[Applause]
-That's a pretty nice reception.
- Nice place you have here.
[Laughter]
- Good afternoon everybody.
My name is Caroline Baum and I'm delighted to be here with
you today for what I think is going to be a very
inspirational experience.
Um, Elizabeth, you- if you'd been here yesterday,
I suppose we would have had to call this talk
"Heat, Pray Love."
Youů poor Elizabeth was driving back from the, um,
south coast yesterday and spent most of yesterday in a
car, um, so, she deserves a medal, I think, for being
here today.
Um, most of you will have been asked when you booked
your tickets whether you would like to ask a question
today, and so I'll be incorporating some of those
questions into our conversation.
And, I hope, that those of you that don't get your
question asked will still get some of the answers that
you're seeking from the conversation that we're about
to have.
And, at the end of this session, Elizabeth will be,
um, in the foyer and looks forward to saying hello to you.
And, there will be some pre-signed books, um, her new
book, which is her great-grandmother's cookbook,
um, which will be available for sale.
So, you will get a chance to say hello then.
Um, you know you've made it when your bestselling book is
satirised by Barry Humphries,
[laughter]
not to mention The Simpsons and also our own local
comedienne Judith Lucy who wrote a book called Drink,
Smoke Pass Out in your honour.
[Laughter]
- I saw it in a book store.
I have to say I think that's one of the best ones I've
seen yet.
- Yeah, it's not bad. - Very nice.
- Umů - I approve.
- I thought that, given that the talk today is supposed to
be about life after Eat, Pray, Love that, maybe it
would be useful for us to go back to before Eat, Pray, Love
in order that we can kind of understand the
trajectory that you've been on a little better.
Um, and I guess I wanted to start by asking you what your
definition of success was before this tsunami kind of
hit you.
So, when you were growing up on your father's Christmas
tree farm with two goats and honey bees and a television
that didn't work very well, what was your dream and what
was your idea of how to go about that?
- Um, I always say that I'm very lucky because I've only
ever wanted to do one thing with my life and I've only
ever been good at one thing.
And it's, I think it's rare that you get both of those
pieces, right?
Um, I, I don'tů I'm not interested in anything but
writing and I'm not good at anything but writing so it
makes your path extremely clear.
You know?
I have friends who are multi-talented and they're
cursed by it.
And I'm notů I do think of it as a curse.
Um, they're pulled in, in many different directions.
That's never been a problem for me, um, and so it's been
pretty simple trajectory.
There's been so much other stuff in my life that I've
made messy and complicated but, for some reason, the
writing path has been straight and narrow, um, from
about the age of nine on, um, maybe even earlier.
And, the idea was to just, um, write as much as I could.
Start, I started sending short stories out for
publication when I was about 18.
Um, I collected rejection notes for six years.
Um, that was okay.
My goal was to get published before I was dead.
And people
[laughter],
people in my family live a
really long time.
So, I thought:
"I got a long arc here."
And, it's not like, you know, it's not like being a dancer
where, if you haven't done it by the time you're 22,
you know?
Um, I had, I knew that, that you only mellow more into
your work as a writer.
So, I wouldů took the long view.
And, um, and, and, really honestly, from the beginning,
my only goal was that I, someday, wanted to have
something published somewhere.
- I'm interested in this, because I know that in your
20s you left Connecticut, and you went off to Wyoming, and
you became a cowgirl.
And you, I think, cooked on a ranch, and you did various
kind of very physical, very masculineů
-Yeah. -ůvery rusticated things.
And, um, I wondered whether, in fact, you were on a kind
of personal quest there?
That you could talk a little bit about exploring that
masculine world at, because you were a tomboy weren't you?
- No. That's theů
- I thought you were? -No, look!!
Um, no I wasn't and I'm not.
And, um, and, in fact, I was on a quest to make a man out
of myself.
I think that's really what I was trying to do.
Um, I come from very tough people and I'm not a tough person.
And I've always felt that it was a liability.
Um, I, my mother's tough, my dad's tough, my sister'sů macho.
I mean, there are, like, people, my, my whole Gilbert
side of the family.
My uncle refers to them all as oxen, you know?
Um, the Olsen side of the family are all Swedish
immigrants, so they're like lazy and, no I'm just
kidding, they're not at all.
They're just, and I always felt like weak, you know?
I always felt like I was the weakest link in, in every
family gathering.
I was a cry baby, and a sensitive, and emotional and,
um, and I wasn't a pretty kid but I wanted to be, and, um,
and, and somehow I just wanted to overcome that sense
of, um, helplessness.
And, I think that's what drew me to, to the west and to
ranching, which I wasn't very good at.
[Laughter]
But I made friends, you know?
- Well, and you, you discovered people who were
incredibly competent and who lived by a very different set
of values.
And, and you wrote about those people very memorably.
And, that's why I was sort of leading you, hoping that you
were going to talk about, um, Eustace Conwayů
-Mm. - because he is such a, an
extraordinary character and I was just wondering, for
people who haven't read your books from before Eat Pray Love,
whether you could talk a little bit about what you
learnt from encountering someone like Eustace Conway
in terms of values.
- Um, Eustace Conway, ah, for those of you who haven't read
it, is, is a guy who I profiled in a book called The
Last American Man.
Um, he was one of the most fascinating people I'd ever met.
I did a magazine article about him for GQ.
He was the brother of a cowboy who I met on the ranch
in Wyoming and, even among that set, where people were
pretty macho and pretty tough, they were all like:
"And then there's Eustace."
You know, he was like, sort of at the Navy Seal level of,
um, outdoorsmen.
And he had left his family's suburban home when he was 17,
moved into the woods of North Carolina, and has been living
there ever since.
He's a utopian, he's a visionary, he's, um, he's a tyrant.
Um, he's a very complicated, difficult person, who I spent
probably four years of my life with, um, writing this
book about him.
And, um, came away, ah, came away with a very different
idea of our heroes.
I mean, I think I started the book with a real sense of
hero worship and came awayů um, there's a line that
Ursula Le Guin says, that she says, um:
"The other side of heroism is very sad;
women and servants know this."
Um, and when I was closer to his life, and you saw the
sort of, the sadness of, of his, um, ferociousness, um,
and the casualties of the people who admired him, and
followed him into the woods and, and just the
complications of being so grandiose.
Um, it, it tempered me for hero worship in the future.
- Because it's interesting, in the book you
de-romanticized the idea of a man who lives in the woods.
Because you say that, when people in cities talk about
the woods, they get this sort of nostalgic look and they go:
"Oh, the woods, the woods."
And Eustace's view of life in the woods is harsh and brutal.
-Yeah. -But then, you tell this
story about seeing him talking about his life to a
group of school children and that crystallises something
for you about authenticity.
So, when you saw Eustace Conway talking with these
children, you saw authenticity that you wanted
didn't you?
- Well, he, he's incredibly compelling, um, and, and very real.
Um, and his values are earnest.
Um, I don't think you can be a fundamentalist of any
stripe if you don't have earnest values.
Ah, he, he believes, quite rightly, that we are driving
this car off a cliff environmentally, um, on the
planet earth and that America is leading that car chase
over the edge of the precipice.
He wants to transform the way we think about resources.
He wants to transform the way that we think about nature.
