this idea was discarded. What gathering, in such an unruly spirit, could fairly be expected to sit still for a serious
scientific lecture? Alma would never know whose idea it had been,
Pontesilli's or her father's, but shortly after midnight, it was decided that
the famous Italian cosmological maestro would recreate a model of the universe on the great lawn of the White Acre estate, using the guests themselves as the heavenly
bodies. It would not be an exact scale model, the Italian
drunkenly declaimed, but it would at least give the ladies a slight
sense as to the lives of the planets and their
relationships to one another. With a marvelous air of both authority and
comedy, Pontesilli placed Henry Whittaker, the sun, at the center of the lawn. Then he gathered up a number of other
gentlemen to serve as planets, each of whom would radiate outward from their
host. To the entertainment of everyone gathered,
Pontesilli attempted to choose men for those
roles who most closely resembled the planets
they were meant to represent. Thus, tiny Mercury was portrayed by a
diminutive but dignified grain merchant from
Germantown. Since Venus and Earth were bigger than
Mercury, but nearly the same size as each
other, Pontesilli chose for those planets a pair of
brothers from Delaware -- two men who were almost perfectly identical in
height, girth, and complexion. Mars needed to be bigger than the grain
merchant, but not quite as big as the brothers from
Delaware. A prominent banker with a trim figure fit the bill. For Jupiter, Pontesilli commandeered a retired
sea captain, a man of truly hilarious fatness who's corpulent appearance in the solar system
reduced the entire party to hysterical laughter. And on it went, until all the planets were
arranged across the lawn at the proper distance from the sun, and from
each other. Then Pontesilli set them into orbit around Henry, desperately trying to keep each intoxicated
gentleman in his correct celestial path. Soon the ladies were clamoring to join the
amusement, and so Pontesilli arranged them around the
men, to serve as moons with each moon in her own
narrow orbit. And Alma's mother playing the role of the
Earth's moon with cool lunar perfection. The maestro then created stellar constellations
in the outskirts of the lawn, concocted from the prettiest groups of unmarried
belles. The orchestra struck up again, and this
landscape of heavenly bodies took on the appearance of the most strange and
beautiful waltz the good people of Philadelphia had ever seen. Henry, the Sun King, stood beaming at the
center of it all, his hair the color of flame, while men large and
small revolved around him, and women circled the men. Clusters of unmarried girls sparkled in the
outermost corners of the universe, distant as unknown galaxies. Pontesilli climbed atop a high garden wall and
swayed precariously there, conducting and commanding the entire tableau, crying across the night, "Stay at your velocity,
Men! Do not abandon your trajectory, Ladies!" Alma wanted to be in it. She had never before seen anything so thrilling. She had never before been awake this late but she had somehow been forgotten in all the
merriment. She was the only child in attendance, as she
had been for all of her life the only child in attendance. She ran over to the garden wall and cried up to the dangerously unstable
Maestro Pontesilli, "Put me in it, sir!" The Italian peered down at her from his perch,
troubling himself to try to focus his eyes. Who was this child? He might have dismissed her entirely, but then
Henry bellowed from the center of the solar system,
"Give the girl a place!" Pontesilli shrugged. "You are a comet", he called down to Alma, while still making a pretense of conducting the
universe with one waving drunken arm. "What does a comet do, sir," she asked? "You fly about in all directions", the Italian
commanded. And so she did. She propelled herself into the midst of the
planets ducking and swivelling through everyone's orbits, scuttling and twirling, the ribbon unfurling from
her hair. Whenever she neared her father, he would cry,
"Not so close to me, Alma, or you'll burn to
cinders", and he would push her away from his fiery,
combustible self, impelling her to run in another
direction. Astonishingly, at some point, a sputtering torch
was thrust into her hands. Alma did not see who had given it to her. She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of
flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted
across the cosmos -- the only body in the heavens who was not held
to a strict elliptical path. Nobody stopped her.
She was a comet. She did not know that she was not flying. [end
of reading book] Thanks. (applause) Thank you, thank you. (continued applause) So then, who has questions for the answers I
have prepared? ( laughing ) As Henry Kissinger once said to a room full of
reporters. I love. If you put your hand up I will hear you because I
have good ears. Well, I won't hear you until you speak. If you put your hand up I will read your mind and
I will relay your question into this microphone for
everybody's entertainment and then I will answer it. No? well, good night. Thank you.
