There was, Wagner says, an "eerie uniformity" to the rejections she received, and this uniformity reflected how Eat, Pray, Love is preying on the minds of agents and publishers now. Wagner quoted choice lines from her rejection emails. Here are a few:

• "Women's fiction of this sort is really difficult these days unless there's a unique angle, or promotional platform."
• "I'm concerned that your protagonist does not have a strong passion, one that really defines her."
• "I'm sensing there could be more of a journey for this character-emotionally and even perhaps geographically."
• "A memoir with this tone could be very marketable."
• "You're a talented, witty writer, but regretfully, I will have to pass. Have you considered non-fiction, or memoir ... or YA?"
• "Are there vampires in this novel?"

The sad thing is that by the time Wagner is done with the "high-concept" YA-flavored vampire memoir she jokes about writing at the end of her post, it is likely the publishing world will have moved on to proto-pulp, concrete/literalist zombie war diaries.

[VF Daily]

• On her store, which she purchased and renovated with the movie money: "This should be called the Julia Roberts Memorial Building." 
• On the movie: "I do not have any trouble telling the difference between me and Julia Roberts." 
• On Javier Bardem: "I fell in love with my husband all over again." 
• On bracelets her store sells: “If I were a 9-year-old girl, I would have killed and field-dressed someone to have these gorgeous, sparkly bracelets on my arm.”
• On what the Times described as "small primitive-looking heads:" "These are boundary gods. They protect and watch over your boundaries. I give them to every woman I know. I keep one next to my computer to remind myself not to say 'yes' to everyone."

Except for Julia Roberts and Ryan Murphy, we presume.

Lovely to Murphy, maybe. Roger Ebert wasn't impressed:

In Italy, [Roberts's character] eats such Pavarottian plates of pasta that I hope one of the things she prayed for in India was deliverance from the sin of gluttony. At one trattoria she apparently orders the entire menu, and I am not making this up.

Ebert sounds like he was grossed out, not scandalized. He finishes his review with some subtle stings, calling the movie "shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue." Eat, Pray Love, says Ebert, "mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat."

The ultimate verdict on any controversy in the movie will, as always, be at the box office - and perhaps in upticks in business at your local Olive Garden.

Then Lyons backtracked for a second. "And that's not a bad thing-it's about rediscovering yourself."

The celluloid version of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir may be all about rediscovery, but last night was about promotion-as if any more were needed. The book, after all, has been selling at an astounding clip since its release, and the posters greet you at every street corner.

Maybe that's why the stars were slow to come. At first, Julia was nowhere in sight, Javier would be a while, and James Franco wouldn't even bother showing up.

The evening's real guest of honor, however, may have been Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer who fashioned herself as the central figure of her astoundingly popular book. Not only did she conceive of the project, but she also had the honor of walking into a theater where lucky ticket holders would spend two hours watching the wish-fulfillment of her tri-pronged globetrotting fantasy-all of which is now re-enacted by Julia Roberts. We can only hope a sequel will depict her being fêted by Oprah, seeing her paperback clutched by disillusioned women the world over, and attending the premiere of a summer blockbuster that features herself as the protagonist-in New York, the city that drove her abroad in the first place.

Eventually there were screams and shuffling at the front of the red carpet, so everyone followed suit and slipped their Blackberrys back into their pockets and paid attention again. James Brolin emerged with a shaggy goatee, and gave featured Eat Pray Love actor Mike O'Malley a fierce bro hug.

"We did a project together, The People Speak-he's a real inspiration to me," O'Malley, who just scored an Emmy nomination for his guest spot on Glee, told me, as if a simple hug between two ruggedly attractive men needed any explanation. "He said the same things about me, I'm sure."
Javier Bardem-who plays love interest Felipe in the film-strolled by, doing his best to avoid any sort of human contact, and soon after came Julia Roberts, her eyes locked firmly toward the ground as she walked, flanked by a squad of guards.

The third in line was Gilbert herself, and the real Liz attracted nearly as much attention as the actress playing her. She was beaming-it was hard to imagine this woman desperately in need of sustenance, scripture, and/or sex. She left the onlookers with little more than a smirk and made her way into the theater.

Luckily, guest Russell Simmons was not in as much of a hurry. He stood unfazed amid an onslaught of cameras and recorders and rattled off his new favorite rap albums. So, he was asked, have you ever had an Eat Pray Love experience of your own?

"I don't know," he said as he walked up to the end of the red carpet, his white Yankees cap turning away. "I haven't seen the movie yet!"

Jessica Olien went to the heart of Eat, Pray, Love territory—Bali—and found herself pulling an Elizabeth Gilbert. Despite disdaining the "caftan-wearing women" who travel alongside her, Olien lives out their dream and finds romance with a Dutch man named Jorick. She and Jorick ride motorbikes through the island paradise and have lots of sex. Olien becomes "completely, embarrassingly Gilbert-like." She comes to terms with this, however:

It is only when I arrive home that I fully comprehend the irony of the past month: Cynical writer goes to Bali to make fun of Elizabeth Gilbert wannabes only to become perhaps her closest emulator.

I feel stabs of guilt for being so harsh on those women, searching the island for their romantic bliss. Who am I to laugh at their longing? By all means, ladies, come to Bali, I want to tell anyone within smiling distance. Find a wonderful man in a wonderful place. But if I could tell those women one more thing, it would be that maybe they should stop looking so hard. Because if there's a romantic cliché that's held true -- for Elizabeth Gilbert, and now, for me -- it's that bliss usually happens when you aren't hunting it down.

She says she doesn't expect a book deal out of her adventure, but she has gotten some mileage out of chronicling it online. Recently, she wrote for Jezebel about how Eat, Pray, Love "ruined" Bali.

On HuffPo, Lea Lane seems faintly irritated that Gilbert gets all the attention:

My book Solo Traveler came out in 2005, not long before Elizabeth Gilbert's cult-inducing phenomenon. Like her, I wrote about the freedom and joys of traveling on your own, but emphasized I was not looking for love.

Besides selling reasonably well, my book spawned a website and a brand, and besides how-tos on eating alone and packing and such, included a couple dozen personal essays, including ones set in Italy, India and Bali. I can't complain.

Well, if pressed, perhaps she can complain: turns out she too went to Bali all she got were bug bites. Her loins burned not with passion but with fire ants.

And Emily Gould cops to an "obsession with the weirdly hamfisted EPL marketing and tie-ins." Which, indeed, are PRETTY WEIRD—even when they aren't using bogus-seeming words like "sensorial."

Final verdict: Eat, Pray... Sort of Like?

The Oscar-winning actor -- best known for either playing a psychopath or heartthrob, depending on the person you ask -- will reportedly make an appearance on Glee next season. And while this could just be another rumor floating around the series -- OMG, Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele are totally dating -- since there are actually corresponding quotes from Bardem, it simply feels too insane to make up. Said Bardem to EW: "We’re going to rock the house [...] We’re going to do some heavy metal — Spanish heavy metal, which is the worst." OK then!

Bardem's plot will dovetail with the wheelchair bound Artie (played by the non-wheelchair bound Kevin McHale) and will probably feature at least one ridiculous medallion and some leather pants. The story goes that the actor became a "Gleek" (a.k.a. a fan of the Fox series) after watching the first season in a single week and sought out his Eat Pray Love director -- and Glee creator -- Ryan Murphy to beg for a role. Our theory? Columbia Pictures -- and Murphy -- realized that the Julia Roberts-led Eat Pray Love was skewwing older in its tracking and needed to get under-25 girls to the theater. And what better way to do that here in 2010 than to be associated with Glee. Hey, it was either that or vampires...