One winter evening I was walking to the subway when I got a 270-word text that began, âJia. Hi. Itâs Elizabeth Wurtzel.â
I was, to put it mildly, surprised. A few weeks back, Iâd been trying to set up an interview with her about her slim new book, Creatocracy. Published through none other than Thought Catalog, the book is subtitled âHow the Constitution Invented Hollywood,â and itâs Wurtzel tracing Americaâs best inventions (ârock ânâ roll, blue jeans, the Gold Rush, cable TVâ) back to the Founding Fathersâ particular relationship to rebellion, individual ownership, and state suspicionâasserting that the Constitutionâs intellectual property clause is not only the most important thing in it but also the genesis of our countryâs singular, unparalleled cool.
I was curious. I sent her some fairly direct questions, asking about her relationship to provocation and if she really stood by the idea that Americaâall of it, the Wal-Marts of the rigged free market, the bruised, bigoted sense of meritocracyâwas unilaterally that cool. But our interview kept getting pushed back, then it was cancelled altogether. I wasnât surprised: I knew that she was in treatment for breast cancer, and that relatively recent personal essays had alluded to a life that was knowingly in flux; I also figured my questions (âDo you have thoughts about the fact that Thought Catalog is known for trolling?â) had put her off.
Then I got that text, in which she explained that sheâd just had surgery, and that the site of her implant-preparing spacers had gotten infected, requiring another surgery and post-operative drainage. She was on a lot of medication, she said, but she still wanted to do the interview as soon as she could. We kept texting; eventually, she just invited me over. âDo you drink?â she asked. âI drink.â We both like red. I came over with tulips.
It was an unexpectedly warm day when she opened the door to her downtown apartment. Her place is dim, airy and full of beautiful personal objects: ceiling-high stacks of CDs and records, plants, candles, figurines, curios, pictures and books (many of which depict her, or are her own). She was wearing a loose dress, tall boots; her hair fell long and flaxy on her shoulders. Her fiancĂ©âyounger, radiating careâwas getting ready to go for a run.
I asked her how she was feeling. She kept calling breast cancer âannoying,â which she had done repeatedly in textsâdownplaying it, like she does in this Vice piece. (âYou go in with breast cancer and come out with stripper boobs.â) She told me itâs mostly a matter of a lot of time spent on the train to get uptown. I ended up staying at her apartment for more than two hours, eating cheese and crackers, drinking wine. She asked me a lot about myselfâmy boyfriend, Gawker Media, my neighborhood in New Yorkâand listened carefully to my answers. When I turned on my tape recorder, her fiancĂ© was heading out to refill her Percocet prescription, which got us talking about drugs, oxycontin in particular.
âI donât know why thatâs the one that gets people addicted to heroin,â she said. âThey all have the same ingredient, donât they? And I just had serious surgery, so if theyâre not giving it to me, who are they giving it to?â
I told her about the FDA oxy crackdown, and how for a couple of years, one county in Florida had prescribed a startling amount of the oxy distributed in the United States.
âOne day I want to write a book about Florida,â she said.
You should.
In a way, I already have. I published a book about being a drug addict in Florida. I went down meaning to stay for two weeks, but I was a drug addict, so I ended up staying for a year. Iâm trying to remember how that happened. I guess thatâs just the kind of thing that happens.
Letâs talk about Creatocracy. I enjoyed reading it a lot, and thought that if anyone could make people read about copyright law, it would be you.
I donât really think itâs about that.
What do you think itâs about?
Well, itâs kind of about copyright law, I guess. Itâs because of our Founders that thereâs intellectual property in the Constitution, and itâs because of intellectual property that this country has turned out a certain wayâand really, that the world has turned out a certain way.
I donât think the Founders were imagining Hollywood, Silicon Valley. I donât think they could have imagined that. But they bothered to put intellectual property in the Constitution, which is not common. There are Constitutions that have been written quite recently that donât include intellectual property. It seems to me that intellectual property the most important thing we have in the Constitutionâand the most important thing we have going. What else do we do here? We donât manufacture anything anymore. All we do is invent things.
In your book, you say America is the most inventive country in the worldâbut then you also say our creativity is being degraded, particularly with music.
It does seem like a lot of the stuff we do best has been thoroughly degraded. But weâll come up with something else.
When people were connected by music in this country, it was a better time. We were happier, more connected to each other. Weâre now connected by Facebook, by things that are not as lovely. And itâs crazy to think weâre going to save everything weâre losing, because thereâs no impulse towards saving them. Like streaming music: itâs not paying. These industries are going to die, because no oneâs doing anything real to save them. You need to pay people the money they deserve to do what they doâand I mean serious money. Musicians need to be paid the way people at Google are paid. What do people pay for streaming?
$10 a month, ish.
Thatâs not enough.
Iâm curious about your idea of a bygone age. I grew up in a different generation than you, but I feel exactly the way you do about music. What you call a lost experience has been my actual, recent experience. Music is the primary way Iâve connected to a lot of my friends, for exampleâprobably the most important thing in my life. But under your conception, I couldnât understand it in the same way; I missed the good era. You donât think young people today could have the same relationship to music that you did when you were younger?
Maybe, but I doubt it. They donât have the kind of choices. They donât have as much being offered to them.