( laughing ) - Oh go ahead >> You said that you had - you wanted to write
this wonderful novel but you didn't have an idea so I wondered about the generation of that idea,
where it came from and how long you worked on
this book >> Thank you. The question was... I had the scope of the novel
but didn't have the idea and where does that come from and how long
does that take to work? It's a funny thing hunting an idea. It's - you know you can't go after it with a panzer
division of tanks, right? You have to - it's butterfly hunting, really. You have to come into this particular state of -- readiness and openness and awareness to just let whoever distributes ideas know that
you are ready to catch one if it should fly by you and that you're not going to
miss it. And I had a sense that I wanted to write
something about plants, but I didn't really know exactly in what direction. And... the real moment of inception was that I went
home to help my mom pack up some stuff in the house that my parents had lived in for 45
years, and I was doing that thing with her that you do
where you've got the boxes and you have the one that goes to the Salvation
Army and the one that goes to this cousin and these
things that get passed along and trash and this goes to the new house. And we were doing the books... And we were
chatting, I had my back to her. And all of a sudden I heard her gasp and say,
"Oh, my God, look what you did!" And I turned around and saw that she was
holding this book that was very familiar to me because it had been in the house the whole time
I was growing up. It is a 1784 very rare edition of Captain Cook's
voyages, that was published in London that my great
grandfather collected because he was not just a bully and an
alcoholic, he was also an avid reader and a great book
collector. And somehow he had gotten his hands on this
book probably around 1919 and it was a book that - it was about it's about this big and bound in calf skin and
filled with amazing illustrations of Captain Cook's voyages. And maps and botanical drawings and
ethnographic sketches and all sorts of really remarkable "Age of
Enlightenment" stuff. The book was intimately familiar with me
because we were forbidden to touch it when I
was a child. And so we touched it constantly. (laughter) And my sister and I were always making up
plays and stories and we always used it because it was the biggest and most impressive
book in the house. So we used it whenever we had a sorcerer who
needed a spell, we'd whip open the Captain Cook book So, anyway, she had pulled it off the shelf and
opened it to see if there was anything in it and
discovered that I looking like maybe age 3 or 4 had
scrawled my name in the end papers of this
book. Thereby simultaneously destroying its value and
laying claim to it. (laughter)
And she said, Well, you ruined it. I guess it's
yours", and she handed it to me. And it's probably because of the talismanic
power that this book had had over me as a child, when she gave it to me I got that thing up the
arms. Which is usually a signal that you should pay
attention. And if you're a creative person or if you're a
writer, it is actually your obligation to follow up on that
shiver that went up the arms and figure out why that happened. So I took the book home and started studying it
and discovered Sir Joseph Banks who is Captain Cook's chief botanist and head
of science who went with him on the first voyage and was a tremendous botanist
who brought back to Kew Gardens, I think 7,000 specimens of plants, that the Western World had never before seen and then dispatched naturalists all over the
world to collect more. And then I started going, well look, there it is. It's not going to be on that voyage but
something's coming out of that. Somebody was on that voyage, somebody
learned from Banks, somebody became a great
botanist, somebody is going to have a daughter and then
it just sort of starts to build from there. So about three years of research after that and
then I was ready to go. Easy peasy. (laughter) Yes?
>> How do you balance your tour schedule with personal time and over the years do you have
dos and don'ts and like weird requests where you're just like okay, no? [laughter] >> The question was, how do I balance my tour
schedule with my personal time. I love that you think I do. That's wonderful.
[laughter] That gives me so much credit that I don't
deserve. I -- you know, I've got to tell ya, I'm going to go --
I have a little thing these days against the word
"balance." because I feel as though -- as well intentioned
as that word has become in terms of what we're all supposed to be
seeking in our lives, I think it has become yet one more word we use to beat ourselves up
with because we don't have -- haven't achieved
it, right? and we're -- and yet we're supposed to. You
can't open any page of any woman's magazine without seeing the word "balance" on the page, often on the cover and usually from the movie
star talking about how she got it. And the reality is I don't know anybody -- I don't know if I would be friends with anybody
who was living a balanced life. I don't know who that would be. [laughter] Do you really want to even like confide anything
in that person? Like it just seems that would be a really kind of
awful person. [laughter] But I want to be friends with people who want
that. You know? And I feel like it's just another thing we use to
wound ourselves. So I've sort of let go of that a little bit and
recognized that -- it's also so fleeting. We live in a crazy shifting weird -- it's a weird
planet to live on. And the minute that you've achieved balance the
ground under your feet shifts and you've lost it and you kind of get it back and
you've lost it and kind of get it back. In answer to your question how do I balance it
on tour, naps and tears help a lot. [laughter] And visiting dear friends along the way. And also just having learned over the years how
to do it. And gratitude helps. You know, because you get sort of petulant and
surly about the airport and the hotel and then you remember that you have the very
best job that any human being could have. And that you are so lucky and you are so lucky
to be published and you're so lucky that anybody wants to come
out on a Friday night and spend time with you. And that everybody else's life is harder than
yours and then you shut up and you just go do
it. [laughter] And then it becomes joyful. And the
second question was about what? About do I ever turn down
things? >> Over the years of dos and don'ts, like
boundaries? >> Oh, I'm great at boundaries! I am not great at boundaries. I'm kidding. I so
thought that was so going to be a laugh line. [laughter] I thought you guys knew me well
enough to know -- no, I don't have any
boundaries. I'm the permeable membrane. [laughter] I don't
know. I let the -- you know, I'm a little better at it, but I
have -- I don't know, I have learned one important thing which is that I
think you sort of get to a point in your life where you
think I have to learn how to say no to things I don't
want to do. And that's a big mature moment when you start
to begin to do that. But the bigger mature moment is when you
learn how to say no to things you do want to do. Because you know that you just don't have time
or you don't have energy or there just isn't -- you know you have to sort of
triage your life and there just isn't an opportunity. And that only came to me very recently, that
sometimes you have to turn down even wonderful things in order to take care of your
health or to take care of what you truly, truly, truly care
about. Not just what you truly care about. So that's helped a little bit. But not much. I have
very, very, very messy borders. It is ah -- I've got -- I've got Republicans who live
inside me who want to build a wall. [laughter] And I've got people sneaking across
the desert all the time. Yes?