Um, and he has this kind of messianic ability, especially
with young people.
They're awestruck by him.
Um, and it's beautiful to watch.
And, whenever you see him in action like that, it's
incredibly moving, and it's incredibly stirring.
And it's incredibly unrealistic.
And it's incredibly un-pragmatic.
And, it comes with, um, a whole other sort of darkness
as well, um, that, that I needed to get away from after
a while.
- 'cause I was going to ask you whether you think you're
very susceptible to charismatic leader figures?
Are youů
- I'm susceptible to everything
[laughter]
- But are youů - But, yeah?
-ůare you a follower? - Oh, hell yeah.
What, what do you have? What are you selling?
I'm buying it.
What do you believe in?
I believe it.
You know? What's the fad?
I'm drinking acai juice right now, and pomegranate.
Like whatever!
I'm, I'm the permeable membrane, you know?
I'm a, I'm a Cancer.
Um, I, I just believe. I'm very gullible.
Um, it's why I think it's funny that I was a journalistů
-Mm. - Um, because I think it, it
doesn't really make for great journalism
[laughter].
Um, I believe anything people tell me about themselves and
then I report it, you know?
Um, [laughter]
like people, you know, people would be like:
"I'm the best six string guitar player the east coast
of the United States has ever produced"
and I'll be:
"This guy is the best sixů"
You know?
I fact checked it because I asked him and he told me
[laughter].
Um, you know, and there's a, you know, that's kind of just
how I am, and I'm always going to be that way.
Um, there's, there's nothing for it really, you know?
Like I keep waiting to, I mean, the world has beaten a
bit of it out of me, but I come back for more all the time.
Um, and on the other hand, there's great benefits of
being like that.
-Mm. -You know, there's a great
openness and, um, people trust me and should.
Um, and, you know, there's that sort of feeling that comesů
- In a sense, you've kept your sense of wonder?
- Yeah, yeah, I would say so I think, I think the scariest
thing for me about going through depression, um, when
I went through my divorce and, and the subsequent
despair, was having that dulled down.
Um, you know, that, what depression does to you and
what despair does to you, is it makes everything in the
world into sawdust.
- Mm. - And you lose all the
shimmer, and all the marvel, and all the wonder and, and
that made me feel more unfamiliar to myself than,
than anything I could imagine.
- Hmmm. We may come back to that.
Um, just staying with the journalism for a moment, one
of the things that really strikes me about that
journalism period of your life, again before Eat, Pray, Love
is that you were often the only woman in a very
macho world.
-Yeah. - You liked to go into those
very masculine worlds.
- Yeah. - So, for example, one of the
pieces that you wrote that got a lot of attention at GQ
was about a bar The Coyote Ugly bar, which subsequently,
that story got turned into a movie.
Um, can you talk a little bit about what you were looking
for in terms of what, what interested you about
masculinity?
- Um, I think I have, I think I had to spend my 20s solving it.
Um, I ů I like men.
Um, and I think that that interested me because I don't
think that's necessarilyů I don't think everybody
necessarily feels that.
I don't think every woman necessarily feels that way
about men.
Um, I enjoy the company of men.
I grew up with a, a lot of uncles and they were all, to
my mind, incredibly funny and, and very charming, and
their attention was worth the world.
And they were, um, they were great story tellers, um, I, I
mean my, my, weirdly, my happiest memories of my
family were when everybody was still a, um, an actual
alcoholic and not a recovered alcoholic
[laughter].
And they used to have these family gatherings and my
uncles and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, I mean,
like I said, people live a long time in my family,
despite how much they drink.
And they, um, they were just brilliant and, and, and
alluring to me.
Um, and I felt like, in those moments, when I was a little
kid, and I got to sit in the corner of the kitchen and
they didn't know I was there, and I was listening to the
dirty jokes and the raunchy stories and the, and the
outrageousness of men, um, they just seemed more
interesting to me.
And, I'm sorry to say this, and I do regret this, they
seemed more interesting to me than the women who were, now
I see, taking care of everything while these men
were having a very good time being extremely irresponsible.
And the women were being very responsible and
responsibility isn't alluringů
- Mm. -ů in the same way as
irresponsibility.
And, um, and so I wanted to be with those people at that table.
I didn't want to be with the people who were making the
casseroles, and washing the dishes, and paying the bills
and raising the children.
I wanted to be with those guys.
Um, and so I spent my 20s mostly with those guys, um,
and more identified with them.
And, and I think I did so both at a gain and at a loss
for myself.
I think it, they were interesting years.
They were exciting years.
Um, but I deniedů there was a lot that I wasn't noticing
about the world and there was a lot that I wasn't respecting.
And, um, there was a lot that I wasn't paying attention to
in my, my own self.
-So, I, I'm curious about, given what you've just said
about how, when you come to Eat, Pray, Love, the voice
and the tone, the very, um, intimate, very conversational
tone, as if you're talking to a girlfriend, umů
- Mm. - How you arrived at that
feminine sensibility and that feminine voice, given what
you've just said.
- I hadůI had it, um, forced out of meůthrough tremendous
pain, wierdly.
Um, I came at it through a pathway of pain.
Um, I was so disconnected. I'd made such mistakes.
I had, um, chosen so poorly, in really important ways in
my life, um, in, in really important interpersonal ways.
AndůI had denied, you know, in trying to be tough and
trying to be cool, and trying to be one of the guys, I, I
had justů just buried some very important feelings and
emotions and, and, I feel like by the time it came to
the point to write Eat, Pray, Love the only way I could
write it was with that sort of raw, earnestness, um, and,
and, and honesty.
And I did write it to a girlfriend.
One of the rules that, that I have as a writer, um, that I
got from my elder sister, who's, who's a really
brilliant writer, is:
never sit down to write anything, um, whether it's a
newspaper article, or a novel, or anything, um, until
you know precisely who the one person is that you're
speaking to.
And have it be one person only.
And each one of my books has been written to a different person.
And, it's a really important decision as I'm beginning a
project, who it's going to be, because it effects the
way you speak.
We speak to different people differently.
And so, I wrote the entirety of Eat, Pray, Love to my
friend Darcy, who lives in Brooklyn.
She's a, um, she's a very funky, hipster Christian.
Um, she and I had, her parents were Lutheran
ministers and she became a punk rocker and then kind of
drifted back toward Christianity, um, but in a
very kind of sceptical and, and, and complicated way.
Um, she's a single mum who went through searing divorce,
she's been through terrible depression, she's a novelist
whose work I really admire, and she's somebody who, in
the year or two prior to my going on the journey, I'd
become very close with and we'd spent a lot of time
talking about the issues that subsequently became discussed
in Eat, Pray, Love.
So when it came time to write the book, it was a letter to Darcy.
And so, when people say to me:
"I feel like you were speaking directly to me,"
I'm like, well I kind of was speaking directly to somebody
and that's what you're hearingů
- Mm. - Is that intimacy of, of, of
an actual conversation and not, um, just writing out
into the empty world.
- Given that intimacy that you create in the book so
memorably, I'm just wondering Liz, what the price is for
that degree of candour?
Whether, when you wrote it, given what you were saying
before about how gullible you areů
- Yeah. -ůwhether you had absolutely
no idea that, in creating this intimate voice, and in
speaking to us all this way, you were laying yourself,
maybe too bare?
