Carbonated holiness: in their first encounter, writers Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Gilbert fizz with wit

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The closest parallel that comes to mind is the near legendary slugfest between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1971. R-went 12 rounds and featured Mailer and Vidal going at it hammer and tongs. By the time it was over, the exchange of insults between the two had enraged both the host and the audience.

In the distaff version, two wry, witty women known for sharing their stories of self-discovery and spiritual longings on the printed page hug, extol each other's talents and footwear, and trade funny, self-deprecating remarks, bathing their audience in a warm glow of good feeling. All of which is enough to suggest that the book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus may not be as ridiculously titled as it appears.

The conversation between Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott, on stage on the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles as part of UCLA Live's "Spoken Word" series, was sold out for months prior to the March 28 event. The literary "happening" was an encounter so upbeat and positive as to be almost treacly, but the writers in question were too talented and funny not to carry it off.

Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, then in its 60th week as No. 1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list, is charming, winsome, blonde. Anne Lamott is equally witty and darker--both in hair color and temperament. The author most recently of Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, released in paperback in February and No. 15 on the Best Sellers list, as well as six novels and five books of nonfiction, including the popular primer for writers Bird by Bird, Lamott has shared with readers her struggles with alcoholism and the challenges--and joys--of being a single mother. Hers is an edgier, grittier voice. Whereas Elizabeth Gilbert tells her writing students to imagine writing for a specific reader--a friend, she emphasizes, for after all why would you want to imagine an enemy--Lamott deadpans that she couldn't disagree more. "I tell my students that they need no reason to write other than revenge."

The evening began with Gilbert introducing Lamott and praising "the incredible reach" of her work. Gilbert said she had spent much of her 20s with people who were terrified of any talk of divinity: "These were people who would have to put their head between their knees if God was brought up, but they loved Anne Lamott." She added, "Annie just doesn't talk about God, she uses the J word."

Gilbert said Lamott, whom she had met for the first time just prior to the conversation onstage, had played a significant role in her life on three occasions. One of them was in pitching the book that would become Eat, Pray, Love. The memoir, published in 2006 and translated into 30 languages now, tells the story of Gilbert's sojourns to Italy, India and Indonesia in the aftermath of a painful divorce. Gilbert said she was telling her editors how she wanted to go to India to spend time in an ashram when she realized she was losing her pitch.

"They were looking at me like I was five minutes away from selling carnations at the airport. But don't worry, I assured them. I think I can make it accessible. I can tell it like Anne Lamott.

"At that moment the seas parted," Gilbert said. She'd won her pitch.

For almost two hours, the two writers swapped notes about their lives as writers, their spiritual paths, their thoughts on politics. If the parallels between the two women and their work were obvious to most in the audience, both offering beguiling first-person accounts of their travails as single women seeking a relationship with the divine and, sometimes, her human avatars, Lamott noted that the differences between them had already become apparent in the brief hour they'd spent with each other before going onstage. Gilbert had suggested they wait a few minutes for latecomers before starting; Lamott argued for beginning punctually. "Next time they'll know to be on time. That's the kind of Christian I am," she said.

Lamott dedicated her book Grace (Eventually) to St. Andrew Church, her church in California that she's attended for years. She became a Christian almost accidentally, she said, stumbling into a welcoming church that met her needs. "To let people be and to not try to correct them or to cheer them up is the most incredible act of grace," she remarked.

Gilbert has written of herself as culturally but not theologically Christian and is a student of an Indian guru. It's been unsettling to her that after the success of Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold more than 4 million copies, people treat her as some sort of spiritual expert, she said. "I'm a spotty meditator at best," she told the audience. "Most the time I'm thinking about other stuff."

She turned to Lamott. "I admire so much the constancy of your spiritual path," she said. "It's the same church, the same pastor."