| Author | Elizabeth Wurtzel |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Riverhead Trade |
| 1994 | |
| Pages | 384 pages |
| ISBN | 978-1-573-22512-0 first edition |
Prozac Nation by Wurtzel, Elizabeth Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing. Shipping and handling.
Prozac Nation is a memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel published in 1994. The book describes the author's experiences with atypical depression,[1] her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer. Prozac is a trade name for the antidepressantfluoxetine.[2] Wurtzel originally titled the book I Hate Myself and I Want To Die but her editor convinced her otherwise.[3] It ultimately carried the subtitle Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir.
The book was adapted into a feature film, Prozac Nation (2001), starring Christina Ricci.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, the writer best known for her best-selling 1994 memoir “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America,” has died at a hospital in Manhattan after a long battle with cancer, her. In Prozac Nation's press packet we encounter the following description of the author: 'Witty, intelligent, and hip (nose ring, tatoo sic), Elizabeth Wurtzel is definitely not a Gen-X slacker. Prozac Nation is a memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel published in 1994. The book describes the author's experiences with atypical depression, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer. Prozac is a trade name for the antidepressant fluoxetine. Elizabeth Wurtzel — the author of Prozac Nation who popularized confessional-style memoirs and was a face of Gen X — has died at the age of 52, according to multiple reports.
Reception[edit]
Reviews were mixed. In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani characterized Prozac Nation as 'by turns wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware,' comparing it with the 'raw candor of Joan Didion's essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song.' While praising Wurtzel's prose style as 'sparkling' and 'luminescent,' Kakutani thought the memoir 'would have benefited enormously from some strict editing' and said that its 'self-pitying passages make the reader want to shake the author, and remind her that there are far worse fates than growing up during the '70s in New York and going to Harvard.' [4]Publishers Weekly was similarly ambivalent: 'By turns emotionally powerful and tiresomely solipsistic, [Wurtzel's] book straddles the line between an absorbing self-portrait and a coy bid for public attention.' [5]
Writing in New York Magazine, Walter Kirn found that although Prozac Nation had 'moments of shapely truth-telling,' altogether it was 'almost unbearable' and 'a work of singular self-absorption.'[6] Calling the book a 'tedious and poorly written story of Wurtzel's melodramatic life, warts and all (actually all warts),' Erica L. Werner asked in The Harvard Crimson, 'How did this chick get a book contract in the first place? Why was she allowed to write such crap?' Werner also described Prozac Nation as 'obscenely exhibitionistic,' with 'no purpose other than alternately to bore us and make us squirm.' She said that the author 'comes off as an irritating, solipsistic brat.' [7]
'It would be possible to have more sympathy for Ms. Wurtzel if she weren't so exasperatingly sympathetic to herself,' wrote Ken Tucker in the New York Times Book Review. He observed, 'The reader may well begin riffling the pages of the book in the vain hope that there will be a few complimentary Prozac capsules tucked inside for one's own relief.' [8]Kirkus Reviews thought the book to be filled with 'narcissistic pride' and concluded, 'By alternately belittling and belaboring her depression, Wurtzel loses her credibility: Either she's a brat who won't shape up or she needs the drugs. Ultimately, you don't care which.' [9]
See also[edit]
- Let Them Eat Prozac (2004)
- Listening to Prozac (1993)
References[edit]
- ^Wurtzel, Elizabeth (1994). Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America. New York: Penguin Books. p. 298.
The McLean people have recommended fluoxetine because they have diagnosed me with atypical depression.
- ^Kirn, Walter (September 5, 1994). 'For White Girls Who Have Considered Suicide'. New York Magazine. p. 50.
- ^Ettlinger, Gabi Sifre, Marion (1 October 2009). 'I Hate Myself and I Want to Die'.
- ^Kakutani, Michiko (20 September 1994). 'BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Examined Life Is Not Worth Living Either' – via NYTimes.com.
- ^'Nonfiction Book Review: Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel, Author Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) $19.95 (317p) ISBN 978-0-395-68093-3'. Publishersweekly.com. 1994-08-29. Retrieved 2019-06-02.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^LLC, New York Media (5 September 1994). 'New York Magazine'. New York Media, LLC – via Google Books.
- ^'Prozac Nation: Elizabeth Wurtzel's Unofficial Guide to Whining - News - The Harvard Crimson'. www.thecrimson.com.
- ^Tucker, Ken (25 September 1994). 'Rambunctious With Tears' – via NYTimes.com.
- ^'PROZAC NATION by Elizabeth Wurtzel - Kirkus Reviews' – via www.kirkusreviews.com.
External links[edit]
| Wikiquote has quotations related to: Prozac Nation |
- Excerpts of reviews, from a Penguin Group website
- Release me, a July 2004 article in The Guardian
- Prozac Nation at IMDb
Prozac Nation Book Pdf
Author Elizabeth Wurzel, , whose controversial, bestselling 1994 memoir, Prozac Nation, helped make discussing depression and mental illness socially acceptable, is dead at 52.Elizabeth Wurtzel Prozac Nation Review
Wurtzel died from metastatic breast cancer in Manhattan on Tuesday, her friend, the writer David Samuels, told The New York Times.Wurtzel’s book, published when she was just 27, was full of candid and often unflattering anecdotes about her drug use and sexual behavior, and drew much criticism from all quarters but was a New York Times bestseller and became the basis of a 2001 film starring Christina Ricci. Michiko Kakutani, writing in The New York Times, said, “Wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware, Prozac Nation possesses the raw candor of Joan Didion’s essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song.”The book, which presaged the oversharing of the social-media era, inspired public dialogue about psychotropic medications that changed the way Americans viewed and spoke about depression. Writing in a 2018 article on the website The Cut about the impact of Prozac Nation and her public persona, she said, “I was a hashtag before there was Twitter.”Her subsequent books were not nearly as successful and received scathing reviews. Writing in The Guardian, Toby Young said that her 2001 book, More, Now Again, was “a confessional memoir by someone who has nothing to confess.” She wrote for many newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal.Wurtzel was born to Jewish family in New York City in 1967 and attended the Jewish school Ramaz. She graduated from Harvard and wrote about music for The New Yorker and New York magazine before publishing
Prozac Nation.Prozac Nation Wiki