Women are from Alpha Centauri, Men are from Aye Phelta Thigh:Katie Roiphe and Elizabeth Gilbert Department

Here’s a teaser from Katie Roiphe’s Slate review of Eat, Pray, Love (link):

Before [Elizabeth] Gilbert's marriage fell apart and she began her epic travels, she led a fairly conventional life: She had a husband, two homes, a successful writing career, and was contemplating having a child.

If you find that fall-down, water-through-the-nostrils hilarious (as I do), then you may be a candidate for the long version: a three-way audio dialog (a trialog?) about what must (I infer from secondary sources) be the most pernicious piece of literary nonsense since Gibran’s The Prophet, or perhaps The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (link).

A woman leaves her husband and discovers fulfillment through meditation and pasta—and zing to the top of the charts. I admit that an hour is a long time to give to a discussion of such arrant nonsense, but I found myself riveted in horrified fascination hearing Roiphe and Steve Metcalf as they repeatedly butt heads in their Upper-West-Side Punch-and-Judy Show. I don’t suppose this is 100 percent a boy-girl thing—allow more like 97.5 percent, recognizing the saner comments of the third party, Julia Turner, who sometimes sounded less like a full participant than some sort of astonished couples-therapy referee.

I guess I knew about the underlying epic of self-discovery because every third woman on the tour buses in India this fall seemed to be sporting a copy. I made it a point not to inquire at the time, and my judgment is vindicated: the audio, and, a fortiori, ultimately the book, bring back to mind any number of face-ripping brawls I have had with women over a long and not deeply corrupt career (though not, I am at pains to note, Mrs. Buce, who, I suspect, would snort even harder at this stuff than I do).

And, yes, I have no idea why I would want to remember all that?