In amongst the tantrums are moments of clarity (Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel)

Member Name: miriamb

Product:	Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel
Date:	16/06/02 (341 review reads)
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Ms Wurtzel is a stroppy, self-obsessed, hysterical and precocious author, who writes as though she’s penning Judy Blume-style teen McFiction with extra obscenities, and adult content on the side. This was her first book, written at 26, and describes her ongoing battle with depression. The narrative is reminiscent of a stamping, tantruming, screaming toddler, constantly demanding, and inherently needy. But despite the natural aversion to her, the story is somehow compelling.

I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar some years ago, and that intense horror and despair that Plath captures so exquisitely is also present in Prozac Nation. The delivery is just so much brasher, and smacks of self-help group egotism. Whilst Plath dwells in her melancholy, Wurtzel is fiercely angry, the little sister who’s used to both being the centre of attention and getting her own way. In Prozac Nation, she succeeds at the former, but completely fails in the latter. Such is the nature of her illness than however loudly she shouts, however many combinations of medication she is dosed up on, however strong is her will, she won’t have her way, ‘cause it just don’t work like that. What she wants is the American dream, the home and husband and kids, the trappings of a normal life, but don’t hold your breath.

One thing I love about Elizabeth Wurtzel is her constant faith in the finality of her problems. She wrote Prozac Nation about her experience of depression, and on completion believed she was cured, or at least able to cope. Her most recent book, More! Now! Again! was written about her addiction to various drugs, in the belief that she had fully recovered. The childlike hope she expresses, earnestly convinced that she is now “normal” and well, comes across like a small child explaining the tooth fairy. It just *is*. Of course, it isn’t. It’s still there and denial doesn’t make it go away.


The book is divided into 14 numbered chapters, plus prologue and epilogue, and in my edition, an afterward dated April 1995. Following a roughly chronological path from her childhood in 1970’s New York, to the time of writing, 1994, she provides numerous explanations for her temperament, and recounts situations that she uses to justify her state of mind. For example, her father’s addiction to Valium and the resultant comatose state he remained in throughout her childhood, and the sense of loss and isolation she feels when shipped off to summer camp at 11.

This is unfortunately one of the points where she seems to get confused by the very illness that she feels she knows so well. If her depression is caused by these events, it is classed as reactive depression and is best cured by counselling. However, it appears from the long line of mental illness on her father’s side that this may be a case of chemical depression, in which case the drugs are necessary. This confusion annoyed me because she never quite answers the question of which type it is. It may well be both, but she doesn’t ever engage with the issue, which I think is a serious failing in the narrative. This book seems to have been written to explain her story, to increase awareness of depression, and whilst it is brilliant at conveying certain aspects of the illness it never quite hits bullseye from a clinical perspective. A great personal history this is, an analysis of depression it aint. But maybe that’s part of its appeal, the same tooth-fairied insistence that it just *is* the way she sees and writes it.

Wurtzel is obviously intelligent and capable, she studied at Harvard, and in her sojourns around the country finds work in journalism with little trouble. Whilst this is obviously a credit to her abilities, it also makes you want to shake her, to remind her how it could be if she’d only remain focussed long enough to keep it tog
ether. In the prologue she describes a party at her apartment; she has stopped taking her lithium, which she knows full well will keep her on an even keel, yet takes cocaine without a second thought. It’s this twisted logic that seems to set her back so often and is unbelievably frustrating to read. To paraphrase that old adage, what’s a bright girl like you doing in a situation like this? And you can’t help but feel that although she is obviously ill, she’s making things as hard for herself as possible.

A lovely touch to the story is the constant referencing of contemporary books and music, Milan Kundera and Jacques Derrida, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen, which litter the narrative and place the story in its cultural context. In fact this is the most effective mechanism for generating sympathy towards Ms Wurtzel - whilst I felt like throttling her in parts, I also empathised with her via the references. Odd really, seeing as I should have been able to empathise on the basis of her emotional state alone. But then again, this is a girl who won’t be helped.

As much as I found Ms Wurtzel to be at times intensely annoying, the book as a whole was compelling reading, albeit maybe only in the hope that she would eventually realise her worth and potential, and start taking real steps to recovery. As someone who suffers from depression though, some of the paragraphs conveyed the emotions, or lack of them, perfectly. As an illustration of this, an abridgement of the third paragraph of the first chapter:

“…to make clear about depression: It’s got nothing to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow…unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel…is [just] to fill up the empty space. But
for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.” (p.19)

Anyone who has suffered from depression will recognise exactly what she describes, and in some ways this book is fantastic as it so precisely conveys the actual non-feeling of depression.

To sum up, this is not a masterpiece. Neither is it a particularly good exposition of depression. It is however a highly subjective account of one young woman trying to come to terms with her illness, and if that strikes a chord, you may well find your feelings voiced in the pages of this book.

This is not a pleasant read, and I really don’t think it is well suited to the general reader, simply because Elizabeth Wurtzel is so damn infuriating. Personally, though, I found it incredibly comforting to find an expression of what I had felt, but yet could never have expressed myself. For that reason alone, Ms Wurtzel, I salute you.

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