Opinion

Committed: A skeptic makes peace with marriage

Love or loathe her, Elizabeth Gilbert is now a brand and must be dealt with as such. Her previous book, “Eat, Pray, Love” — a sprightly-written ode to post-divorce self-actualization — became the subject of one episode of Oprah, then two, then a tenacious bestseller, and is soon to be a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts.

“Committed” is her long-awaited follow-up and, smartly, is something of a sequel. At the end of “EPL,” Gilbert falls for a Brazilian man she meets in Bali; “Committed” is, ostensibly, the story of what happens when she and this man, who she names “Felipe” (real name: Jose; question: why bother?), are advised to resolve their immigration issues by getting married.

Because this is happening to Elizabeth Gilbert, it is as though it has never happened before. (She at least has the self-awareness to acknowledge her own narcissism within these pages, writing, “I require a level of devotional attention that would make Marie Antoinette blush.”) But first, we begin with a preface in which Gilbert marvels at having written a memoir that became a cultural phenomenon and the attendant pressures: “I suddenly had millions of readers awaiting my next project. How in the world does one go about writing a book that will satisfy millions? The fact is, I do not know how to write a beloved best-seller on demand.” Quite the relatable epiphany, one all those suburban women who turned their bathrooms into ashrams will surely understand.

Gilbert then proceeds to inform the reader that though “Committed” is ostensibly an exploration and dissection of marriage, she hasn’t done all her homework: “Any proper matrimonial historian or anthropologist will find huge gaps in my narrative, as I have left unexplored entire continents and centuries of human history, not to mention skipping over some pretty vital nuptial concepts (polygamy, as just one example) . . . I didn’t have that kind of time.”

On to the story at hand: We begin with Gilbert’s outrage that The Department of Homeland Security has begun to flag frequent foreign-born travelers to the US, such as her Brazilian partner, and that a subsequent law passed to prevent human trafficking is holding up their file. “It was a good law. It was a fair law. The only problem for Felipe and me was that it was an awfully inconveniently timed law.” She is a martyr to her own cause; these two former world-travelers and exotic sophisticates are now re-cast as rootless exiles. “Please forgive me,” she writes, “for using the word ‘deported’ throughout the pages of this book, but I’m still not sure what to call it when a person gets thrown out of a country.” (The scene where a hysterical Gilbert retreats to the airport bathroom to recite a prayer by a 14th century mystic named Juliana: priceless.)

Though getting married is the quickest, easiest way to resolve her dilemma, she doesn’t want to do it, and so this becomes the false crux of her narrative — because if we are to believe her, and her whole brand is based on her credibility — there is nothing she would not do to be with Felipe/Jose.

What results is a strained book that’s part travelogue and part journal entries, but which mainly reads like a Western Civ term paper that was written at the last minute. There is next to nothing in this book about marriage, past or current, that is not covered in high school history class, US Census taking, and national newspaper reports. Gilbert will occasionally make a salient point — that marriage has been shown to increase happiness, which has been shown to increase GDP; that the institution has always been elastic, and for this reason arguments against same-sex marriage are inherently false — but these are fleeting and rare.

Ironically, Gilbert’s heart does not seem to have been in this book. She does not say in one line what she can say in four. She relies far too heavily on pedantic, patronizing stylistic ticks, such as “Let me repeat that.” And then she does. Cliches are littered throughout. The book is more filler than anything, just pages and pages of rambling encounters with poor Asian people who talk to her about marriage and teach her things, then some Wiki’d historical facts, then some paeans to her worldliness and personal growth — all the while continuing to evade any real personal disclosures.

One of the major criticisms of “Eat, Pray, Love” was that Gilbert wrote about the death of a marriage without providing the why, and here she is, doing it still, blaming its demise on “an avalanche of circumstantial misfortunes.” Despite that flaw, “Eat, Pray, Love” at least felt personal, and it was clear that Gilbert meant what she was saying. And here she is now, writing about marriage and fate and true love, and it all feels so cynical and rote.

But it’s not like she hasn’t warned you: She did, after all, have a deadline.

Committed

A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Viking