Elizabeth Wurtzel remembered by Nancy Jo Sales
My daughter had a dream about our friend Elizabeth Wurtzel the other night. Dreams about someone who has died are not uncommon, as we know. Some say it’s a way of working out unresolved issues with the person; or maybe it’s just that you miss them so much, your unconscious is trying to bring them back. Others say it’s something more along the lines of a visitation, actual contact on a spiritual plane. Guardian angels.
Whatever can account for such dreams, it’s amazing how those who’ve passed away act so like themselves in them. This was true of my daughter’s dream, as she told it to me. She had misplaced a backpack full of schoolwork, and Elizabeth was helping her look for it. “I was really nervous about losing it,” my daughter said, “and she made me feel sure I would find it. She was very helpful and kind. She made me feel safe.”
That was the Elizabeth I knew: supportive, present, warm. As a Jewish woman, I can’t think of her without remembering that part of her that was always very familiar, reflecting the best of Jewish culture. She was hamish as hell. She wanted to talk to you, feed you, give you presents, argue you over to her point of view, tell you what to do. I once had to restrain her from calling up a man who had hurt my feelings, because it would have embarrassed me; but I knew it was her way of saying she cared.
But there was another Elizabeth, a more troubled and difficult one – which is certainly no secret. She made a literary career out of talking about that person, a woman who irritated and exhausted her as much as she could those around her. Her original title for her groundbreaking 1994 memoir Prozac Nation was I Hate Myself and I Want to Die– a dark, Jewish joke – but her editor persuaded her to change it. Elizabeth has often been called a narcissist, but I think that’s a misnomer; I think she was just honest – too honest for some people’s taste. Before that book, you hadn’t seen a woman dissect herself with such rawness. And some people were not ready for that, and resented her for it.
Prozac Nation is credited with sparking a resurgence of the memoir genre, and continues to be a source of inspiration and comfort for those struggling with addiction. Elizabeth got letters and emails from readers thanking her nearly 30 years after its publication. She was an icon. Which she wore very lightly. In 15 years of knowing her – we formally met in 2005 – I never heard her brag.
The book came out when she was just 27, making her a literary celebrity in a way that doesn’t really exist any more. The circles in which writers and journalists travelled back then were smaller, and everybody congregated more often. I remember seeing her at parties in New York City in the 90s, when every room she walked into buzzed with excitement and the kind of jealousy writers are so good at nursing. On top of her celebrity – which the jealous types rushed to say she didn’t deserve – she was beautiful, with her big, haunting, brown eyes. Eyes which seemed to say: “I’m not going to let you, or myself, get away with anything.” My favourite book of hers, 1998’s Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, is a wild, meandering feminist manifesto taking society to task for failing to understand strong women – women like herself – who chafe at being undervalued and underestimated, dismissed as crazy or out of control.
When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, Elizabeth wrote that the disease, “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.” Another dark joke, which made me laugh. She handled cancer the way she did everything: bravely.
At Elizabeth’s funeral service, which took place on the Upper West Side, where she was raised, my daughter (now 20) and I stood up as a show of respect when the pallbearers carried out her coffin. I was struck by how tiny that coffin was – I don’t know why this had been the choice; if I had to guess, I’d say it was her own choice, with its lack of pretension. But it made me cry, to think of her tiny body inside that little box. Such a big life she had, and such an outrageous talent she was, my friend, who did so much, and was so often misunderstood.