Man of the House: One man’s quest for enlightenment — and a gopher

In my new novel, “Eat Pray Belch,” I tell the story of a man who runs off to the foothills of Los Angeles in a journey of personal discovery and redemption. This book is sure to be a life-changing experience, particularly for men who believe in the spiritual powers of eating, praying and belching.

Popular Mechanics has just acquired the movie rights, and Julia Roberts is set to star in the big screen adaptation. She will play the man’s wife, Posh, a put-upon beauty who has seen her fortunes decline since meeting the protagonist in a Fort Lauderdale beer bar some 30 years before.

Stop with the tears already. It gets much worse.

Together, the two main characters have four feral children, some of them intentionally. They also have a learning-impaired beagle that will probably be forced to live with them for life, as will the children, who don’t like it at home but find the rent impossible to beat.

The older daughter explains this best when she looks bravely into the sandstorm of what has become their life and says: “The trick is not minding.”

In the course of the book, the man goes through several phases of self-discovery. In the beginning, he is searching for answers about love and relationships. Soon, he has given up on both and has begun pouring his passion into catching the gopher that is strafing his beloved front yard. By Chapter 2, the gopher has consumed the galvanized iron sprinkler system and parts of the driveway.

“It’s a really bad year for gophers,” the character explains.

More than anything, “Eat Pray Belch” is about never giving up, so by Chapter 3 the main character has rallied. He is a man of enormous spirit — one of those guys who other people invariably quit listening to in the middle of a conversation, but he plows ahead anyway — you know the type.

By Chapter 4, he has bought some gopher traps at the local hardware emporium, a humongous place in which he is constantly getting lost and being forced to spend the night. By morning, he finds his way to the cash register and sets off on a quixotic quest for gopher.

The gopher — played in the movie version by Javier Bardem — isn’t merely a gopher. As with Moby Dick, he becomes a metaphor for all the things men need in life: adventure, passion, death. The man spends many hours trying to think like his prey, burrowing down into the tunnels themselves, which is where you have to set gopher traps for them to be even remotely successful.

“Call me Ishmael!” he proclaims.

“Why?” asks his young son.

“Because I love to travel,” the man says.

In Chapter 5, almost by accident, the man catches a gopher and proudly straps him to the front of the minivan, like a nine-point buck.

Of course, some of the neighbors recoil at this act of hubris, until the main character invites them over for margaritas and explains about the two months of agony and heartbreak that went into capturing his very first gopher.

The message: “If we’re not smarter than gophers now, we’re certainly gaining on them and may one day be equally as smart as gophers.”

The gopher experience changes the family, leaving them with several existentialist questions: Why are we here? What does life mean? And why does the vodka always run out well before the tonic?

Such moments are revealing of all of us, not just the characters in the book. We see ourselves in their struggles and their victories. As with all great novels, there is something timeless about their desperation. And where there is understanding, there is also anger.

For instance, in Chapter 7, the man and his family try to give the 300-pound beagle a much-needed bath. Two people nearly drown when they become entangled in an overabundance of bathtub toys. If you have ever seen a bathtub used by a 7-year-old boy, you know how dangerous such toys can be. You step on one and nearly lose a leg.

#@##%&%&*^*^$^$@#!@!@#!^$^^^%$!

By the time the dog is done, the entire bathroom needs to be reglazed and recaulked, affirmation that — even in the worst of times — there is always more room on the Visa bill.

So, as you can see, “Eat Pray Belch” is full of romance, conflict and raw misery, all the ingredients of great literature. Among the many themes it explores: Is there anything more excruciating than a little boy playing the harmonica?

Read it with someone you love.

chris.erskine@latimes.com