- You think?
[Laughter]
Somebody said to me, they read the book, a friend of
mine read the book in galley, you know, before it was
published, and she gave it back to me and we, she took
me out to a cafÚ and she said:
"Are you really comfortable with putting all this out in
the world? It's really intimate."
And I'm paging through it going:
"It is, is it? Do you thinků?"
You know, like I really was, I just felt like:
this is the story, this is what happened.
And, um, would I have written it that way had I known that
10 million people were going to read it?
You know? I wouldn't have been able toů
- No. - Because I would have not
been thinking about my friend Darcy, I would have been
thinking about that audience.
And, um, and it wouldn't have occurred.
Um, I don't regret itů in the least.
And, and I feel like, is there, there's a little price
to be paid for it but it's the one that I'm, I'm
contented to pay.
Um, the benefits of what has come into my life from that
journey are, are so staggering, um, that, that
whatever inconveniences may have arisen from it, I would
be ashamed to even mention, um, because they're so
overshadowed by the great blessing.
And, it, really like, shame on me, if I have all this
tremendous good fortune and then say like:
"Oh, people think they know me."
[Laughter]
Um, you know what?
People think they know me 'cause they freakin do
[laughter].
You know? [Laughter]
Like, lots of people come at you, and they're like:
"I feel like I know you." I'm like, you do!
If you read this and you read Committed you do know me.
You know?
Um, I can't fault anybody for feeling that way.
- So, when you talk about the blessings, let's just
acknowledge thenů
- Yeah. - ůthese blessings.
What is the single best thing that has happened to you as a
result of this book?
- The book, or the journey that led to the book?
- Okay, the journey. - Um, the, the best thing
that, that's happened to me from the journey, was the
four months in India.
Um, and the best thing that came of that, was spending
time, needing to negotiate a peace resolution between me
and myself.
Um, and it was arduous.
Um, it was like the YALTA Conference, you know, I mean,
it was really painful and difficult but it needed, you
know I, there was really a, it was a moment of reckoning.
And I feel like my whole life hinges from before that time
and after.
-Mm. -Um, and it, and it really
was, you know, I reached this place, um, that I slip from
constantly, but still, at least, I kind of know how to
access it now, which is that, like all of us, um, you know,
I always say that, you know, my, my head is a
neighbourhood you wouldn't want to walk around alone in
at night [laughter].
Um, and most of us, I think, have that head.
Um, and, and, you know, I have demonic voices, ah, that
we all have and I abuse myself, and I attack myself,
and I demean myself, and I accuse myself and I, you
know, I have those, that sort of court room drama going on
constantly.
And it wasn'tů.you know, all that work of meditation, and
all that work of reconciliation and all that
work of self-acceptance finally kind of allowed me to
discover this other voice that I've got, um, who's the
'mom' of all those insane children who live in my head.
Um, and I've really come to think of it as that.
What I thought were demonic monsters are actually just,
um, very anxious orphans.
- Mm. - Um, you know?
And they're, you know, it wasn't 'til I realised that
they're just scared.
It's just a bunch of fear and somewhere above all of that,
there's a mom in a mini-van saying like:
"Shhhh. Mommy's driving."
[Laughter]
Um, you know:
"Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, everybody quiet down."
You know?
And, and, that, you know, finding that place to just be
able to sort of calm myself rather than need to distract myselfů
-Mm. - ůor impale myself on
somebody with the hopes that they would save me from myself.
Or run away from somebody with the fear that they had
destroyed me or, you know?
Like all of this madness that defined my life up until that point.
Um, and, and the price, you know, the value of that is
beyond rubies.
Umů
- There are many writers in the audience today, I know.
Um, and so, I just wondered whether we could explore that
voice, that judgemental voice, because I know that
many, many writer, all writers I think, are
afflicted with that voice.
- Yeah. - And, um, I read an
interview with you in which you said that, you know, the
persistent voice, um, the judgemental voice in your
head was saying as you were writing Eat, Pray, Love:
"This sucks."
- Yeah. - All the time.
- Yeah. - So, can you just talk about
the process of self-forgiveness and how you learntů
- Yeah. -ůto quieten that voice and,
and bring the voice of that nurturing mother forward.
- Yeah, it's another orphan, who lives there right?
Um, you think it's this big powerful judge in a, in a
cloak and a wig, but it's actually just a really
freaked out little kid who's just very afraid of being
vulnerable.
Because, when you present something of yourself, um, in
any form into the world, it's scary.
And, the thing that wants to protect you from that, is
going to tell, like, stop you from doing it, um, by any
means necessary and one of the best means is by telling
you that you're, you're not worthy of, of, of even
attempting it, and that'll stop, that'll shut you up, right?
[Laughter]
Um, and it, and it often works.
And I feel likeů there'sůsome of it is motherliness, you
have to be very kind to yourself and very forgiving
to yourself.
Some of it is stubbornness.
Um, I'm stubborn about wanting to do this work.
And you have to be more stubborn than that voice.
Um, I'm, I stubbornly love and respect this work.
Andůyou have to, sort of, out-endure it, you know?
Um, it, it'll tire, that voice will tire itself out,
hopefully sooner than the part of you that just insists
on being heard and insists on, on trying.
And, I, I think, really one of the big breakthroughs I
had as a writer was when I wrote Stern Men, my first
novel, which was very intimidating for me.
I'd never written anything of that length, I didn't know
whether I could sustain fiction to that level.
It was writing about a culture I didn't really know about.
I'd set the bar very high.
And, there were tears on every page of that manuscript
and, and I remember, you know, being at that point of
just not even wanting to open up the computer because you
can't even look at it 'cause it's so awful.
And, and then I had this really stubborn moment one
day, where I just said:
"I am not going to be somebody who dies with 75
pages of a novel in my desk drawer.
I simply will not be that. And it doesn't have to be good.
It just has to be done."
- Mm. - And, for that, I'm grateful
to my mother because that was a motto that we grew up with,
that she always said, is:
"Done is better than good."
And, um, and it was, you just, I just thought, if you
don't, you know, and I was always taking to the, you're
always talking to the critics who are coming, you know,
they're coming.
And I remember, sort of, as I was writing that novel, just
saying to the critics:
"Write your own fucking book if you don't like it!"
[Laughter]
You know?
Like this is mine, I'm sorry. It's the best I can do.
It may not be good but it's all I've got.
Here it is. Leave me alone.
Get a real job.
You know?
Umů[laughter]ůand, and, and that's the sort of, you have
to push hard like that, um, and, and, and be relentless
about wanting to be out there.
- And, at the same time, not complain about how hard this is.
Would you like to tell the story about your friend and
their letter to Werner Herzog.
- Oh, this is one of my favourite stories.
Um, yeah, I get really tired of people complaining about
how difficult the arts are.
Um, it's fairyland that we live in, you know?
Um, and working in a steel mill is a difficult job.
- Mm. - You know?
Um, writing can be a frustrating job but it'sů.
I mean, can we get serious aboutůyou know, really?
Um, I, I just feel like sometimes, you know, us
artistic souls can be a little over-dramatic, and we,
you know, act, make it worse than it is.
And, it's just, it's challenging, um, but
everything's that challenging is worth doing.
But it's not impossible.