>> Would you speak to your process per non
fiction versus fiction creatively and personally? >> Sure, the difference in process for me non
fiction versus fiction creatively and personally, I've got to say I don't see a huge difference
really. I kind of feel like -- it's just a little bit different aspect of the job. I
think it's because I worked as a journalist for a long time at the same time that I was
learning how to write short stories, so in my 20's I got used to the idea that you put
on this hat and you do this job and you put on this hat and
you do that job. I think there's nothing -- Ann writes about this in
her new beautiful book which is -- please do not neglect to buy "This is The Story
of a Happy Marriage." It is wonderful. She writes about how there's almost nothing
better than working in the magazine world to par boil your skills as a writer, to get you
almost to lose the romance of it and to just get the job done 'cause it's gotta get
done. Whatever the job might be. One thing is that I was really intimidated
because I didn't have a terrific experience writing my last and first novel "Stern Men." And I think in my mind I had established that writing a novel is a painful and bloody and
exhausting and terrifying thing. But I think writing that novel was 'cause it was
my first novel and I was only 27 and I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't
know how to do it. And what I learned when I returned to the form,
is that in those 13 years I have really learned a lot about writing. And a lot
about working. And the main thing that I've learned is that the
more assistance you can give yourself in terms of preparation, the easier time you're
gonna have of it once you get to work. Which is why my process is so front loaded with
research and preparation. Which other people might think of as really
boring. But I think of as the difference between painting
the interior of a house just walking into the living room one day and
starting to paint the wall and then being like oh, there's a picture here I
have to move. Oh, the couch is in the way. Oh, everything is filthy. I didn't really choose the
paint right. Or spending a month emptying the house out,
polishing, getting rid of all the rust spots, taping up all the windowpanes, coming with a color expert to work on and then
when the moment comes to work, you're just rolling paint on the walls because all
the hard work is the preparation. So I think that's always how I'm going to write,
whether it's fiction or non fiction. Then I feel when I'm writing it, I take notes on
index cards and keep index cards in shoe boxes because
it's very tactile. I'm able - I do this for fiction or non fiction, and
I'm able to move them around. I've got them filed by character, by chapter. In this book orchids, moss, abolition,
missionaries, Tahiti, Holland, it's all sort of lined up, and then you can spread
them out, look at them, put them in the right
order and then it's paint by numbers. You just write your way through the box. Once you've sort of learned how to help yourself
out, I have these wonderful moments as I'm writing
where I just say 'Thank you past Liz,' you know? [laughter] 'Thank you so much for taking two
weeks to learn about whaling routes. That's going to make this chapter a lot easier.' 'Thank you two years ago Liz for calling the guy
who's an expert in botanical pharmaceuticals in historical Philadelphia 'cause now we
actually just get to write this scene and we don't have to worry about that kind of
stuff. So it's kind of boring. It doesn't make for
romantic image of the work. Would make for a terrible biopic. There are no fugue states. I could no more write at three o'clock in the
morning drunk than I could do anything else at three o'clock in
the morning drunk. [laughter] It's very orderly. It's very disciplined. There are moments of - of course there are
moments of divine inspiration. But I think that - I have tried to figure out a way
to put this metaphor - I feel like divine inspiration is to a lifetime of
committed creativity what a one night stand is to a 40-year marriage. Exciting, dangerous, fleeting, versus, you know, respectful, loving, devotional,
disciplined, and dedicated. And that's really where the work gets done, is in
the 40-year marriage part. Yes, sir. >> What you read - >> Are you going to ask me about one-night
stand? No, I'm not answering that question! [laughter] Go ahead. >> What you read, the chapter I think was
really, really good >> Thank you. >> Was that a day, a half a day? and at the end of that, did you read it out loud
after you wrote it and did you call it a day after you wrote that? >> I am so glad you asked that. Just that one
section. It's hard for me to determine. I kind of balk when people ask me how long it
takes to write certain things because I include the entire process. So I remember reading a book that mentioned
that Keats once mentioned that when he was a child
he went to a party where they recreated the heavens on the lawn. And then I spent probably three weeks
trying to find the original reference for that and never did. So you got to figure that into the timing. And then decided I'm just going to have to make
that up. And then had to go look into the proportions and
distances of the heavens and all -- you know, all of that sort of work. Then had to decide, you know, where the
astronomer could have been from, like why Henry -- so all of that figures into it. But then --- that was probably a day's work to
write that. And then I did read it because here's something
that is very different about this book from anything I've ever written. I'm normally a very private writer. I'm a very -- In every other way of my life I'm a very public
person but when I'm working I tend to be very retiring. I've never been able to write in my home. I always have to -- even when I was living in
squalid walkups in the East Village I wrote at the New York Public Library. Thank you library gods for making spaces that
people can go be away from their homes around ideas. Or I wrote in coffee shops or in
bus stations or someplace else. This was the first book that I ever wrote
completely in my own house. And one of the reasons for that is that I'm sort of
more at ease in my own house than I've every been before. My marriage to
Javier Berdem is going very well. [laughing] And -- it's a very sweet marriage and I did something with my husband that I had
never done before, with anybody, which is after I wrote the first few
pages of the novel, I -- he came up, he's very respectful -- I have an
office in the attic, he never even goes near it. And he sort of hesitantly -- he knew I was
beginning writing that day. He tapped on the door and said, "How's it
going?" I said, "Can I read it to you, just the beginning?"
