Elizabeth Gilbert is about to release a memoir. I haven’t read it yet, but I, along with a lot of people, have a lot to say about it. If you do not know what I am talking about, you may pause reading this letter and go read The New Yorker’s piece “Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Epiphanies” or if you don’t have time for that, here’s a Reddit recap of the memoir’s highlights.
If you have come back from reading those – or already know what I am talking about– isn’t it fucking bonkers what she admitted to publicly?
Gilbert has largely made her career in the literary world from the success of Eat, Pray, Love. That book changed people’s lives. You cannot downplay the success, whether you liked the book or not, whether you like her or not — she is considered a very successful person in our field. And here she is now, admitting in her new book that she planned to end the life of her partner—not a private confession whispered between friends, but she announced it to the whole damn world through her memoir.
Gilbert frames part of her decision to publish all this as the result of an alleged visitation — a communication in which she believes her late partner gave her permission to publish this story. Parts of her partners family have publicly expressed discomfort with this publication and the idea that their loss is now material for commerce.
What is at stake when a writer says aloud, in public, what was once private? There is an obvious legal geography — libel is not the principal threat when the subject is deceased, and murder is not something a court will consider unless physical acts crossed a legal threshold — but law is only one map of the problem. There is the moral geography, made of power, race, and money. Elizabeth Gilbert can afford a publicist, a tour, and massive messy press. An author with her platform writes with a kind of cultural immunity that others do not enjoy. That imbalance is what people mean when they point to privilege; it explains why the same paragraph published by a lesser-known writer would be read through a very different lens.
I will say plainly that what looks like a commercial calculation might be exactly that — a book timed, a book sold, a career maintained — and yet motive, for writers, often wears a thousand faces. Some people will read this memoir and see exploitation. Others will read it as painful honesty. My own inclination as a writer is to defend the right to speak about one’s life even when that speech makes the speaker look ugly, monstrous, or small. The defense is not an endorsement of violence, nor is it a defense of hurt. What I am defending is truth as a subject worth writing about, and the writer’s choice to work on what haunts them. That defense needs to be held alongside accountability, and it is the tension between those two that I want to keep in view.
There is another practical, technical thing I want to say about telling these stories well. When you choose to write about other people you must anticipate the public ledger that will open: press cycles, family statements, social threads, and archival screenshots that do not forget. If your aim is to write honestly, gather what you need to make the book defensible on three counts: verify dates and details where possible; offer context that shows why you perceived events as you did; and, where you rely on private moments, describe how you arrived at the shape of your memory. Those practices are not legal armor, but they make the work steadier. They also give editors and publishers a clearer ethical calculus when they consider whether a book should be backed and how it should be presented. That is not the same as asking permission to write; it is asking of yourself the discipline to make your case to readers who did not live what you did.
This awkward honesty from Gilbert is not entirely surprising if you have watched her career. She has made a practice of extreme disclosure for a long time, and that stylistic habit modifies how the public reads new revelations. There is a pattern to public confessions—her promise to readers: I will be generous with my life if you are generous with your attention. That arrangement has consequences when the generosity intersects with someone else’s grief. The family who loved the person whose life is detailed in the memoir may feel exposed and objectified; that is a valid and serious reaction that cannot be dismissed. The fact that readers and family are protesting is itself a kind of evidence about the social effect of publishing intimate detail.
Now for the personal part, because the personal is where we teach each other most honestly. I have dated people who could write; I have been written about, not as publicly as this, of course, but written about nonetheless. I would not want my worst deeds printed for strangers to browse. I do not want the private ledger of my failures to become someone else’s source material for lunchroom gossip or sales or letters like this one. And one day they could still be. At the same time, I write about my life and by doing so, have written about others. I do so because confession, when paired with craft, can illuminate patterns in a way that argument alone cannot. I just want to be the one to write about them, not someone else. Elizabeth Gilbert, in this particular book, offers a version of herself that will make her look bad to many readers; the book is messy and, for some, unforgivable. That is part of why we must be careful readers and careful writers both.
If you are a writer who worries about being the subject of someone else’s work, here are the only instructions that matter: admit to the risk before you fall in love with people who also love to tell stories; choose partnerships with clear communication about boundaries; and accept that entering a relationship in any way with a writer includes the possibility of narrative capture. If you are a writer who plans to publish a book about another person, be prepared to name your motives outwardly, to show evidence where you can, and to hold whatever praise you receive in the same hand that receives criticism. The work is harder if the subject is dead, because they cannot answer; the work is harder still if the subject had fewer platforms to speak. This is the ethics of witness and the craft of bearing witness well.
I will finish where I began. Every author should have the right to write about their own experience. That right carries obligations to the people who share those experiences with us. I will defend an author’s voice when that voice is earnest and careful, and I will call it out when it weaponizes intimacy for attention. If you ask me whether I would want my worst deeds written about, I will say I would not; if you ask me whether I will continue to write about my life, flaws and all, I will say I will. For writers, the hard work is doing both things at once — telling the truth and tending to the people the truth touches — and accepting the consequences when you fail at either of those duties.
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