And, and there is a wonderful story, I have a friend who's
an Italian independent filmmaker, and he wrote a
letter, um, in his 20s, that he, he got a response from,
from the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog, um,
who's sort of aůfascinating character in his own right.
Um, but he wrote a letter to Werner saying, um:
"I'm incredibly frustrated.
I'm really, it's hard to live in Italy, there's no arts
funding, um, I can't get anybody to make my movie,
I can't get anybody to read my script, I can't get any
actors to come to auditionsů"
just a, a litany of complaints about how
difficult it was to make films.
And Werner wrote him back a letter and, and the first
line was, and he has it framed, I've seen it, he said:
"Stop complaining, nobody wants to hear it."
Um, and, and he said:
"It's not your fault. It's not the worů"
sorry,
"It's not the world's faultů"
- Mm. - "ůthat you want
to be a filmmaker.
And it's not the world's responsibility to like what
you do.
It's not the world's responsibility to fund what
you do.
It is your passion. It is your responsibility.
You don't have money to make a film?
Go steal a camera."
Umů [laughter]
like, he just laid it down.
He said:
"You're doing this voluntarily.
You want to be an artist voluntarily.
Don't keep waiting for somebody to give you
permission, or to give you funding, or to do anything.
And stop whiningů"
- Mm. - "And go make a movie.
And don't bother writing me letters about how hard it is."
And, and that's another kind of resilience.
And that's why Werner Herzog has made, what, 197,000 movies?
[Laughter]
Um, you know, each one different and each one
complicated in its own way.
- Let's talk a little bit about some of the, um, sort
of, public aspects of the aftermath of Eat, Pray, Love um...
- I like the word aftermath [laughter]
-Umů -Tsunami
[laughter]
- We were talking backstage a little bit about, um, Oprah's
interview yesterday with Lance Armstrong and you have
also been a guest on Oprah, and I'm very grateful to the
fact, that today, you're not giving answers that are just
one word long likeů[laughter]ůlike him.
- I've never given a one word long answer to anything.
Sorry, I don't know how to do that.
Ah, Oprah Winfreyů?
- Yeah, what was she like? - She's amazing.
Um, I won't hear a bad word spoken about her.
I think she's fabulous.
And I think, um, as I was saying to you backstage,
I think she very much cares about the lives of women.
And she takes those lives seriously.
And, um, there are, aren't, you know, that's not often done.
-Mm. -And she's demeaned for that.
Um, but, but she's got a mission.
Um, and, and she's brilliant, and she's, she's funny, she's
witty, and it's incredibly scary to go on the show.
Um, you don't meet her beforehand.
She likes to keep it very fresh, which means that, the
second you sit down in this chair, you have this huge
speed bump that you have to get over, that suddenly,
there's Oprah Winfrey [laughter].
You know?
And so, she's asking you a question and I'm like:
"Oh my God her eyes are so big and herů."
you know, like, you're just, you're trying to take in
like, you know:
"Look at her. Wow.
I like that.
I wonder how much that ring cost?"
[Laughter]
You know, you'reů?
And you have to really focus.
Like, she's asking you something.
And she's so engaging and warm and makes, you know, um,
I said to her at one point:
"You're really good at this." [Laughter].
You should, you should think about this as a career.
And, um, but she's also, you know, she's running the world.
And so her boundaries are, are very, um, established and
they're very appropriate.
Um, she made me feel, in the first 10 minutes of the
interview, that we were the best friends who had ever met.
And she does that with everybody.
And of course we're not, but of course I thought we were.
[Laughter]
And, um, and so, when they do the commercial break, she
doesn't talk to you.
And it's not because she's arrogant.
It's because she's got, she's opening up a new school
in Africa or something.
Ah, she's busy.
And so, she's got producers all around her and she's
looking at cards and she's running her empire.
And I'm sort of sitting there in the chair like this, and I
don't, I'm not comfortable sitting next to someone and
not speakingů
-Mm. - So, she's sort of looking
at her index cards and the clock is ticking down to the
commercial and I go:
"Do you like my shoes?" [Laughter]
Because, I was really goingůmake conversation out
of whatever's there right?
I was like
"Do you likeů" and she looks over and she says:
"Oh yes, they're very nice" and, ah, goes back to her notes.
And I said:
"They're not mine." [Laughter]
They're my friend's.
They're my friend Cheryl's, she lent them to me."
She said:
"Oh, that's nice sweetheart."
You know?
She goes back to her thing.
And I go:
"They're from Paris." [Laughter]
Waitůgets worse. [Laughter]
She didn't respond.
And I said:
"That's in France." [Laughter]
And then she took her reading glasses off and she just
looked at me and she said:
"Is it?"
And later in the show somebody in the audience was
saying that they were, um, they had gotten inspired by
Eat, Pray, Love to go do a marathon in Paris and, it's
in the clip, you can see it, Oprah just turns to me and
she goes:
"That's in France." [Laughter]
And it's out of context, it makes no sense.
And I was likeů[laughter] but, ahů
- I think it's so telling that you would share this
story with us, [laughter]
I would keep that to myself.
-Oh it's too good. It's too good to not.
It's too, ahůnever let a little humiliation get in the
way ofů sharing a good story.
- Well, since we're on a little bit of a celebrity
roll hereů
- Mm. - ůI suppose we should ask
you about Julia Roberts and about what the experience of
meeting Julia isů
-Yeah. - ůbecause she's another
person who's sort of like Oprahů
-Yeah. - She's almost a one, one
named brand.
-Yeah. Um, she isůluminescent.
Um, she's lovely. She's very private.
She's very professional.
And I didn't have much interaction with her, to be honest.
Um, and I was kind of happy for that in a way.
They, when it came to making the film, I just felt like,
another thing that it'sů I'm going to list all the things
that annoy me about, when, when writers complain about
what happened to their books when they were made into
films, I always think it's weird because, you sold it.
Um, and it's like selling your house and then driving
by your house every day and being like:
"They took down the pergola!"
[Laughter]
You know? You sold it!
It's not yours anymore.
You know like, once you sell it, you know, it's out of
your hands.
And I feel like, once you sell it, you should
relinquish it, and, and, and, in exchange for a, a handsome
sum of money that makes your life better, you should let
them do their jobs and stay out of their way.
And so, that's the attitude that I took toward it and,
and so I didn't really want to throw myself intoů
- Mm. - ůthe production.
But they asked me, invited me to come to Rome and to watch
the filming.
And I got to meet Javier Bardem and we, and I got
toů[laughter] I ate dinner.
I ate dinner across from him. We shared a fork.
I'm just saying. [Laughter]
That is not a euphemism. I wish that it was.
But it's not. Um, weůhe's beautiful.
Him andůanywayůJulia [laughter]
is also very, very beautiful.
Um, but, but, but, the thing about her, so, I met her, and
she, she also didn't want to meet meů
-Mm. -ů because she had created
her own idea.
-Mm. - And so, she didn't want to
meet me until the filming was halfway finished and she'd
already kind of established and owned herself on the
stage, which I completely understood.
Um, so we met very briefly and she was gorgeous and
there's absolutely nothing on this planet that can prepare
you for what that face looks like from this distance.
She, I mean we're all familiar, we know Julia
Roberts' faces over the years better than we know our own.
