Elizabeth Wurtzel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Wurtzel in 2018 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel (1967-07-31)July 31, 1967 New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Died | January 7, 2020(2020-01-07) (aged 52) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Education | Harvard University (BA) Yale University (JD) |
| Genre | Confessional memoir |
| Years active | 1980s–2020 |
| Notable works | Prozac Nation |
| Spouse | |
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel (July 31, 1967 – January 7, 2020) was an American writer, journalist, and lawyer known for theconfessional memoirProzac Nation, which she published at the age of 27. Her work often focused on chronicling her personal struggles with depression, addiction, career, and relationships. Wurtzel's work drove a boom in confessional writing and the personal memoir genre during the 1990s, and she was viewed as a voice ofGeneration X. In her later life, Wurtzel worked briefly as an attorney before her death from breast cancer.[1][2]
Wurtzel grew up in aJewish family on theUpper West Side of New York City and attended theRamaz School.[3][4] Her parents, Lynne Winters and Donald Wurtzel, divorced when she was young, and Wurtzel was primarily raised by her mother, who worked in publishing and as a media consultant.[5][6][7] In a 2018 article inThe Cut, Wurtzel wrote that she discovered in 2016 that her biological father was photographerBob Adelman, who had worked with her mother in the 1960s.[1][2][5]
As described in her memoirProzac Nation, Wurtzel's depression began between the ages of 10 and 12. Wurtzel admitted tocutting herself when she was in adolescence, and of spending her teenage years in an environment of emotional angst,substance misuse, bad relationships, and frequent fights with family members.[8] A gifted student with family wealth, Wurtzel went on to attendHarvard College, where she continued to struggle with depression and substance abuse.[9]
While an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1980s, Wurtzel wrote forThe Harvard Crimson and received the 1986Rolling Stone College Journalism Award for a piece aboutLou Reed.[9][10][11] She also interned atThe Dallas Morning News, but was fired after being accused of plagiarism.[12] She received aB.A. degree incomparative literature from Harvard in 1989.[2]
Wurtzel subsequently moved toGreenwich Village in New York City and found work as a pop music critic forThe New Yorker andNew York Magazine.The New York Times book criticKen Tucker characterized her contributions to the former publication as "unintentionally hilarious."[13] In 1997Dwight Garner wrote inSalon.com that her column "was so roundly despised that I sometimes felt like its only friend in the world."[14]
Wurtzel was best known for her best-selling memoirProzac Nation (1994), published when she was 27. The book chronicles her battle with depression as a college undergraduate and her eventual treatment with the medicationProzac.Michiko Kakutani wrote inThe New York Times, "Wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware,Prozac Nation possesses the raw candor ofJoan Didion's essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism ofSylvia Plath'sThe Bell Jar, and the wry, dark humor of aBob Dylan song." The paperback was aNew York Times bestseller. Thefilm adaptation, which starredChristina Ricci, premiered at theToronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2001.[15] The book is credited with launching the feminist disability memoir genre and "became one of the first memoirists to write honestly and brutally about depression and addiction."[16]
Wurtzel's next book was titledBitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1998). InThe New York Times,Karen Lehrman wrote that whileBitch "is full of enormous contradictions, bizarre digressions and illogical outbursts, it is also one of the more honest, insightful and witty books on the subject of women to have come along in a while."[17]
More, Now, Again (2001), was the follow-up memoir toProzac Nation and centered primarily on her addictions tococaine andRitalin. The book discusses her drug inducedobsession withtweezing as a form ofself-harm, and recounts her behavior while writingBitch, among other subjects. It received generally negative reviews.[18][19] InThe Guardian,Toby Young wrote that "Wurtzel's overweening self-regard oozes from every sentence" and concluded, "In a sense,More, Now, Again is thereductio ad absurdum of this whole self-obsessed genre: it's a confessional memoir by someone who has nothing to confess. Wurtzel has nothing to declare apart from her self-adoration. A better title for it would beMe, Myself, I."[20]
In 2004, Wurtzel applied toYale Law School. She later wrote that she never intended to pursue a career as a lawyer, but rather had simply wanted to attend law school.[21] She was accepted at Yale even though "Her combinedLSAT score of 160 was, as she put it, 'adequately bad' ... 'Suffice it to say I was admitted for other reasons,' Wurtzel said. 'My books, my accomplishments.'"[22] She was a summer associate atWilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.[23] She received herJ.D. in 2008, but failed theNew York state bar exam on her first attempt.
