Meeting Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.

This delightful snippet from NZ author W.J.O'Connell via his Dunedin publisher Barbara Larson:

“Great book,” said Elizabeth Gilbert, “thank God.”

Someone in the ashram had given her a copy of my book A Plumber’s Progress; Pilgrimage to the Heart of Tibet (published by Longacre Press 2003) insisting she read it. This is one of the traps for successful writers, every wannabe wants their approval, mostly leaving the more accomplished one with a fraught choice between a response of brutal honesty or a polite lie.

Liz was in India gathering experiences for her own book. At the time, she was calling it The Wandering I, subsequently it became the best seller Eat, Pray, Love. We became literary buddies, sharing life’s mysteries, writer’s tales and the poems that popped from our experiences of monastic life in an ashram.
She called me ‘the Poet/Plumber’, I called her attention to how to go onto an Indian roof at sundown and let go of the weeds of her life. Now I’m in her book and she is on Oprah.
Julia Roberts is reportedly going to play Liz in the forthcoming movie of the book. I’m hoping Richard Gere gets my part.
Janame O’Connell.