And, there is no picture I have ever seen of her, there
is no moment I've ever seen of her, that is nearly as
beautiful as what she actually looks like.
It's crazy.
Um, youůI walked in and I looked at her and I just said:
"You're so pretty." [Laughter]
And, I just, she's soooo pretty.
And she's like:
"Thank you."
I'm like:
"I know people have probably told you that before but really!"
[Laughter] Umů
-You didn't tell her about your shoes did you?
- I didn't tell her but I didn't have a chance to get
into the shoes.
Umůshe's, she just is in sort of a cone of light.
And, um, and she looks like a, a fairy.
And she couldn't have another job besides being a movie star.
- Did she put on the pounds to do the Italianů?
- She, she didn't. Um, I don't think so.
I mean, there is a scene where's she's trying to
button her pantsů
-Yeah, but she doesn't look likeů -And I'm like:
"You call that a muffin top?"
- Mm. - "Honey, let me show you what itů"
no, I, I don't think sheů
-No. -ů she wanted to
do that to herself.
-Are you contractually obliged to say that you like
the film?
- No.
But I am contractually forbidden to say that I
didn't like it.
[Laughter]
- But I like it, so it's easy.
I like it.
I saw it, it makes me, I've seen it a number of times.
It makes me cry.
Um, it's, it's so surreal to me, that's it's almost beyond
like or not like.
-Mm mm.
Of course,
-Um, you know, I can't have an, I can't have a neutral
opinion on it.
Um, it's, it's just like, the first time she opens her
mouth, like one of the first things she says in the movie.
She's going to visit Katut Liyer, she's on her bicycle
and then they flash back and she, she goes to the medicine
man in Indonesia, and she says:
"Hi, my name is Liz Gilbert" and I'm like:
"No it's not!"
It's so weird.
I'm like:
"You're Julia Roberts!" [Laughter]
That's crazy! [Laughter]
Everybody knows you're Julia Roberts.
No-one's going to believe that.
[Laughter] Wild.
Umůbut I love, I, I love it, I thought it was gorgeous.
- Now, one of the other, um, sort of, honours I suppose
that gets bestowed on you when you, um, achieve what
you've achieved is you get invited to give a talk at TED.
-Mm. - Um, and your TED talk about
creativity and genius and about, sort of, how to deal
with expectations, unrealistic expectations, and
put those aside in order to keep working, is one of the
most popular TED talks of all time.
Um, and I know it's a source of great inspiration to a lot
of writers.
How did you come to the theory that you posit in that talk.
And could you just give us a little sort of synopsis for
those who haven't seen it?
- Sure.
Um, the, the theory isůit's just to, I was talking about,
umůcreativity and, and, and madness and despair.
And, and the western obsession with the idea of
theůumůthe artist who becomes a victim to their own work,
um, and the way that we have Romanticised that, a capital
R German Romanticisation of, of the artist.
And what a dangerous idea that is.
And how that's not, um, I think it's an idea that's
literally claimed lives.
Um, I think that there are a lot of books that haven't
been written because of that idea, and there's a lot of
poetry that hasn't been written, and there's a lot of
artists who have died younger than they may have needed to
because of that idea.
Um, and we, we support that idea because we kind of love it.
It's our favourite story about the arts.
Um, and I was looking for other models for how to think
about creativity that, that maybe predated that or came
from other societies, and that led me on a search to
the classical idea ofů
-Mm. -ůof the arts, and that led
me a Roman idea which was that, um, you know, there was
the word 'genius,' um, to the Romans did not mean that
somebody was brilliant.
It meant that somebody had a genius, and a genius was kind
of like an elf who lives in the walls of your house, um,
and who assists you on your work.
And it's a collaboration between you, the craftsman,
and this thing called a genius which is just this
kind of mysterious other being, um, who you are
negotiating your work with.
And it takes a lot of pressure off the artist.
Because everybody knew that, um, it wasn't totally up to you.
That the work may have failed because your genius was not
on the job that day.
Um, or the work may have, you know, you also don't get that
sort of crazed narcissism, that, um, the work wasn't
entirely your creation either.
Um, that there's some sort of a relationship that, that
exists between you and what I also call
"the mystery."
Um, and that that just feels like a healthier, and
certainly more interesting idea, than the, the notion of
the single, healer, great genius artist who, um, you
know, who, who, is above us all, and therefore is also
to, you know, to be brought down and destroyed by their
angst and their suffering and, um, and you know?
I've just sort of had it with that, um, and I think, it,
it's time to kind of think about things differently.
So, the speech was speaking to that.
And speaking to my own encounters with that mystery,
um, and I think anybody who has ever made anything, um,
which is probably most people in this audience, know that
you brush up against that sometimes.
- Mm. - Um, you know, as rational
as we may be, there are moments when, when we do work
that we can't necessarily account for.
Um, you know, where we slip from our own labour into
suddenly moving, on that moving sidewalk through the
airport, there's something under you that's sort of
pulling you along.
Um, and it's not you, um, but it's related to you, it's
interacting with you, and those are, you know, that's
the big magic.
Um, and, and that's the beauty of that path.
It's the moments where you get to have that.
It doesn't always last.
- Mm. - Um, it doesn't, it doesn't
always show up.
And the stubbornness is showing up yourself, um,
whether your genius is in the room or not.
- Because the idea is, isn't it, that, that there's a sort
of contract between you and your, is it your unconscious
or your subconscious, I can never remember?
- I can't, I think unconscious is when you're
hit on the head with a hammer?
[Laughter]
- Oh, okayůso you'reů thank you.
- Subconscious is when you can't remember why you keep
hitting yourself on the head with a hammer?
[Laughter]
- Right.
So, the idea is that you show up and, if you keep showing
up, then your subconscious will keep its part of the
bargain and it will show up too.
Whereas, if you don't show up, then you don't know
whether your subconscious is there or not?
- That's the one way to guarantee it won't worků
- Mm. - ůis to just not show up.
- Mm. - Um, and the best you can
hope for is, and I think the angels reward people who are
at their desk at six in the morning every day.
Um, and, after a while, they take pity on you,
[laughter]
and, they, they throw you a bone, you know?
Um, and, and that's a feeling I've had too where I've been like:
"God..? Three months I've been
sitting here?!"
You know?
Um, and eventually, you know, something happens, something
gets loosened up and, and, and comes through.
- Now, the process of giving a TED talk is, from what I
understand, because there is a TED alumnus in the audience
here today I know, a fairly, um, stressful experienceů
-Yeah. -ůand over a fairly
protracted period of time.
- It's terrifying.
And, and, those of you who don't know what TED is, it's
a, um, it's a speaking series that's now in its 26th or
27th year that started in Long Beach California where
they just get together 50 people a year, and each
person is given 18 minutes to give the speech of their
lifetime on the subject that they know the most about, or
care the most about.
Um, the audience is, or consists of Nobel Laureates,
and innovators and venture capitalistsů
- A bit like here todayů - Yeah, like the normal
audience who shows up to hear me speak; a lot of
Nobel Laureates.
[Laughter]
And um, and it's incredibly intimidating.
And, um, the one thing that I've found spoken, um,
speaking to anybody who has ever given a TED talk is that
everyone there agrees that, um, they all felt they were
the only person who shouldn't have been invited.
