Author spurred a memoir boom
Elizabeth Wurtzel, who chronicled her struggles with depression and drug addiction in bestselling memoirs that helped spur a boom in confessional writing, turning her into a Gen-x touchstone at 27 with the publication of Prozac Nation, died Jan. 7 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 52.
Wurtzel announced in 2015 that she had breast cancer, a challenge that she dismissed as “nothing” compared to stemming her drug use or overcoming the death of her rescue dog Augusta. She underwent a double mastectomy, but the breast cancer recently metastasized to her brain, said her husband, Jim Freed.
Writing with extreme candour, Wurtzel was one of several authors who helped reinvigorate the personal memoir in the 1990s. The form had long been dominated by politicians, artists or entertainers. Wurtzel was instead a self-described “20-nothing,” largely unknown outside circles who read her rock criticism in publications such as the New Yorker and New York magazine.
Her harrowing 1994 debut, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, established her as one of the most provocative writers of her generation, generating awe among readers who saw in her work an honest depiction of depression and mental health issues, as well as derision from some critics who accused her of self- absorption, narcissism and relentless self-promotion.
The book took its name from an antidepressant that she was one of the first to be prescribed.
Wurtzel went on to make “a career out of my emotions,” as she later put it. Her misadventures came to an end in 1998, when Wurtzel said she stopped using drugs, aside from the antidepressants that she credited with keeping her alive. Within a decade, she graduated from Yale Law School and worked for years at Boies Schiller Flexner.
The 9/ 11 terrorist attacks had left her feeling unable to write, she told the Times, explaining her decision to become a lawyer. But her writing never stopped.
In a 2018 essay for New York magazine, she wrote of discovering Donald Wurtzel — the man she had believed for 50 years was her father — was not, in fact, her father. Her mother, Lynne Winters had an affair with photographer Bob Adelman, according to Wurtzel. He remained a family friend and died in 2016.