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Elizabeth Wurtzel — the author ofProzac Nationwho popularized confessional-style memoirs and was a face of Gen X — has died at the age of 52, according to multiple reports.
Her husband, Jim Freed, confirmed toThe Washington Poston Tuesday that she’dbeen battling metastatic breast cancer, which then spread to her brain. She died due to complications from leptomeningeal disease in Manhattan on Tuesday, according to the newspaper.
Wurtzel was just 26 whenProzac Nation— a hyper-personal account of her struggles with depression, her dependency on drugs, and her sex life — was published.
“That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful,” she wrote in her memoir, which was received both with acclaim and criticism. But despite some naysayers, Wurtzel helped define a generation, began a national discourse about depression, and inspired numerous other unknown authors to write memoirs — a trend that’s still seen today.
The young author would go on to write other books that challenged the status quo, includingBitch: In Praise of Difficult Women(1998) andMore, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction(2001). She was admired for her lyrical prose and candor that, inProzac Nation, bordered on narcissism, theTimesnoted.
She announced she had breast cancer in 2015, and had a double mastectomy, according to theWashington Post. As she did with depression and addiction, Wurtzel wrote about her cancer in an unapologetic manner. In a2018 op-ed forThe Guardian, Wurtzel wrote that she doesn’t need to hear “I’m sorry,” even as she advocated for a screening to detect the BRCA gene — a test that could have saved her life.
“I hate it when people say that they are sorry about my cancer.Really?Have they met me? I am not someone that you feel sorry for. I am the original mean girl,” she wrote in the op-ed. “I now have stage-four upgrade privileges. I can go right to the front. But it’s always been like this. I am a line-cutter. Which is to say, I was precocious. I was early for history.”
“I was on Prozac when it was still called fluoxetine. I wrote atwentynothing memoirwhen there was no such thing,” she continued. “I got addicted to snorting Ritalin before there was Adderall. I was a riot girl, I was a do-me feminist, and I posed topless giving the world the finger on the cover of my second book. I have always been the most impossible person ever.”
source: people.com