[Laughter]
Um, because it's a really intimidate, it's a really
intimidating group of people.
I mean, you're looking out and Bill Gates is watching
you speak and waiting for you to impress him, you know?
And it's scary.
Um, and I was in tears two hours before I gave that
talk, um, in, in my hotel room.
Really, really, regretting, I mean, beyond regret.
Just saying;
"You have done an incredibly foolish thing to have
accepted this invitation and this is going
to be very humiliating."
Especially because, the day before I spoke, everyone was
speaking on subjects of science and technology and
robotics and genetics.
And I was speaking about, basically, fairies.
Um, and you can feel, when you watch the talk, you can
feel they're not into it, at first.
You're like, they're the first, like, they see where
I'm going with the fairies, and they're like
"errr."
And then, you know like, they, you know, I broke 'em down.
- Oh, you got a standing ovation! Come on!
- But it was like, but, for a while, it was, I was talking
to a very cold room.
You know, like it didn't start warmly.
And, the other thing about, you know, it's not a
self-selecting audience.
I mean, you guys are here because, presumably, you
know, either someone dragged you here or you came because
you like what I do.
And that's an audience of people who had, half of them
had never heard of me, so you have to introduce yourselfů
- Mm. - And kind of, it's really,
it's, it's difficult.
-What wasů? - UmůI never want to do it again.
- Was there any follow up or anything that span off it
that was a particularly interesting or unexpected thing?
- The thing is, when people, I, it gave me a different
audience because most people only know me from Eat, Pray, Love.
Most people who didn't, well even some people who did read
Eat, Pray, Love, but a lot of people who will diminish or
dismiss that book as Chick Lit, whatever that means, or
just, you know?
They have an idea about me based on that book.
And so, often now, I'll find that I'm, I'm at an event and
somebody will come up to me and, I know what they're
going to say when they begin with, umm, you know:
"I'm not really the typical person who would like you,
but, ah, I saw your TED talk"
you know?
[Laughter]
And like they really need to let you know that they're a
lot smarter than people who like you,
[laughter]
um, and, and I don't think they understand how terribly
insulting that is to me and to people who like me.
[Laughter]
Um, but, but they, you know, there's people who want to
just distinguish themselves from, from that crowd.
And that, and that TED, TED talk brought me those fans.
- Mm. - Yay.
[Laughter]
- You were, you were also, in terms of pressure, and kind
of a burden of responsibility, you were
named by Time magazine as one of a 100 most influential
people, um, in the world.
What does that feel like? And what do you do with that?
- I have done nothing with it.
And, um, [laughter]
and they need to pick a 100 people every year, and now
that I know how hard it is for them, 'cause after you've
done that for years and years and years, you can't have
Oprah Winfrey every single time [laughter]
and so they're like pretty desperate, I mean, pretty
desperate really.
Like, you get, I start getting emails now from the
editors of Time six months in advance saying:
"We really needů"
and they're always like "We really need women"
you know?
"We really needů"
ah, people who aren't, you know, techno people.
"We really needů"
So, um, ah, still, it's a great honour
[laughter].
Sorry, I don't mean to be diminishing it.
But that year, was the year that I kind of hid.
Um, soůah, that was kind of the culmin, I think that was
sort of at the peak of everything.
I went to the event with my dad which was very fun.
I got to introduce him to Martha Stewart and people
like that, which was exciting for him.
And, um, andůIůI went home and never, really never
thought about it again.
- Because, I mean, judging from your TED talk
performance, which is very polished and you look very
casual, and very relaxed and very at ease.
And, and the way you are here today, I'm just thinking one
could be forgiven for mistaking you for an extrovert.
- Oh. -Yeah?
- I am.
No I..wellů
- But presumablyů - I'm and introvert trapped
in an extrovert's body.
- Right. - Umů
- 'Cause, 'cause to be a writer, you do need to be
able toů
-Yeah. -ůto face the solitude andů
- Yeah. -ů not always be out there
getting the loveů.
- Yeah. -ůfrom an audience.
So, do you find that difficult to sort of,
withdraw?
- Um, I find it difficult toůit's not like from 'my public'
that I find it difficult to withdraw.
It's from, I have a big, I have a large, a lot of friends.
You know, personally, I have, um, people in my life I care
about a lot, and, and spend a lot of time with, and invest
a lot of energy in.
Um, I have a, a group of friends who mean the world to
me, um, and, and they take more of my time than, you
know, I mean, this is fun and this is easy and this is an
afternoon, and it's a delight.
Um, you know, your friends who are going through serious
problems in their lives, you know, obviously, you need to
be there for them in a more serious way, or, your friends
who you just love and want to enjoy.
And the hard thing for me is setting that boundary.
-Mm. - It's easy to say:
"I'm not accepting any speaking engagements for the
year 2011."
That's done and done, you know?
Um, it's harder to say:
"I'm not, you're not going to hear from me for about six months"
um, and
"Please don't be offended, but I will never write a book
if I am going out to dinnerů"
- Mm. - And, and, and that's,
that's hard.
- Mm. - And it's painful for me.
Um, because I love them, and, and I want to be there but it
doesn't work any other way.
- You need some of those boundaries of Oprah's?
You need that kind ofů?
- I need the index cards and the looking down, yeah.
- Um, let's just, since we're talking about friends, um,
let's just backtrack to Eat, Pray, Love and maybe you can
just give us a kind of a little kind of an update on Wayan.
How's she doing?
- Oh she's doing splendidly.
I was in Bali last year and I saw her.
Um, she's doing great. She's got a fancy car.
Um, she's got her business thriving.
She hasn't moved. She's still in the same place.
You can find her right next to the post office is Ubud.
Um, she's looking gorgeous.
She, the coolest thing about her, aside from the fact that
she's really financially stable now, um, in, in ways
that she wasn't before, and that she continues to kind
of, reap the boon of Eat, Pray, Love in a way that's
really been helpful to her and her daughter, especially
as a single woman in Indonesia.
Um, but she's become an advocate for dispossessed people.
Um, she, you know what, those of you who are familiar with
Bali, and I know, ah, many of you probably are, know that
each one of the villages in Bali is run by something
called a 'banjar,' um, which is sort of a village council.
- Mm. - Um, tends to be men.
Well, it's always men.
And, she has a certain amount of authority now, as a
landowner and a business owner, and, um, a woman who
has some celebrity.
Um, she takes on cases where she feels that people in the
village aren't being treated right.
Um she goes and makes, you know, comes to their defence.
Um, she looks after elderly people, who, um, you know,
she feels have been neglected by the community.
She demands that they be paid attention to.
Um, she's really become this really passionate social activist.
And, the story that I love, is that an American woman
moved to her home village, not Ubud but a much smaller
and more provincial village where she comes from, and,
um, and happened to be a, a lesbian, and was living with
her Indonesian lover, and this wasn't going over well,
um, in the village.
There was a lot of discrimination and also they
didn't like that it was a white woman and an Indonesian
woman, and they didn't like that it was two women, and,
and, um, they were running into a lot of trouble.
And Wayan went and just laid it down in this banjar
meeting and said, um, oh she had the best line, she was
telling me about it later and she said:
"And I told them, not your business.
If she's a girl and her girlfriend is also a girl."
[Laughter].
- Mm. - "Not your business.
