Remembering Elizabeth Wurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel, lawyer, journalist and writer of the famous Prozac Nation, a memoir that the New Yorker describes as “A book that became a cultural touchstone" ultimately succumbed to breast cancer at the age of 52 in a Manhattan hospital.

Elizabeth’s life has always been an open book. Literally as well as figuratively, for she has always used the personal as her muse, with every experience, every emotion, every mood put down in words and presented as a book.

Her first memoir, penned in 1994 at age 27 and by far the most popular, Prozac Nation, extensively records her life at Harvard, her drug issues, her active sex life, bouts of depression, gender biases, relationships between parents and children, along with her struggles as a writer. In the book, Elizabeth claims to be one of the first users of Prozac, after it was officially approved by the FDA. Prozac as we all know is one of the first antidepressants available, it affects chemicals in the brain that may be unbalanced in people with depression, panic, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The book was one of its kind, written in a conversational confessional style not popular then and so released to mixed reviews. However, since then, it has achieved almost cult status with a movie starring Christina Ricci releasing in 2001.

In 1998, she came out with “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women”, called ‘one of the most entertaining feminist manifestos ever written’ where she linked the lives of women as demanding and disparate as Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, and Nicole Brown Simpson. In 1999, Radical Sanity: Commonsense Advice for Uncommon Women, dispensed advice on how to make your boyfriend do dishes, be self-loving, the secret of life and how it is within everyone’s grasp. She eventually released four more books, The Bitch Rules: Common Sense Advice for an Uncommon Life, The Secret of Life, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction and Creatocracy, and remained a popular essayist and commentator for years.

Lyricism was a strong element of her writing, with many lines from Prozac Nation being quote-worthy. There’s a line in Prozac Nation, “That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.” that just resonates. After all, isn’t this what all the art and books and poetry in the world is all about?

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Priyanka Modi is a writer, environmentalist and mother. She loves to read and believes that books can change the world.