The legal community criticized Wurtzel for holding herself out as a lawyer in interviews, because she was not licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction at the time.[24] Wurtzel passed the February 2010 New York State bar exam,[25] and was employed full-time atBoies, Schiller & Flexner in New York City from 2008 to 2012.[26] She continued to work for the firm as a case manager and on special projects.[27] In July 2010, she wrote in theBrennan Center for Justice blog to make a proposal for the abolition of bar exams.[28][29]
While an intern at theDallas Morning News, Wurtzel was fired, reportedly for plagiarism,[12][2] although a 2002The New York Times interview suggested that she had fabricated quotations in an article that was never published.[30]
Wurtzel wrote regularly forThe Wall Street Journal.[31]
On September 21, 2008, after the suicide of writerDavid Foster Wallace, Wurtzel wrote an article forNew York magazine about the time she had spent with him. She acknowledged that "I never knew David well."[32]
In January 2009, she wrote an article forThe Guardian,[33] arguing that the vehemence of opposition demonstrated in Europe toIsrael's actions in the2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, when compared to the international reaction to human rights abuses in thePeople's Republic of China,Darfur, andArab countries, suggested anantisemitic undercurrent fueling the outrage.
In 2009, Wurtzel published an article inElle magazine about societal pressures related to aging. Regretting her youth of casual sex and drug-taking, and realizing that she was not as beautiful as she once had been, she reflected that "whoever said youth is wasted on the young actually got it wrong; it's more that maturity is wasted on the old."[34]
Wurtzel's publisher,Penguin, sued her in September 2012 in an effort to reclaim a $100,000 advance for a 2003 book contract for "a book for teenagers to help them cope with depression" that Wurtzel failed to complete. Of the $100,000, Penguin advanced Wurtzel $33,000 and sought interest of $7,500, claiming to have suffered detriment at Wurtzel's expense.[35] The case was dismissed with prejudice in 2013.[36]
In early 2013, Wurtzel published aNew York magazine article lamenting the unconventional choices she had made in life, including heroin use and spending much of a lucrative publisher advance on a costlyBirkin bag, and her failure to marry, have children, buy a house, save money or invest for retirement. "At long last, I had found myself vulnerable to the worst of New York City, because at 44 my life was not so different from the way it was at 24," she wrote.[21] The article was widely criticized. InSlate, Amanda Marcotte called the piece Wurtzel's "latest word dump" and remarked that it was "as lengthy as it is incoherent."[37]
Writing inThe New Republic, Noreen Malone said of the piece that "Wurtzel wants us to know that she's a mess, and kindly invites us to rubberneck."[38] Prachi Gupta forSalon characterized the essay as "rambling" and "self-involved."[39] InThe New Yorker,Meghan Daum called the piece "self-aggrandizing, disjointed, and, in its most egregious moments, leaves the impression that her editors might have been egging her on—or worse, taking advantage of what sometimes looks like a fairly precarious psychological state—in order to ensure maximum blogospheric outrage."[40] By contrast, inThe New YorkerJia Tolentino called the piece "one of the best things she ever wrote."[41]
In January 2015, Wurtzel published a short book titledCreatocracy under Thought Catalog's publishing imprint, TC Books. It is based on the thesis she wrote about intellectual property law upon graduation from Yale Law school.[42]
Wurtzel met photo editor and aspiring novelist James Freed Jr. in October 2013 at an addiction-themed reading.[43] They became engaged in September 2014 and married in May 2015, while she was undergoing therapy.[7][44][45] The couple later separated, but remained close.[2] They completed their divorce papers, but never filed them; they were still married when she died.[46]
In February 2015, Wurtzel announced she hadbreast cancer, "which like many things that happen to women is mostly a pain in the ass. But compared with being 26 and crazy and waiting for some guy to call, it's not so bad. If I can handle 39 breakups in 21 days, I can get through cancer." She said of her doublemastectomy and reconstruction, "It is quite amazing. They do both at the same time. You go in with breast cancer and come out with stripper boobs."[47]
Wurtzel died in Manhattan fromleptomeningeal disease as a complication ofmetastasized breast cancer on January 7, 2020, at age 52.[3]
Her personal effects were sold at auction two years later.[44]