You have to be kind to people anyway."
And, um, so she, it's just wonderful to see, this person
who was really struggling, um, not only achieve a
certain amount of security and stability in her own
life, but then take that power and use it to, to
better the lives of other women as well.
- Mm.
What about the impact of the film and the book on Bali?
- Mm. - Because, I was there just
after the filming had finished and everywhere,
there were T-Shirtsů
- Yeah. - Eat, Pray, Love T-Shirts
and there are toursů
- Yeah. - Obviously Eat, Pray, Love tours.
So, how do you feel about all of that?
- Ambivalent.
Um, did you see the "Eat, Pay, Leave" T-shirts?
[Laughter] I like those better.
They're very funny.
Umůit's you know, it's ůBali's a paradise that has
been under assault for a long time.
Um, and, and I, and I know that, ah, the expat community
in Bali is certainly unhappy about the fact that, that
their private paradise has become a public paradise.
Um, the Balinese that I've met are really gratefulů
- Mm mm? - Um, because it's provided
an enormous amount of, um, economic uplift for them, and
they, especially after the bombingů
- Mm. - ůthey had really, there
were people in very desperate straits.
And now, all the drivers have jobs, and the rest, I mean I
can't credit myself with all of this, but they're not
complaining.
It's westerners who are, who are complaining about it.
And it's westerners who live there and who have that thing
that we all have, um, where we move to a neighbourhood
and then we don't want anyone else to discover it after
we've, you know? [Laughter]
And so, they all have that kind of sense of people who
are like:
"Oh, I remember Provence when it was a sleepy fishing village."
Um, you know?
And, and they don't want it to be anything else.
- Mm. - And I understand that.
That's their home and, and they've made their home at it.
I can't, I didn't expect for that to happen.
You know, all I can ever say, I don't generally try to go
around defending myself 'cause I think it just sounds
weird, but, um, I didn't mean to.
I didn't mean to bring everybody to Bali.
Um, and, ah, you know, I, I hope some good comes of it
too, to deserving people.
- Mm. I'm sure it is.
Um, just on that subject of, you know, people's reactions
to things, and complaining, and, and, and all of that,
you, you may know that, um, ah, the Australian writer,
critic and poet Clive James once wrote a poem called The
Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered and I was
wondering, ah, and the next line is
"And I was glad"
or "I am glad."
- Yeah. - Um, and I was just
wondering whether you've come across a lot of envy of your
success, in the writing community and in the general community.
Whether people have come up to you and said:
"I could have written about that.
I could have written about going to Italy and eating
pasta and going to an ashram and going to look for love in Bali.
I could have done that but I just didn't bother."
I mean, do you?
- I do. I do hear that a lot.
Or, a kind of funny reaction is a kind of angry, um,
"That's my story."
You know, um, which is, like I, it's, you get
two ways of peopleů
- Mm. -ůpresenting that.
One is,
"I felt like you were telling my story. Wow."
Or, "That's my story.
I, I had a horrible divorce too."
You know?
Um, and I'm always like:
"I'm not blocking your door. Write your book."
You know?
Um, feel free, it's, the, you know?
There, there's many more stories to be told.
Um, I think, when something gets that much attention it's
going to attract all kinds of stuff.
Um, andůbut it's also, I feel like, you know, with what I
have benefitted from, you knowů
- Mm. - financially, creatively,
emotionally, you know, in every wayůit's fair game.
You know?
That's kind of how I feel about it.
It's like:
"Take your shot at it. It's okay.
It's a big book.
It can handle people attacking it."
You know?
Um, I mean, once something gets up there, it's, it's up
there, and thenů
- Mm mm. - ůpeople, it's, it becomes
this big projection screen and everybody projects either
their love, or their hate, or their disgust or their
distaste and that's kind of their business.
Um, and I don't really know if I should make it my business.
- Does it change any of the other more intimate and more
personal dynamics with writers who are in your
orbit, or even for example, in your family.
Your sister is a writerů
-Yeah. - She's written many books
for young, adult writers.
- Yeah. - And what she says about you
on her website is, um,
"My sister Liz is now a VERY famous writer who travels all
over the world collecting stories and diseases, while I
stay home, scowling over paint chips and trying to
keep my kids off our garage.
-Yeah. - So, she's obviously jokingů
- Yeah. - ůthere, about the fact that
you are the "VERY" famous writerů
- Yeah. - But I'm just wondering
whether in your, in your closer, in your more intimate
circle you've had to deal with envy that you suspect,
and that isn't completely overtly expressed?
- I think, um, yes. - Okay.
- But, umů - The reason I'm asking that
is because there are some writers in the audience
who've asked me about that.
- Yeah, but it's not, um, it's notůit's not as much as,
as you might think.
I think the fact that my circle of friends have known
me for so many years and they knew me long before this ů
-Mm. - umůandůtheyůalso know my
admiration for them.
Um, you know, as does my sister who taught me how to write.
You know?
When I was a child and who I've credited my entire life
with being the Sheheraůthe Scheherazade in our familyů
- Mm. - ůwho just spun stories and,
and, and formed me as an author.
Um, no one knows more than her how much I admire her.
Um, and she'll always be my big sister who's better at
everything.
Um, so she can tease me like that.
- Yeah. - You know?
Um, because we know, we know who'sů the real one
[laughter].
You know, like we know who's always been the, and, and
soůum, I think the fact that this, this thing, this
success and this stuff happened to me when I was
closer to 40 than to 20 means that, for one thing, I've
hoped that I've processed it as well as possible and that
I don't rub it in people's faces in any way.
And two, that the people who I've chosen to surround
myself with by this point in my life, are people of such
decency, um, that, that we don't base our relationships
on competition and resentment.
- Mm. - Um, if I've had friends
like that in my life, I don't have them anymore.
Um, by this age, you get a sense of knowing if somebody
has that in them and you cross the street.
- Mm. - You know?
Umůsoůso I feel really protected more by my friends
than I feel envied.
- As a result, again, of this kind of success and, and
celebrity, you get invited to, um, speak at a lot of
conferences and events.
And, when I was looking at your website to see what
you're doing after you leave here, I see that you're
speaking at a women's leadership conference.
I think, in the US?
- Yeah. - And I was interested in the
fact that this new phrase has come into being in the US
"Lean In"
which is the phrase of Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.
And she says that the problem that women have had in the
workplace in getting as far as they need to get is that
they lean back whereas they need to lean forward.
- Uh huh. - So, this new phrase is
gathering a kind of momentum, I suppose a little bit like
"destroying the joint" does here.
And I was just wondering whether you had a theory
about this, this idea, this notion of leaning in and of
empowering women, and of women fulfilling their destiny.
- Um, that's an easy question.
No, I'm just kidding.
Um, I, I feel, I feel sometimes, umůthat I only
ever have one message for women.
You know, um, and that it's the same one all the time.
And, and I don't know whether, I don't know how
useful it is.
I don't really understand, it's funny when I get invited
to these women leadership things because I've never
worked in the corporate world.
- Mm. - Um, I don't have, I'm not
struggling with the burden of a career and raising a family.
Um, I've chosen a different path than that.
I'm a childless artist.
I really almost have no business speaking to people
who are leaning forward into those male dominated business worlds.
They invite me. I come.