And I've never done that. And I read it to him, and he said, "What
happens next?" [laughter] And so then what I did was I wrote the book to
him and every night I read it to him as I was writing
it. So it was like a Victorian serialized novel but for
only one reader. Really intimate serialization. You want to marry the person who's your
champion and he's such a champion. And he just generally would just always say I
think you're wonderful and I think it's terrific. But I could notice at certain times that his eyes
were kind of glassing over [laughter] as he sat there with his glass of wine and then I
would just write in the margins, 'delete today's work.' You know? [laughter] Get rid of those six pages 'cause he would just
sorta be politely listening and then other times he was leaning in and
other times he was emotional and other times -- so I was playing to the audience really. And I feel like that energy is in this story. And hopefully kind of pulls it along. So yes, I did read him that and he said it was lovely but he also says it's lovely
when I manage to tie my shoes. So after that level you go to a sterner critic. That's what my family members are for, to give
you the tougher answer. >> Uh-huh?
>> It kind of connects to that a little bit. I've read your talk a little bit about the editing
process and how challenging that is to go back through and over and over look at
that. So could you just talk about that a little bit, how
that differs from the actual process of writing and some of the -- some of the personal
challenges it is to go back and look at your work and try to
separate from it? >> Yeah, the detachment, yeah the editing
process versus the writing process. This is one of the tricky magical thinking spaces
that I have to go into as a writer. And this is why the more expansive you can
kind of make your mind, I think the better a time you'll have with it in most
creative endeavors because you have to hold two completely diverse ideas to
be true at the same time. And those completely opposed ideas are -- this is the most important thing in the world as
you're writing it, because you have to bring that level of
seriousness and reverence and devotion to the work. And
then -- sometimes even like one minute later you have
to turn to, this is totally disposable. [laughing] You know, and so you have to love it
and then cut it and then love it and then cut it and care about it and then not care about it. And you have to flip back and forth all the time
between that. And it's -- it's tricky but it's also so interesting,
emotionally to do. I find it's kind of a really curious emotional
puzzle. I've also learned, I have kind of concentric circles
of people, there's levels of editing. And I go from
kindest and gentlest to sternest and toughest. And you have to do it in that order. Be very
careful not to show your work right away to the person who begins
all sentences with 'may I be brutally honest.' [laughter] You know, like generally speaking in
life, the people -- sometimes you're going to get more brutality
than honesty from -- but you do eventually want to show it to that
person, because you would rather hear it from them than
from the "New York Times." But not -- you have to just have -- make sure
your project has a little more callus on it before you do that. I'm also really lucky to work with a friend of mine
who lives in Portland, Oregon, named Ann
Connell who is -- she's not a professional copy editor but
she has the most granular eye of anybody I've ever met
for catching mistakes and errors. She's usually the first person that I send it to
because at least she cleans it up, you know. It's like -- it's like auto detailing. So that even if
the car doesn't run, it's immaculate. [laughter] And then I give it to other people to
see if they can get the engine running. But I find that whole process, I don't find it
anguish. I mean it's -- I don't find it to be -- anguish. Sometimes it's troubling. But it's always more
interesting than anything else. I feel like those -- you know those famous
bumper sticker, a bad day fishing is still better than a good day
of work. I always feel like a bad day of any part of writing is still better than a good day at anything else I
ever did in my life. So it's part of the process. And if you want to write but you don't want to
edit, it's kinda like saying, I want to have a baby but I only like them when
they're six months old and really cute. And I want them when they're three years old.
Then I'm going to send them out to foster care. You have to take care of the project at every
single step, even through the difficult times. >> Um, yeah?
>> You talked a little bit about that separation. Do you ever feel like you get stuck in like either
"Eat, Pray, Love" or whatever novel is out? Like every time you
meet somebody they're like tell me about "Eat, Pray, Love," I'm
moving -- I'm still developing and growing? >>Thank you for assuming I'm developing and
growing. I appreciate that. [laughing] The question was about being stuck the way
people see you. You know what? I don't think it's the world's
responsibility to keep track of who I am. I think it's my responsibility to keep track of who
I am. And I think I'm also a little bit sympathetic to the
phenomenon that Ann was talking about earlier about people kind of conveniently sort of sticking
a label on you and saying you're this person. Because the fact is we are all overloaded with
so much -- information, so much media, and so many
people we have to keep track of, and so many people making music and art and
movies and television programs. It's really easy and efficient to just sort of
catalog them. And I do it. You know, I do it and then I get
shamed. I do it because I've decided something about
somebody and I'm completely surprised to discover that oh, who knew -- also can do
this. And I would never have thought of that. But who
has time? You know, to keep track of everybody's back
stories. So I don't mind at all. And I also don't -- you know, it's interesting for me to read some of
the reviews have been really amusing to me about this book because, I find it interesting to see just how far the
reviewer needs to separate him or herself from "Eat, Pray, Love." Like sometimes the really confident ones don't
even need to mention it. They just talk about this book on its own merits.
