Like a college student wondering aloud about how much she can drink and still get A’s, Wurtzel regards her emotional destitution as something of a marvel. Depression is not so much described as used-to garner sympathy and admiration. We’re encouraged to view Wurtzel’s woes as symptomatic: as a possible Newsweek feature story first and an autobiography second.īut for all Prozac Nation’s gestures toward the generational, it’s really a work of singular self-absorption, and its pain-however real it may have been in life-often seems fake on the page. With more than a hint of grandiose self-pity (and some MTV-style marketing savvy), it strives to position its author as a poster child for a putative bluesy youthquake, pretending to offer us not just the memoir of one woman’s early sorrows but a newsworthy generational complaint. Even the title of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America sounds like an excuse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |