Elizabeth Gilbert: Her side of the story is the only one we're going to get

No offense to Michael Cooper, but was anyone going to read his book anyway? It seemed a desperate ploy to get in on some of the action (aka money) from his ex-wife Elizabeth Gilbert‘s bestselling memoir (and forthcoming movie adaptation) about her post-divorce life, Eat, Pray, Love.

Now the book has been canceled (Hyperion has confirmed that fact) amid claims that they drove Cooper to make the book “more racy” and he decided to walk, manuscript in hand. Apparently he’s looking at other publishers — we’ll see if there are any takers.

But the more the story about the book circulates, the more suspicious it all seems. For Gilbert, the chronicling of her international journey is a somewhat natural, if not logical, extension of her breakup from her husband: she was a writer with several books already in the bag, and she signed a small deal pre-trip, using the advance as the basis of her traveling funds. But Cooper? Gilbert doesn’t reveal much about him in her book, but he certainly wasn’t a writer before her book turned into a major bestseller. All of a sudden he pens a memoir, which is canceled a year later, supposedly at the “11th hour”?

It just seemed like a bad publishing idea. Unlike Eat, Pray, Love, which has a huge appeal for a female audience (of all ages) and bookclubs, Displaced seems to somewhat lack an ideal audience. Women would take Gilbert’s side, and men… well, do they read post-divorce, humanitarian aid memoirs? Not that it wouldn’t be interesting, but it did just seem petty. I don’t think anyone will miss it if it doesn’t get picked up by someone else. But we’ll see!