But the other ones, just need to take sometimes a few
sentences,sometimes a few paragraphs to make glaringly clear that they absolutely
disapprove of "Eat, Pray, Love." Just to establish their own intellectual credibility.
Like just to make sure, I hate books by women about confessional
emotions, but this is a really good book. [laughter] They have to lay down the law on that
really hard. And I'm like dude. What's it to you? I find that kind of amazing. And I think are you afraid you're going to catch
it? [laughter] Like it's something -- You're going to get contaminated by it? You
have to make sure that you're not contaminated by it or that your opinions are not contaminated
by it. I find that really strange. But that's their jam.
Whatever their thing is. And I don't think it's the really best use of my
energies to try to go out into the world and convince
people that I am other than what they think I am. I think the really good use of my energies is
make sure I'm always doing the most ambitious, creative work that I
can do. And then whatever comes of it is kind of none of
your business after that -- I mean not none of your business. [laughter]
That sounded aggressive. None of one's business. [laughing] Just kind of
gotta let it go. >> Uh-huh?
>> I really, really loved "The Last American Man" and I was kind of wondering what happened to
him and also, if you could talk a little bit about the process of
working with him because I assume it might have been a little - he
might have been a little reserved or something. >> Eustace Conway is not reserved. Eustace
Conway is incredibly, tyrannically domineering. So it was difficult for a different way. The question was about the book "The Last
American Man" which was a biography sort of contemplation
that I wrote about this very fascinating guy named Eustace Conway,
who ran off into the mountains when he was about 17
years old and has lived off the land ever since. But also wants to be a charismatic prophet and also kind of is a charismatic prophet and
also kind of is -- Like what's the opposite of that? Kind of is a
snake oil salesman and also kind of is a dangerous person and also kind of is an
exciting person. So I was trying to sort of sort out what he was
and also what he says about manhood in
America. Working with Eustace is tricky because he's
used to being -- he's one of these people who's accustomed to being the best at everything and
in control of everything. So the only way I could figure out how to do it, and I don't think this is typically how these
things are done. Also he didn't come to me and say will you write
a book about me. It wasn't -- like a ghostwriting relationship. I approached
him, having written a magazine article about him and
said, "I want to write a book about you. Will you work with me? Will you cooperate with
me?" And he immediately started trying to kind of
micro-manage how that was going to go. And I just said, "You know what, Eustace?
Here's what the terms are going to have to be. We'll split the money 50/50. And what I'm buying from you by giving you half
the money for my work for four years is total control over this project. And if that's not something that you're
comfortable with, then we just can't do it. Because I have to do this. And you should be
paid and compensated for the fact that you're sharing your life story and you're giving me your
time. But I'm -- I'm writing this. I'm driving this bus,
you know." And every once in a while during the process I
would have to sort of gently lean over and take him by the arm
and say, "You're the mountain man, I'm the writer."
[laughter] "I don't tell you how to skin a deer, you know.
You're not going to tell me how to do this." And he was very happy. He was very
courageous about sharing himself in a really intimate way. He gave
me such access to his life. He gave me boxes of youthful diaries and journals that he himself had
not opened in 20 years. I cannot imagine ever doing that for anybody. In fact, I feel like right now going home and
burning those in case anybody should ever read
them. [laughter] He gave me love letters, he gave me
phone numbers of women who he knew hated
him whose hearts he had broken and said, "You
should call her and talk to her she hates me." He just -- he's a full on person. He sort of committed. If we're gonna do this,
we're gonna do this full on. And one of the things that that did for me was
inspire me to be as open as I could when I wrote "Eat, Pray,
Love" because I thought, if you're ever gonna ask somebody to be that revealing, then it's sort of not fair if you
don't then do the same. So we're still friends. You know, there's
boundaries that have had to be established. But he's somebody that I care about. He's
somebody who I worry about sometimes, pity sometimes. I think he's a very lonely and
unhappy person. He's like a lot of us, like most of us, he's playing the same song over and over again.
This song always comes to the same ending. It's just sort of one Saturday after another in his
life. I wish he would be different, but, you know, the beginning of sanity is to stop
being shocked and appalled when people that you know behave exactly like
themselves, again and again and again, because that's what they're gonna keep doing.
So it worked out well. We got through it without tears and as being two
people who could hang out together, which I think is kind of the best you can do in
that situation. >> Yes.
