More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
Description
From Publishers Weekly In her second book, Bitch, a discourse on self-destructive women, Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) admits to writing the manuscript while on drugs and then checking herself into rehab. In this memoir, she expands that admission to its extreme, minutely detailing life as a Ritalin addict and then as a rehab patient. But with its long stretches of descriptions about glass coffee-tables, tweezed leg hairs, missed phone calls and junkie buddies, this new book would have been more aptly titled "Prosaic Nation." Not only does Wurtzel tread on well-covered terrain about getting clean, she manages to add little or no insight either to her own habit or to the landscape of addiction in general. She's never figured out how to be a grown-up and do the little things like scrubbing a tub, she writes, "and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics." Yet she fills this work with nothing but mere basics, like which cereals she eats, how she feels about television and how tough she finds life on a book tour. Even in rehab, that reliable bastion of craziness, the scenes are ordinary, washed out by Wurtzel's seeming lack of emotion. Indeed, throughout the book the author describes crying or worrying, but never seems to feel anything, so that when she has a surge of gung-ho self-esteem at the book's end, complete with a spiritual awakening, it rings false, a too hasty wrapup. Hardcore Wurtzel fans may find much to enjoy here, but the book's lack of depth and originality will check all but the most devoted. (Jan. 17)Forecast: The toned-down and boring jacket (compared with those of Wurtzel's previous books) and her lackluster writing won't do much for sales. More, Now, Again has scant chances of reaching new readers it just doesn't have the depth and insight of other works on addiction. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-An excellent, harrowing, horrifying book that YAs will identify with and remember. It's also one of the first lengthy accounts of prescription-drug abuse (for a time, Wurtzel crushed and snorted Ritalin every five minutes, which is increasingly popular among teens). More is thoroughly unglamorous ("I was not a cool drug addict") and often frankly disgusting; on speed, for example, the author began tweezing her legs and couldn't stop until she nearly hit bone; her legs became an infected mess of open sores. The last third of the book-on rehab, relapse, and recovery-is not as strong, but the preface and first chapter alone make More, Now, Again an important acquisition for a YA collection. Whatever her advantages (white, middle-class, Harvard grad, author of the best-selling Prozac Nation[Riverhead, 1995]), Wurtzel is not a "poor little rich girl" begging readers' pity or forgiveness. If anything, she courts their revulsion, while dragging them repeatedly (as she did her friends, doctors, and family) into the hellish world of addiction-deception, blood, desperation, vomit and all-more skillfully and memorably than anyone else. Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal What, more? After Prozac Nation and Bitch, Wurtzel finally cleans up her act. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Wurtzel came to fame as a teenage depressive whose memoir, Prozac Nation (1994), offered a guided tour of her personal purgatory as well as a commentary on the use and abuse of antidepressants. Now we learn she's gone from purgatory straight to hell. She's hooked on Ritalin, or as she puts it, "I'm addicted to a drug for six year olds." With the resourcefulness of an addict, Wurtzel has figured out the way to a Ritalin high is to crush the drug and snort it, which she does to about 40 pills a day. This makes for a miserable life, and Wurtzel, who is nothing if not fabulous at self-observation, brings readers right into the pit with her as she scores drugs, obsessively tweezes the hair on her already infected legs, and grows filthier and thinner in cheap Florida motel rooms. All this would be impossibly dreary if the writing wasn't so insightful and funny. It's also manipulative, yet this quality only mirrors the way addicts in general and Wurtzel in particular act in real life. Still, everyone gets tired of being around a junkie, and after a while, readers may tire of Wurtzel, as she leads us from rehab to relapse to more rehab. It's an intense and exhausting journey, but it's worth the effort, both for the reader and, one hopes, for the author. It's frightening to wonder, though, what she has up her sleeve for the next book. Ilene Cooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Elizabeth Wurtzel is the author of the bestselling books Prozac Nation and Bitch. She graduated from Harvard College, where she received the 1986 Rolling Stone College Journalism Award for essay writing. She was the popular music critic for The New Yorker and New York magazines. Her articles have also appeared in Glamour, Mirabella, Seventeen, and The Oxford American. She lives in New York City. Read more
Features & Highlights
- A precocious literary light, Elizabeth Wurtzel published her groundbreaking memoir of depression, Prozac Nation, at the tender age of twenty-six. A worldwide success, a cultural phenomenon, the book opened doors to a rarefied world about which Elizabeth had only dared to dream during her middle-class upbringing in New York City. But no success could staunch her continuous battle with depression. The terrible truth was that nothing had changed the emptiness inside Elizabeth. Her relationships universally failed; she was fired from every magazine job she held. Indeed, the absence of fulfillment in the wake of success became yet another seemingly insurmountable hurdle.When her doctor prescribed Ritalin to boost the effects of her antidepression medication, Elizabeth jumped. And the Ritalin worked. And worked. And worked. Within weeks, she was grinding up the pills and snorting them for a greater effect. It reached the point where she couldn't go more than five minutes without a fix. It was Ritalin, and then cocaine, and then more Ritalin. In a harrowing account, Elizabeth Wurtzel contemplates what it means to be in love with something in your body that takes over your body, becomes the life force within you - and could ultimately kill you.More, Now, Again is a story of a new kind of addiction. But it is also a story of survival. Elizabeth Wurtzel hits rock bottom, gets clean, uses again, and finally gains control over her drug and her life. As honest as a confession and as heartfelt as a prayer, More, Now, Again recounts a courageous fight back to a life worth living.
