Elizabeth Gilbert Is Owning Her Past Mistakes
Like Spinal Tap, Elizabeth Gilbert goes to 11. Whether it’s the depths of her despair in Eat, Pray, Love, the intensity of her research in her fiction, or the openness with which she shares her life—romantic and otherwise—with her rabid fans, she lives in bold.
Gilbert has something of a two-track career toggling between carefully crafted fiction and confessional creative essays. The latter, of course, made her a guru for thousands of women who longed for similar arcs of self-discovery and thrilling lives. Now, after the death of her partner Rayya Elias, Gilbert has written a new novel, City of Girls, set in 1940s New York. The work follows a privileged woman’s adventures, headstrong mistakes, and growing self-knowledge. It’s sprawling and colorful, with characters firing off dialogue that would fit in a Howard Hawks movie. I spoke with her about her book, her craft, and what it means to be Elizabeth Gilbert. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Lizzie O’Leary: This new book inhabits a very complete and discrete world: a sort of crumbling, pre–World War II theater scene [with] a naïve, self-absorbed young woman in it. What was the spark for creating this?
A couple of things. I always feel like there are multiple sparks, and then they conjoin, and then you have a match, and then hopefully it becomes a torch. But I can tell you some of them. One is that I came upon. He was really famous in his day and not at all now.