>> I had read somewhere that you had read the
novel "Wolf Hall" several times before starting this book and I
wondered how that influenced you. >> Thank you. Has anybody here read "Wolf
Hall"? Yes, you have. [laughing] The Booker prize winning stupendous historical
novel, by Hilary Mantel, in my opinion it's the best book of the last 10,
20, 50 years. I mean, it really got me. And she wrote about Henry VIII and more particularly about Thomas
Cromwell, Henry the 8th's sinister, but incredibly compelling, in her telling,
advisor. And I had already begun researching the novel
and sort of laying the novel out, but it wasn't until I read "Wolf Hall" that I got the
trick of what you could do. Because I didn't know -- I wanted to write a book
that took place in the 19th century. I didn't want it to feel candlesticky, is the only
word I can come up with for a certain tone that historical novels can take
sometimes. I didn't want the candlesticky feel. I didn't want to pretend I was writing a lost
George Eliot novel, and I didn't think I could get away with that first
of all and I also thought that that would be really
affected and then I read "Wolf Hall" and realized she
wrote a contemporary novel that just happened to be set in the 16th century. And that was just this tiny little psychological
shift for me, to realize that I can write this from my position in 2012. I just happen to be writing about the events that
occurred in this era, as long as I don't use any anachronistic
language, I can use a contemporary soul to tell this story and that opened up -- but I had to read it twice
before I got that. 'Cause I kept trying to decode the magic of what
she had done, and I think that's the magic of what she did. Thanks for the question. Did you read "Bring up
the Bodies"? >> Oh, yeah. But I like "Wolf Hall" better. >> I do too. But what I really love about her as
well, Hilary Mantel. I love her confidence. I love her confidence as a narrator. That's what I
love about 19th century literature, is the very self-assured narrator, who just takes you by the hand and says,
"Come along. I know exactly where we're going". "I've got this whole thing figured out. I am not
going to drive the carriage off a cliff." You know? Like we are going on an adventure. And I also love her confidence as a writer. She
won the Booker prize twice, for the book and the
sequel. It's like "Godfather I" and "II" getting the Oscar.
And then, at the Booker Prize ceremony, Of course, the obvious question people asked
her was, "Do you feel a lot of pressure about the
third one?" And she was like, "Oh, no, the third one's great.
It's gonna be great." She's like, I got this, I know, I know what I'm
doing. I know how to do my job. It was SO cool to see somebody just blatantly
owning her capacity. I think that's really amazing. And inspiring. Yes. Back there. >> So you've alluded to the negative reaction to
"Eat, Pray, Love." I would be on the opposite end, by the way.
>> Thank you. >> But what do you think that's about? And how do you -- you see it playing out with
Sheryl Sandberg and a lot of other women who write in that
personal tone. What's your reflection on what that's about and
are you going to do it again? >> Why the haters? Is that the question? Why
the "Eat, Pray, Love" haters? I think there are as many reasons for that as
there are haters. I think people bring their own particular breed of
hate to stuff that they hate. I think some of it is just kind of fear of women
and fear of women's feelings. Some of it is anger at what was perceived to be
self indulgence. Some of it -- my dear friends of course always
say that it's jealousy. But I don't think that everybody who hated "Eat,
Pray, Love" was jealous of it. I think some people legitimately just hated it.
And you have to respect that. Like you have to just-- you know there's stuff I
hate that I'm not jealous of. I just don't like it. And I think that you just have
to give room for that and allow that. It's not always -- it's not always intimate or
emotional and politicized in that way. I think -- the other
thing that happens is that when a book reaches a level of not just a
book, anything, but let's just say a book reaches that level of
visability. Suddenly it becomes this giant screen upon which people start flinging their -- you
know, projecting their most powerful emotions about a lot of other stuff that really has nothing
to do with the book and has everything to do with whatever is going
on in their own lives at that moment. And the other thing that happens is that when
something gets that much attention and everyone's talking about it, then suddenly
you feel sort of obliged to read it, which means that the book ends up in the
hands of a bunch of people it was never intended
for. And that happens to me sometimes where
there's a book that's just like everyone's reading
this book and so I just feel like I would be remiss not to
read it. And then I read it and I hate it. And I was like,
but you never would have read -- that's not a kind of book you would ever read.
You know? It's not fair to that author to then say it's not well
written because I felt like I had to participate in some conversation that was going on in the
culture. So I think that happened as well. And I don't
know, have I listed all the reasons to hate? There are more. [laughing] And then there's the whole "Chick Lit" thing. You
know? What I found kind of interesting and unable to
avoid noticing, is that when I wrote about men and men's journeys, they gave me the National
Book Award nomination, they gave me the National Book Critic's Circle
Award nomination, they gave me the National Magazine Award, they gave me the PEN/Hemingway, they
showered me with love. And when I wrote about a woman's emotional
journey, they just like shunted me off into that particular
dungeon of horror. And that is just kind of the way it is, I guess
still, to a certain extent. But I don't believe that there's much you can do
about it other than continue to do whatever work you
want to do. And of course there are consolations. It's sort of
sad to have people hate your book, but it's kind of great to have eight million copies
of it sell so it makes you feel a little better. [laughter] You can kind of be like, it's not so
bad, you know? That anonymous blogger was really mean. On
the other hand, you know? So when you weigh it, it's kind of like I think I
can survive this. Anybody else? Yes.