You know?
And I bring what I've got.
And, and, and I feel likeůthe only thing I've ever got to
say is that we, as women in the 21st Century, need to
constantly maintain a very realistic perspective on how
far we have come and how quickly, and how tricky our
position is right now.
Um, there's justůwomen are very hard on themselves and I
feel like my message is, is constantly about trying to
relax that grip a bit.
Um, and one of the things I think that, that women in the
States are hard on themselves about, and I am assuming that
it's the same here, is this, um, perfectionism, of, you
know, why can't I make it work?
Why can't I be fantastic at my career, and a total
success at my marriage, and a fantastic mother, and a
terrific neighbour and all these things that are somehow
expected of me?
And why, you know, why does it appear that this is the
model and I'm failing at, at that?
Um, and, and why am I exhausted, and why am I
confused and why do I have huge crises of conscience
whenever I look at something that another woman is doing
that's totally different from my life and suddenly I have
to re-evaluate whether I've taken all the wrong steps the
entire time because her life looks a lot better than mine does.
And this is the dialogue that's kind of going on with
all of us all the time.
And, and, and all I can say is that, it's so new, what we are.
You know?
Um, women of, of, of I say
'this generation,' by which I mean any woman
probably born in the last 70 years in the
industrialised west, almost are a new species
of human being.
We don't have centuries and centuries and centuries of
role models and mythologies to look back to, at how you
do it, because no one ever was given what we are given.
We don't have literate, articulate, financially
autonomous, biologically autonomous, um, women to look
back at through history because they didn't exist.
Um, it's, we're just starting, you know?
And, and so, of course we don't totally know how to do it yet.
And it doesn't help that in my country, um, we are asked
to be all these things.
To be successful career women, to be mothers, to be wives.
And the society at large also says:
"Oh, by the way, we're not going to help you with any of that."
- Mm. - Um, we're not going to give
you any childcare, we're not going to give you any
healthcare, we're not going to do anything to help you
with that.
You just have to do it, um, and make it look easy, and
stop crying.
Um, why, why are you so sad, and why are you taking
anti-depressants? [Laughter]
What's the matter with you?
Um, you know, and, and, and there's, there's justůI just
feel like we have to take the long view.
Um, you know, we're standing on the shoulders, I'm
standing on the shoulders of women of the previous
generation who took incredible risks for me to
have the freedoms that I've got, but they're new freedoms.
- Mm. - Um, and, and it's going to
take us a while to figure out exactly how to do it.
Is that 'leaning forward' I don't know.
Umů.butů
- It's standing straight, it's a start.
- Standing straightůor maybeůputting down the knife
that you're holding to your own throatů
-Mm. -ůum, which, which I would
certainly hope to encourage people to do.
- We've got about, um, according to this, we've got
5 minutes and 22 seconds leftůokayů.soů
- 19ů18ů - Given, that that's the
case, I would love it if you would tell us a little bit
about the book that's in the foyer, your
great-grandmother's cookbook and also, ah, perhaps a
little bit about your novel which is coming out in October.
- Cool.
Okay, my great-grandmother's cookbook is a book I
rediscovered when I was cleaning out my attic.
I have an extraordinary great-grandmother it turns
out, who wrote a brilliant and hilarious cookbook that
was published in 1947 in Philadelphia.
She was a food columnist for the local newspapers and I
found this book, started reading it, and realised that
she was so much of our time than of her time, speaking
of, of, um, the freedoms that we've now got.
Um, she would have been a fabulous writer of this
generation but she didn't have a voice then.
So, I've brought the book back into print, and all the
proceeds go to a wonderful educational charity called
ScholarMatch that helps send very promising kids from, um,
under-served communities to university.
So, because of this new book being published, there are,
um, I think the number now is 25 or 26 kids in the States
who are able to start college this year who wouldn't have
been able to otherwise.
So, that's fantastic.
- Mm. - So, and the recipes are
terrific and, she has a voice like Dorothy Parker.
Um, she's just a delight.
- She's hilarious. - She's fantastic.
Um, and then the novel is coming out in October.
It's called The Signature of All Things and it is a period novel.
It takes place, um, in the 19th Century and covers the,
ah, the fortunes of a family who is involved in botanical
exploration and the early, basically pharmaceutical business.
Um, it takes place all over the world.
It's a, it's a, big romping travel adventure, history,
fun, sadůyou'll laugh, you'll cryůahů.
- It has an Australian dimension to it.
- Yes. - Um, I've only been able to
read the first chapter but Joseph Banks is a character
in the first chapterů
- Yeah. - So, maybe you'd like to say
how you decided that you wanted to write about him?
- Ah, well, I found another attic find, I think, from now
on, I'm only going to write books based on things I find
in my attic, but, umů.[laughter]
ah, a book that had been, belonged to my
great-grandfather that had come down through the
generations in my family.
Um, an incredibly rare, beautiful, um, 1780 volume of
Cook's Voyages um, with the original ethnographic
illustrations, the original botanical illustrations, the
prints, the incredibleůscientific work
that these guys were doing when they were travelling
around the world on the Endeavour.
Um, andůahůand soů.I became fascinated with that book,
and, and, and as I started to study Cook, I realised that
the, the much more interesting character, was Banks.
- Mm. - Um, in the same way that
when you start to study Darwin, you find that the
much more interesting character is, um, Wallace.
You know, like there's these sort of shadow, more
charismatic people hidden in history, and, and so, um,
Banks becomes a very powerful figure in the beginning of
the book, setting the destiny of the young man who's the
patriarch of the family about which I write.
- 'Cause it's interesting that the book has botany as,
as a theme.
And, I'm thinking of you growing up on your Christmas
tree farm, and the fact that I know that you like
gardening as a kind of relaxation, and it seems that
you've integrated all sorts of things and come back to
the beginning which is:
growing up in the country andů
-Yeah. - ůand having your hands
dirty, and the sort of peace that comes from gardening,
which is a very good, um, ahůthing to do when, when
you're not writing, and, in fact, frees up your mindů
- Yeah. - ůoften, so that the
creativity comes to you while you've got your hands in the soil.
Do you find that?
- Definitely.
It's a, it's a fantastic, um, alternative.
It's something that you can generate, um, that isn't
intellectual, it's more physical, um, but it's still
creative and, and, and, my mum always told us when we
were growing up, that any day that you don't put your hands
in the earth is a day you're not living.
Um, and despite the fact that I made every effort as a
child to learn nothing from her, um, I accidentally
learned a lot of really wonderful things.
And found, when it came, when I settled down and bought a
house in the country, and looked out the window of my
kitchen and saw a patch of lawn and realised, well that
won't do, um, that, that is now just this huge cottage
garden, um, that, that, I accidentally had learned how
to be a gardener, despite really resentfully pushing
back against those chores, um, and that I knew more than
I knew I knew.
Um, and, and so, when I got into that, and then found
Cook's book, and then realised, you know, just got
very interested in the history of botany, um, it,
it, it did seem to come full circle.
- We've come to the end of our time together.
I hope you found it as inspiring as I have.
Please join me in thanking Elizabeth Gilbert.
[Applause] - Thank you.
[Applause] Thank you.
Do we get up?
[Applause] Thank you.
-Enjoy it while you can.
[Applause] -Thank you so much.