On tour: Meet the author Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert is touring Australia and New Zealand in March as a guest of Adelaide Writers’ Week, visiting Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Wellington. Her latest novel, The Signature of All Things (Bloomsbury), was released in September 2013.
What would you put on a shelf-talker for your book?
Pride and Prejudice meets Master and Commander!
What are you reading right now?
Frances & Bernard (Carlene Bauer, Vintage). I’m only three pages in, but it’s lovely so far.
Which book do you always recommend?
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, various imprints). It’s remarkable how many people haven’t read it—or haven’t read it since they were forced to read it in school. It’s eternally marvellous, especially that first scene in the graveyard. You simply can’t write a better opening to a novel than that.
What was the defining book of your childhood?
The complete ‘Wizard of Oz’ series (L Frank Baum, various imprints). We had an old set of them from the 1930s with amazing art deco illustrations, passed down lovingly through the generations. These volumes of wonder constituted our family bible, basically.
If you were a literary character you’d be …
Isabel Archer.
What’s your favourite book adaptation (film, television or theatre)?
Ang Lee’s adaptation of Brokeback Mountain (Annie Proulx, various imprints).
What’s your favourite section of the bookstore?
It depends on my fascination of the moment. For the last five years, it was gardening and botany. Now it’s shifting to anything relating to New York City in the 1940s.
How old were you when you wrote your first book?
Around five or six. My sister and I were constantly making little books. We could never seem to get them published, though. Discrimination against authors who couldn’t spell or use sticky tape properly, I suppose.
What’s the best advice an editor or publisher has ever given you?
‘Don’t pursue a career path; just pursue a path.’
Hardback, paperback or digital?
All of the above, depending upon whether I’m at home, at the beach or on a million-hour overseas flight.
Facebook or Twitter?
Both, though I like the sweet earnestness of Facebook better than the general insecurity and snarkiness of Twitter. That said, when I’m feeling insecure or snarky, Twitter beckons.
In 50 years’ time books will be…
Passed illegally hand-to-hand, in tattered remains, between brave revolutionaries living in a dystopic anti-intellectual nightmare landscape. Just kidding! No, books will be exactly what they are now and have been for centuries: the most efficient and lovely form of imaginative escape and emotional transformation humans have ever invented. Books may not look exactly how they look now, but that’s still what they will be.
Category: Features
