addictive and easy like popcorn, deep like nutritional yeast glazed popcorn

Why did I like Eat, Pray, Love? What techniques did the author use that drew me into the story and kept me going?

I wasn’t prepared to keep turning the pages. My girlfriend, who had to read it for a book project she’s working on, described it as “like watching an episode of Oprah in book form.” Other comparisons I heard included “like spiritual popcorn,” and”Real Simple goes to India.” This was not sounding so promising. I tend to wince when white people go to South Asia to find God, or a yoga retreat with raw food, period. I hesitated for a long time before I handed over my fifteen bucks at the bookstore. I did so because every single one of the 50+ copies in the Oakland library system were checked out.

Okay, much of this may be true of the content. However, some things I noticed:

* she’s not fighting her cuteness. She is cute. She owns it.

* There’s something to be said for popcorn! Sarcastic, wry, I-am-losing-my-shit popcorn. What I mean is that her very short chapter structure, embeded within an overarching premis that is very clearly stated from jump (lady wakes up in suburban married nightmare, ditches it, goes to Italy to eat, India to pray, Indonesia to love, figures out Life, the Universe and Everything) , works! It’s not too much to digest. It’s made for people who have no attention spans and/or have work/kids/school types of huge lives where picking up a whole book and finishing it is almost impossible. It worked similarly (albeit by a writer with a totally different background/message) with William Upski Wimsatt’s collections of essays. Each chapter is a few pages and has a simple plot line. You can read three pages, put it down, and pick it up three weeks later and you’re still good to go. Reading this book, the structure tells you subconsciously and very quickly that it’s not going to be too much. The Big Questions we want to read about are succinctly and practically broken down by the structure.

In some ways, I felt like this was what A Three Dog Life tried and failed to pull off. Abigail Thomas, in a Three Dog Life, tells a story that could be overwhelming to tell by vignettes, quick takes on a hard subject. Yet often, I felt like her vignettes missed the mark, or were lovely prose with a “so what?” feeling at the end of the day. With Eat, Pray, Love, while I feel like many characters or scenes are given a slight once-over-lightly treatment, the plot just keeps motoring forward and the narrative voice is wry, relateable and poking fun at itself enough that I stay hooked/invested/involved/whatever you want to call it.

Also: Miss Thang is facing issues many folks face, and telling the story of experiencing them in glorious environments we’d all like to experience them in. Hell, I’ve never wanted to go to Italy so much, but after she described the cinnamon-ginger gelato I got more interested than I’ve ever been before. This makes for a winning combination of Travel Magazine and deep thinking about life/God/What Really Matters, told in a voice that both makes fun of itself and is pretty damn vulnerable with its shortcomings. Kind of like Anne Lamott with more cash and an international setting.

It’s pretty fascinating, looking at what you can do making a story go pop- literally. As much as it’s tempting to look down our noses at stuff that’s a commercial success, I’m still fascinated to look at how and why it works. Let’s rip off her techniques and use them in our own books so we can make it on Oprah!