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Interview: Elizabeth Wurtzel
The author of Prozac Nation talks about her panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival and what she’s working on now
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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One of more interesting sounding panels at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival is “Exposing a Difficult Past,” in which a group of writers will explore “the motivations for, and process behind, writing for the general public about life events most people would keep secret,” according to the festival. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and Bitch, and someone who knows a thing or two about writing about difficult times in a person’s life.
Encore spoke to Elizabeth a few days before the panel, which will be held at St. Francis McArdle Hall on Sunday, September 12, at 10 a.m.
Can you talk a little about your panel, “Exposing a Difficult Past”?
The original idea was to have people who wrote memoirs, specifically memoirs about difficult subjects. When the event planner for Housing Works approached me about moderating the panel, I thought of different people who could be on it. For instance, Emily Gould, but she wouldn’t fit in because she didn’t write about anything devastating. Actually, I don’t think I wrote about anything that devastating, whereas Darin Straus wrote a book called Half a Life and he accidentally killed somebody when he was a teenager, which is a devastating thing to go through. Kathyrn Harrison, her book, The Kiss, was a big bestseller about having a romantic relationship with her father. In fairness to her, she didn’t know her father until she was an adult. Piper Kerman [Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison] ended up spending a year in jail, and actually, Nelson George’s book [City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success], I wouldn’t say it’s so devastating. It’s about growing up in Brooklyn. But the idea was to get people who had written books about very difficult experiences.
Did you come up with the idea?
That was Housing Works’ idea.
Were the authors chosen by you or was that Housing Works as well?
Piper was Housing Works’ idea, but I love her book and thought it was a great idea. Kathryn was my idea, Darin was my idea, and Nelson was Housing Works. But we, of course, had to agree on it. There’s a woman at Housing Works named Rachel Fershleiser who handles all the events. Everyone on the panel lives in Brooklyn, so that’s kind of good, I think. But I can’t think of a better group of people.
If you were on the panel and someone asked you about writing something private, what would you say?
What I always say about these things is that it’s not something I spend a lot of time agonizing over because it’s just what I do. I think even memory is a construct. Even when you’re writing a memoir, it’s not like the person you’re describing is completely out of your control because it’s true. You get to describe the person the way you want to describe them. You know how it can be, there could be a blue wall and one person remembers it as purple and the other person remembers it as yellow. I think what I’m trying to say is that I don’t find it any more difficult than anybody would find any other kind of writing. I think writing is very difficult.
Have you ever written anything you’ve regretted putting in print?
I think that I try to be careful about other people. I try to keep their lives private. I can’t think of anything in particular, I’m trying to think of something I wish I hadn’t said or done in writing. There are things I wish I hadn’t said or done in real life. When you’re writing a book or an article even, you go through so many drafts and edits and there’s so much time to reconsider everything, I think it’s pretty clear by the time you’re at the final point that you know what you’re doing. So, I can’t think of anything, but there might be other people who wished I hadn’t written something, but I don’t feel that way.
What are you working on now?
I just finished a proposal for a new book, but I really don’t know how I’ll be able to write a book and practice law. It’s a scary thought. But all I have so far is a proposal, so I don’t have to worry about it yet, I guess is my point.
Is it a memoir?
I think I would call it more of a personal essay. I believe I’m going to call it I Don’t and it’s about not getting married. It’s not quite against getting married, but it’s maybe re-thinking getting married. At this point, I’m not married. Statistically, like 90% of people will at some point get married, so I’m not writing the idea off. But it’s something that scares me a lot. I think commitment scares me a lot. I’ve written a lot of articles about never feeling it’s the right time or things like that, and I think the idea is to put together a book about…there are more and more people who never got married and they’re not miserable. So, I don’t think it’s exactly a memoir, though it has something to do with my life. I’m not sure what I call that. I actually have to write a table of contents for it still, so I’ll know more in the next couple of days about what it’ll look like.