Hookless and Committed
Saturday, January 9, 2010
I've now read at least a half dozen reviews of Elizabeth Gilbert's new mega-memoir, Committed, including the Curtis Sittenfeld version that appears on this weekend's cover of the New York Times Book Review. I've watched her talk. I've read the interviews. And it occurs to me that, were I to read this book, I probably wouldn't know much more about Gilbert's travails or voice or happy ending than I already do. There's a remarkable sameness in the press, in the reviews. There is little variation in how Gilbert's story is summarized (she never wanted to get remarried, but she was forced to), in which telling anecdotes are brought forward (her grandmother's marriage story, the marriage stories of Hmong grandmothers), in how Gilbert herself is portrayed (chatty, entertaining, self-knowing bordering on self-absorbed). Were Gilbert running for office no one would be left confused about the party line. There is no murk in the margins. No room, it seems, for the unexpected retelling or interpretation.
A dozen years ago, when I was just starting out in this book life, I was encouraged to think about the "one line or two" that summarized my books. The hook that would broadcast their intentions, content, style. I failed for the first book. I failed for the next. I pretty much gave up by the time I'd written a book called Flow, the autobiography of a river. Say what? most editors said, after listening to me talk in a circle about it. Is it history? Is it poetry? Is it fiction? Even my novels have refused to fit inside the lines of what might be easily parlayed; I end up writing most summaries or jacket flap copy with a sense of familiar defeatism. I need more sentences than there's room to print. Again and again, I come up hookless.
I should probably work on that, but frankly, I don't know how to. That's not a boast; it's a confession. It's the reason why I need to write most of my books all the way through before I can try to sell them, for I never fully know, until I'm done too many drafts to count, what my books are all about. Even then, I need some room to explain them. Even then, they will be summarized, reviewed, and interpreted in ways that I often don't see coming.