>> Do you still experience resistance to this craft you love at this point, like have sort
of a pre-anticipated method of attack when
resistance arises? >> Oh, ok. Thank you. The question was do I
still have resistance to this craft and do I have a method of attack? Ok, right there, that word is the problem. And that is why I struggled as a writer in my
20's is because having been raised on the mother's milk of
German Romanticism as every single creative person in Western
society has been, it was my misunderstanding that if you are not
at war with your creativity, you're not doing it
right. If you're not a bit tormented or tormenting other
people around you, you're not doing it right. I had a high school English teacher who said to
me when I was 14, you're a really good writer but it's too bad you'll
never have a chance to be one because you haven't suffered enough, your life
hasn't been traumatic enough, right? Jerk off thing to say to a 14 year old by the way. And I thought, God, I've got to do something
about it. Got to go get me some suffering! [laughter] And also, what does a middle age man know
about the sufferings of a 14 year old girl, by the
way? Which were acute, I can tell you, because of the
fact that I was a 14 year old girl. And what I've learned is that what I'm much
more interested in is not attacking the work but collaborating with the work. I feel like that's an older relationship that human
beings have with creativity. I think that's the original relationship that human
beings have with creativity. And I think it got really perverted by a bunch of
guys in Europe in the middle of the 19th century and we still have a hangover from that. And even the language that people use, I find it
-- I recoil from it when people say things -- like famous quotes about writing, right? "It's easy to write, you just open up a vein and
bleed." They're always violent, right? Like "kill your
darlings" is another one. Norman Mailer saying every -- let's not even
bring Norman Mailer into it. [laughter] So off the scales in this direction. I don't think
Norman Mailer would have enjoyed anything that he wasn't
punching or that he didn't feel is punching him. And I just feel like it's a general rule of the
Universe that anything you fight, fights you
back. And anything that you invite, approaches. And if
you want the work, you invite the work. You don't attack the work. And I also have a sort
of magical thinking, mystical idea that is where I keep my one foot with the fairies.
That the world is constantly being swirled by creative ideas that want very much to be
made manifest and can only be made manifest through people and they're looking for people to
come through. And the same way that lightning wants the most
efficient path down to the earth, they want the most efficient path into being and
they will find the person who can do it, who's like committed to doing it the most. And so when you get those little moments of
inspiration, when you get those sort of tweaks of
creativity, it's your obligation to get everything else out of
the way, including your own garbage. So when I'm struggling now with my work, I
know that it's me. It's not it, you know. It's not because I'm being
tormented by the muse. It's not because the arts are an arena of
suffering and pain and blood. It's because I have a problem and I need to get
out of the way. And then it's my job, just as you would with any
psychological problem, to try to figure out what you need to do to clear
that, right? Do I have to meditate? Do I have to pray? Do I
have to go for a run? Do I have to end a toxic relationship that's
distracting me? Do I have to go back and have a tune up with the
shrink? Like what is the thing that I can do to make
myself as open and channeled as I possibly can to that work. And what if I just trusted that the work wants to
be made as much as I want it to be made? And that it's doing everything it can to come
through me. And I feel sometimes like the artists in the
studios who are throwing dishes against the wall and weeping and pulling out their hair. I feel like the little creative idea is just sort of sitting on a
cot in the corner just waiting. Just kind of like, when you're done with that --
[laughter] can we go back to this? And I'm just going to
wait. And it just waits and it just watches like all this
spinning until the artist spins himself out and then the
idea is like okay, let's go. Let's get back to work. And I think that the great
tormented artists did their work not because of their torment but despite it. You
know, because the creativity was so powerful and it came up like grass through the sidewalk. And so I try to keep the -- keep that grass
growing as well as possible. I don't know how else to say it. Except for that
it's a really big leap of trust. And I have friends who are so rational and, you
know, proud atheists and who are just firm rational writers but they
have all kinds of crazy magical thinking about jinxes. I don't want to talk about the work
because I don't want to jinx it. My second book's not going to be as good
because you only get one good book in your life. They say all these things and I always call them
out on it. And I say, when you say that you do know that
what you're implying is that there is an operating force in the Universe that's doling out reward and suffering and pain,
which sounds a lot like a deity. So if you're gonna do that and you're going to
sort of set up this sort of deity that's punishing
you for your hubris or setting up obstacles or making
sure that you don't get too much credit, or giving your reward to somebody else, if you're
going to have irrational magical thinking, why not have irrational magical thinking in your
own favor? And why not - equally irrational, my thinking is
absolutely as irrational as theirs. It's just that mine is all organized with this fake
belief that it's all working to help me. And that none of it is working to harm me And I just think why don't you just choose to
think that way because it's just as stupid and just as crazy but
it makes the work so much easier and also makes you be able to have
relationships and nice days without ruining your
life and anybody else's ( laughing ) A modest suggestion. ( Applause ) >> Where did the notion of Alma's sexual... >>ELIZABETH GILBERT: Passion? Lustiness? >> What was the inspiration for that or the
notion? >>ELIZABETH GILBERT: Well, my character
Alma is very carnal and very lusty and I knew
that that was always going to be part of her. Because I wanted to write a birth to death
woman's story and I felt that it would be
incomplete to not discuss sex because that's part of birth - that's part of what happens in between birth
and death. And hopefully close - not so - well, anyway. And I also felt - she's also homely
and I felt that I that was important because I feel like I get really
frustrated as a reader, as a woman with books where the lusty, carnal character
female is always - always looks like Jessica
Rabbit, you know Like it's always telegraphed in her appearance...
She's got She's got high color in her cheeks and heaving
breasts and dangerous Auburn hair and flashing eyes and of course she's the one
who's sexualized and the one who is pure looks
pure. And it's just not real to what sex is and what
desire is. And often the one who looks very lusty and
sexual is probably the one who doesn't want to
be touched. And I was playing with that too in the novel by
creating a pair of opposites in that regard with
Alma's sister. And I wondered what it would be to write a
character who is full of physical desire and
nothing in her demonstrates that. No man is ever able to pick up on that because
it's just not visible And especially in a time when it really wasn't
supposed to be visible anyway. It's not even obliquely visible in her. The tricky thing is that I also knew that she'd be
a self pleasuring person, that be a character
point and go through the whole novel. And a lot of the subsequent events in the novel
are based on her desire and her thwarted desire That's a really huge part of what drives this
story. But when it came time for me to write the first
scene of Alma and her self discovery, to put it
modestly I balked. It was really the hardest thing in the book.
