What do you guys want from Elizabeth Gilbert??

Do you want her to stay on the bathroom floor, sobbing? Do you want her NOT to get up, leave the house, and go on a mind-and-heart-expanding journey? Do you want her NOT to get an acquaintance with holiness? Do want her NOT to find love?

Sure, she's young and smart, not to mention talented enough to get a publisher to fund her round-the-globe exploration. Since when is that a bad thing? Good for her! At least she did something with her negative feelings rather than staying home and projecting them all over other people who dared do something interesting with their lives.

Sheesh.

While I haven't read this book, I have read a lot of Elizabeth Gilbert's previous works, and I can say she is a talented, insightful writer capable of crafting sentences that stick in my head for days. Most of the angry letter writers are right -- they clearly can't relate to her.

Sometimes all it takes to make someone angry is to tell them you're happy.

Yikes! I have to side with Emily on this one. Her Mark Twain quote was on point. I have frequently traveled around the world on a shoestring since I was 19. I am now 51 and just got back from Brazil. Travel is a wonderful way to open a closed and bitter mind. I had not thought about getting this book until now. I think I'll use that Barnes and Noble gift certificate from Christmas...

So Gilbert's overblown prose may fail to move much more than my bowels. Her epiphanies, like other people's epiphanies generally, may lose their sheen in the telling. The review is shrewd enough to point all this out. But most appalling here is the bitterness of the invective spewing forth from the gnarled, overworked fingers of the commentators.

Why all the bile? Are you mad at Gilbert for not taking on children and the myriad other commitments with which you've chosen to saddle yourselves? If she were a backpacker sans book deal, would that make her story any more palatable? Beyond the fact that the world probably doesn't need yet another tale of privileged enlightenment (did a Baccarat chandelier light up in her head as she ohmed away in her cave?), there seems to be a hefty dose of plain old jealousy here.

Peeps, the choice was yours. You were the ones who bought the hype this society has spun you like so much cotton candy: mortgage, kids, enslaving makework, cradle-to-grave consumerism, lather-rinse-repeat. Gilbert certainly hasn't rejected that package wholesale - she did make sure she was nicely sorted out before leaving - but instead of focusing your remaining energies on Gilbert-hating, you should perhaps take this opportunity to see where your own life could use some tinkering.

In this country, leisure, learning and personal growth for their own sake are viewed (to a downright uncivilized degree) as frivolous. We're encouraged to be a slave to the rhythm, too busy to step back and ponder, too absorbed to recognise that most of our daily pursuits are but a distraction from the higher goals that really matter: improving our characters; nurturing our physical, spiritual and emotional health; tending our relationships; being responsible and compassionate global citizens. All these seem like add-ons that don't "get" you anything. Not for a moment do I suggest that Gilbert is anyone's sherpa to anything but savvy, au-courant personal branding. But the appearance of the book itself can open doors perhaps too long sealed in our own consciousness.

Finally, as others have pointed out: travel is more accessible than ever! It's not just for the wealthy or desperate any more, nor has it been for some time. Travel should be a rite of passage to adulthood - no! a requirement - like the draft - for Americans, woefully insular as you are. In some ways you're probably the only "civilisation" that can still afford to be. The rest of us long since lost the luxury of imagining we're the centre of the universe, and had to get off our asses and discover the world to which we belong. There's a famous statistic I read once that states that when shown the outline of a map of the USA, 75% of American high school seniors can immediately identify it. But when asked to point out the US in the context of a world map, the figure drops to under 25%. But it's all so avoidable. Just downgrade your SUVs, deny little Susie her nineteenth Build-A-Bear and avoid Starbucks for a while. You can coast for months in many countries on those savings alone.

Isn't this where you can't get out of bed, or alternatively can't sleep, can't focus on one thing long enough to secure a fabulous book deal, make complicated travel arrangements, etc., can't stop crying, can't function? Isn't that what debilitating means? I haven't know many "debilitated" people with the level of function required to plan a fabulous year long voyage around the world.

Like many skeptics of this book have written - been there, done that (the debilitating depression, I mean) and it briefly destroyed my professional career. I have not purchased the yoga shirt bearing the name of an ashram for well-heeled Americans on designer-clad spiritual pilgrimages.

It's striking how "Eastern" religious and philosophic traditions, which tend to deemphasize (some would say devalue) the individual, have been most enthusiastically embraced in the West by exactly the sort of middle class to wealthy, self-absorbed Yuppies who jet off to an ashram in India, and seek red kitchens in pristine island cottages in order to find themselves. And then get paid for it. Only in America.

Whaddya know? There's life outside of New York City! But apparently it has to be experienced by a New Yorker for it to be of interest.

i have no anger towards ms. gilbert but find and am glad she has found peace the vast majority of the world cannot look to her for inspiration simply because we lack her vast resources whether they be intellectual or financial simply because we don't have them. this could be jealousy or practicality, either way, she doesn't address herself to me or just about anyone else because she lives in the vapors. i hope she has found peace but really how many of us could afford to do it this way. i suspect that she will habve to revisit the question she was asking herself and have to ask it again and again and again. nice trip if you can afford it though.