Gilbert, Elizabeth 1969-

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GILBERT, Elizabeth 1969-

PERSONAL: Born 1969 in Waterbury, CT; daughter of a chemical engineer and a nurse; married. Education: Attended New York University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Hudson Valley, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking Publicity, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer. Former staff writer for Spin magazine; writer-at-large, GQ magazine.

AWARDS, HONORS: John C. Zacharis First Book Award, Ploughshares/Emerson College, 1999, for Pilgrims; National Book Award nomination in nonfiction, and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination in biography/autobiography, both 2002, both for The Last American Man; nominated for National Magazine Award; Pushcart Prize winner.

WRITINGS:

Pilgrims, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1997.

Stern Men, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

The Last American Man, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to magazines, including Harper's Bazaar and Esquire.

ADAPTATIONS: Three of Gilbert's stories were adapted by Shira Piven as the play Pilgrims and produced in 2001. Gilbert's GQ article on working in a Manhattan bar was optioned and loosely adapted into the film Coyote Ugly; The Last American Man has been optioned by Warner Brothers.

SIDELIGHTS: The twelve short stories in Elizabeth Gilbert's debut collection, Pilgrims, range in locale from New York City to the ranchlands of the American West. Gilbert's tales do not always end predictably, giving readers the sense that they have been allowed a glimpse into the life of a character that will continue learning and growing even after the window opened by the story is closed. According to Times Literary Supplement reviewer Wendy Brandmark, personal epiphany links each story in the collection. In the title story, a city girl longs to run off with a Wyoming ranch hand even though each realizes that the psychologically inhospitable landscape would become a trap. Another story, "Elks," plays on the irony of a city woman who, having moved to the West, now resents the urban ways of her city family when they come to visit. According to Brandmark, "Elks" effectively illustrates parallels in isolation: the family visitors are just as "self-contained" as the woman has come to be in her rural lifestyle. The reviewer claimed that Gilbert subtly illustrates how "no one can be truly isolated." In another tale of introspective epiphany, "Alice from the East," an older woman who helps the inhabitants of a broken-down car shows one of them the depth of his own desires and losses.

Sometimes Gilbert's characters search for their own personal revelations, as in "The Names of Flowers and Girls," which features an artist who makes experience-seeking trips to the seedy side of town but fails to capture a new female friend in his artwork. In a New York City-based story, "Tall Folks," a female bar owner senses the end of her business when a strip bar opens across the street. A contributor to Publishers Weekly commented on the author's skills with detail, illustrated in "Tall Folks" when Gilbert describes her protagonist's habit of hiring female bartenders, by writing: "She had done very well this way, brokering these particular and necessary loves." While the Publishers Weekly reviewer opined that Gilbert's endings sometimes lacked closure, the reviewer liked the premise and the ending of "The Finest Wife," a story about an aged school bus driver who enters a fantasy realm and picks up all her lovers for a final bus ride. The critic concluded that "The Finest Wife" was a good portent for the "full length, warm blooded, compelling work to come" from Gilbert. Several reviewers remarked on the author's talent for making much of the silence between the lines, for showing the reader the subtleties of her characters. According to Brandmark, Gilbert's effort is a "rare mixture of compassion and keen observation."

Gilbert followed up Pilgrims with her first novel, Stern Men. Writing it was a struggle, she told Beatrice interviewer Ron Hogan. "It's difficult to go from a short story, which is just such a lovely moment—not even a chapter, just a glimpse. You don't have to provide more than a glimpse, and you can't get away with that in a novel, though people try to." The author uses another unique setting, two lobstering towns on neighboring Maine islands, to tell the coming-of-age story of Ruth Ellis, who has returned home after four years at boarding school. She doesn't fit in with her mother's wealthy family, and considers becoming a "stern man" on a lobster boat rather than go to college. When Ruth falls in love with a lobsterman from a competing island, it complicates matters even further. "In this breezily appealing first novel, Elizabeth Gilbert presents us a heroine as smart, sly, plucky and altogether winning as her own prose; it's difficult, in fact, not to develop a knee-weakening crush on both," Salon contributor Jonathan Miles observed. Gilbert's "gift for lively, authentic dialogue and atmospheric settings continually lights up this entertaining, and surprisingly thought-provoking, romp," a Publishers Weekly critic noted. Library Journal contributor Debbie Bogenschutz similarly hailed Gilbert's "beautiful novel," concluding that Stern Men is "funny and moving at the same time and populated by some quite memorable characters."

Although Gilbert has written many nonfiction profiles for magazines such as GQ and Esquire, it wasn't until 2002's The Last American Man that she produced an entire nonfiction volume on one subject. Eustace Conway is a modern woodsman whose determination to promote a more natural lifestyle has led him to build a 1,000-acre camp in the Appalachians, cross America by horseback, and lecture on environmental topics. "I've met some extraordinary people, fascinating characters, but I've never met anyone who thought of himself as being a man of destiny—and lived every moment as though he were that," Gilbert told the Powell's Books Web site. "That makes for an enormous amount of material, just in terms of the strict biography." Gilbert traces Conway's troubled childhood, recalls how he left home at seventeen to live on his own in the mountains, and details his life's mission—not only to live in harmony with nature, but to teach others how to do the same.

Critics found much to praise in The Last American Man, which earned nominations for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. "In the end, her view of him is as balanced as it is entertaining," Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times. "Without compromising her obvious admiration, Ms. Gilbert presents a warts-and-all portrait of Mr. Conway and a sophisticated understanding of why those warts are only natural." New York Times Book Review contributor James Gorman similarly called The Last American Man a "wickedly well-written and finally pain-filled biography," particularly in its exploration of how young Conway's emotional abuse by a cruelly demanding father is reflected in his own perfectionist personality. "It is hard to imagine a deeper, more insightful portrait," Anthony Brandt stated in National Geographic Adventure. The critic called The Last American Man "an important book" for its exploration of Conway's efforts to bring people back to nature, and concluded: "If the message of Conway's life is inherently sad, not just for him but for all of us, Gilbert's book is wise and knowing. She understands the dimensions of the loss we must all suffer through his failure."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 2000, Carolyn Kubisz, review of Stern Men, p. 1434; April 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of The Last American Man, p. 1297.

Entertainment Weekly, May 31, 2002, Karen Valby, "The Man Show: Journalist Elizabeth Gilbert Tracks Down a Recluse Lured by the Call of the Wild," p. 99.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, review of The LastAmerican Man, p. 307.

Library Journal, April 1, 2000, Debbie Bogenschutz, review of The Last American Man, p. 129.

National Geographic Adventure, June-July, 2002, Anthony Brandt, "The No-Comfort Zone: Eustace Conway Is Modern America's Daniel Boone," p. 48.

New Yorker, May 20, 2002, Dana Goodyear, "Solitary Man," p. 25.

New York Times, June 3, 2002, Janet Maslin, "How a Woodsman Found High-Profile Solitude," p. B6.

New York Times Book Review, June 2, 2002, James Gorman, "Endangered Species," p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, July 7, 1997, review of Pilgrims, p. 47; March 20, 2000, review of Stern Men, p. 71; April 22, 2002, review of The Last American Man, p. 63.

Times Literary Supplement, May 29, 1998, Wendy Brandmark, review of Pilgrims, p. 27.