I really got stuck. Really stuck for the first time. And I had grown so fond of her, I didn't want to
disgrace her. But I also knew if I took that piece out, the
that's the foundation and the house would
collapse. So I just couldn't figure out how to do it. What I ended up doing, you should always find
an expert. I have a friend who's a romance novelist and also
a brilliant ivy league historian who is a full tenured professor by day and by
night writes bodice ripping she was an academic and she had two kids and
it was easy to do and she made a great deal of
money under her pen name. For 15 years she hid this from her colleagues at
her esteemed university because she knew she would never get tenure if
they knew what she was doing by night Then at her tenure party she brought case of her
romance novels and handed them out to
everybody and introduced her alter ego. She had been in bookstores with her colleagues
where they had - she was appearing and they
had a big poster with her photograph. I would be standing next to it and she said the
only way they didn't notice is that I wear glasses
and my romance novelist doesn't. So it's exactly like Clark Kent and Superman.
Exactly alike. Just take off the glasses. And also because the people I'm colleagues
with are blind to that kind of book.
It was invisible to them. I took her out to lunch and said how do I get
through this?
What's the right way? And she gave me - first of all, I should say one
of my favorite details about her is her contracts her book contracts stipulate that she is required
to write two and a half sex scenes per book. Because the particular brand that she writes for,
that's what - every brand has its different kinds
of sex and how much sex. And her brand is two and a half. I will leave it to you guys to imagine what the
half is. ( laughing ) And they have to be separated - the first has to
be on page 40 and the second has to be on
page 80 and the third on page 120. And that is how you do that kind of genre book. And she churns out like three of these things a
year. And so she said to me, it's actually very, very
simple. You know already who your character is, I
believe. You feel like she's in you, and you know who
she is. You just have to ask yourself what she would
actually do in that situation. And then you have to permit her to do it And I felt so embarrassed that after 25 years of
writing nobody had ever given me that incredibly useful
character advice for just about anything that
your characters are doing. And once I asked myself that, the answer was
very clear, there's no way she's leaving herself
unexplored. She's - she's an explorer. She's going in there.
( laughing ) So I just had to let her do it. And then once I sort of let her do it, as I believed
she would, I felt that it became plausible. One more question, please. >> I've never actually read "Eat, Pray, Love."
I've listened to the audio book four times. >>ELIZABETH GILBERT: Oh, that's nice.
we've spent a lot of time together. So how is that process different, you telling the
story after you've written it? >>ELIZABETH GILBERT: I read "Eat, Pray,
Love" and read "Committed" and Ann and I were
discussing this, I don't know she has the same policy... we both
read our non fiction but not our fiction. The fiction, in my feeling, deserves an actor. It needs to be presented in a very different way. If you guys get the chance, the great British
actress Juliet Stevenson read "The Signature of
all Things" you may know her voice from all of the Jane
Austen audio books, all of the George Elliot
audio books. She was the voice in my head when I was
writing it and she was the only person I wanted
to read it and she did it. It's so exquisite. It's like you're watching a mini series because
she just paints the book.
Whereas with a memoir I had to tell the book. Whereas with a memoir, I just had to tell the
book. And also, because a memoir is my
voice... I felt that it was appropriate that it be my voice. It would be actually kind of really weird if it
wasn't. It's a funny thing to sit in a tiny little booth for
ten days and just read out loud your own story
to yourself. And I find it very amusing there would be certain
passages I would just stumble and stumble and
stumble over. I would be like "who wrote this garbage?" (laughing) Have a little sympathy - that's an unreadable
sentence. (laughing) And it's also funny because I - I speak out loud
while I'm writing, which is another reason I kind of have to be
alone. I do have to be alone when I write, because I feel
like my ear is better than my eye. I hear things when I hear my voice in the room
that I can't see on the page. I'll hear that I used the word "also" seven times. I won't see it. My eye will jump over it but my
voice won't jump over it and my ear will catch it. So the other thing that happens in the recording
booth is of course when you're reading it with that
deliberation you find so much stuff. That you're like, "Oh, goh!" And it's too late
'cause it's already in print. [laughter] I kind of enjoyed doing it. And it's been very sweet for me to hear people
talk about keeping that with them. I have certain people's voices who are comforting
voices in my head. Juliet Stevenson is one of
them. I often fall asleep to her reading "Great
Expectations". It's one of my favorite bedtime stories in my
iPhone. And the great Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron
is another one whose audio tapes I listen to. And she's sort of been associated with a certain
kind of comfort and encouragement for me. And I've had people tell me that they've put "Eat, Pray, Love" in their ears when they're
going to bed at night. and it's brought them comfort and
encouragement and that makes me feel really pleased and honored
because you know, we're all in the same emergency
room here and if we can offer each other comfort and
encouragement along the way, then we've done good. So thank you all so
much. It's been wonderful. Thank you. [applause] [applause and music]
