Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose blunt and painful confessions of her struggles with addiction and depression in the best-selling novel Prozac Nation made her a voice and a target for an anxious generation, died on Tuesday aged 52.
Wurtzel’s husband, Jim Freed, said that she died at a Manhattan hospital after a long battle with cancer.
Prozac Nation was published in 1994 when Wurtzel was in her mid-20s and set off a debate that lasted for much of her life.
Critics praised her for her candor, and accused her of self-pity and self-indulgence, vices she fully acknowledged.
Wurtzel wrote of growing up in a home torn by divorce, of cutting herself when she was in her early teens, and of spending her adolescence in a storm of tears, drugs, bad love affairs and family fights.
“I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat,” she wrote. “I know that into every sunny life a little rain must fall and all that, but in my case the crisis-level hysteria is an all-too-recurring theme.”
Wurtzel became a celebrity, a symbol and, for some, a punchline.
Newsweek called her “the famously depressed Elizabeth Wurtzel.”
She was widely ridiculed after a 2002 interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail in which she spoke dismissively of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me,” she said, remarks that she later said were misrepresented.
However, many readers embraced her story and would credit her with helping them face their own troubles. News of her death was met with expressions of grief and gratitude.
“It’s hard for me to even articulate how important Prozac Nation was to me at a certain point in my life,” writer Anne Theriault tweeted.
Author Sady Doyle lamented that Wurtzel was regarded as a “Sad Example Of Something — female memoir-writers, women who got famous for being themselves, young women generally.”
“And to see her gone so young is a harsh reminder of how cruel that was,” Doyle tweeted.
Wurtzel’s other books included Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women and More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not