Iâd argue they have more choices, in a way, if the choices are produced differently.
Theyâre not buying albums.
Thatâs true. I havenât bought many albums. Just concert tickets.
I feel theyâre not getting infused with it.
Do you listen to anything thatâs on Top 40 now?
I never listened to anything on top 40, ever. I always listened to rock music, which was never top 40. Nirvana got popular, but that was a surprise, and other than âSmells Like Teen Spirit,â they didnât have hit songs. Hole didnât have many hit songs, either, and I loved them.
But I buy plenty of new albums. I just bought Emmylou Harrisâs new album. I just bought six hours worth of unreleased Bob Dylan basement tapes. I like a lot of alt-country stuff. I got Arcade Fire recently.
Maybe youâd like Tame Impala. Theyâve been doing a lot for rock.
I read somewhere that your musical taste stops changing at 26.
Was that true for you?
Maybe. I still like new music all the timeâbut itâs mostly stuff Iâve always liked, and I just like more of it. And thereâs stuff I missed. I never listened to the Beatles much, but it turns out theyâre really awesome.
The truth is, the very best stuff was made probably in the â60s. We havenât evolved very much.
Yeah, I was listening to Prince last weekend and having similar thoughts. But so, your book: when did you decide to write it and do it through Thought Catalog?
Well, at first it was a paper I wrote in law school. I didnât think it was a book at all. It was my final paper for law school, and actually, when I first got out of law school, I gave it to David Blum at Amazonâhe wanted to publish it as it was as a Kindle Single. I didnât think that was a good idea; I thought it needed to be updated and made smoother.
And then I kind of forgot about it, and I wrote something for Thought Catalog and I showed this to them, and they thought it would make a good e-book. But the more I think about it, the more I think itâs a book. I might have underestimated it. Thought Catalog isnât a book publisher, theyâre a website. Maybe it should have really been a book, I donât know.
Do you have plans to write another book proper?
I do have memoir plans. I thought about doing some kind of fiction, but I think memoir is what people like me doing. I wrote a piece for New York a few years ago when things were really bad. I thought, people liked thatâthatâs really what people like me doing.
People are fascinated by you; why do you think that is?
I think I remind people of themselves.
Youâre honest.
I think I have the same problems everyone else has. Not exactly, but kind of. It turns out that cancer is very commonâmaybe the most normal thing thatâs happened to me. Itâs unbelievably common.
And really, most of the things that have happened to me, they happen to everybody. The one thing I shouldnât feel about anything that happens to me is ashamed. Who doesnât get all messed up with this or that thing?
But itâs not just that. I think people are also interested in what about you is not relatable. Was the NYMag piece the one you wrote about beauty?
No, that was the one for Elle: looking back at different boyfriends, feeling like I was getting older. I liked that one. Thatâs really what I wanted to turn into a book.
But now Iâm getting marriedâeven though Iâm still the same. It just turns out that when youâre ready to get married, you get married.
What made you ready?
The truth is, that whole thing I wrote about in NYMag [a period in which a previous tenant of her apartment semi-stalked her] was really awful. It made me think I should straighten out my life. You can just decide enough is enough. You can really have that moment.
Did that moment feel unexpected?
No. When I was younger, I thought enough was enough quite often! But it turned out it wasnât. I enjoyed things being crazy. People who are not married really enjoy the headache. Theyâre into the whole mess.
Now I just canât imagine anything worse. Iâm not even interested in happy drama. Weâve been talking about our wedding, and he says, âI hope itâs going to be the most amazing day of our life.â I donât want that at all. I just want it to be a good day. I donât want any âmost amazingâ anything ever again. Iâm done with most amazing. I think Iâve had the most amazing day a lot of times. Iâm through with all of that.
I know what it means to him, and thatâs fine, but I donât even want to humor him about it.
I think another reason that people have always been interested in your writing is because of the way you look. I assume that people were intrigued by you being beautiful, and also skeptical of your writing because of it.
I donât read my own press. I donât know what people think of my books.
But you know what I mean. You were on the cover of your books, youâre on the cover of this oneâŠ
I see what you mean, but I donât think about it very much.
Did you ever hesitate to put your face on the cover of things?
I thought of it as just making it more personal. It was like an album cover. The idea was that you should care about the author. If people care about the author, theyâll care about the book. I didnât think I should be on the cover of this book, but they wanted it, and thatâs fine.
I wanted Prozac Nation to be relatable. Thereâs this idea that authors are supposed to be hidden, and itâs all about the book. But the reason people donât care so much about reading is that they donât care much about the person who wrote the book. Once upon a time, they did. People read confessional poetry, and Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were famous, and then Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell came along and replaced them. If youâre competing with albums, you have to do the same thing. You have to make people feel like youâre there.
But youâre not just any writer showing her face; your looks are of the type that could make your project both immediately celebrated and immediately dismissed. Did you ever think you were setting yourself up for judgment in either direction?
Iâm sure people did judge me. I know they did. It was very frustrating. There wasnât Twitter or anything like that, so it wasnât as bad as it could be now. But people gave me a hard time all the time: like at the New Yorker, there were constantly people giving me a hard time about stuff Iâd write in my columns that was all totally fine. It was very obviously sexism. Iâm not sure if it was the way I looked, even. Maybe just that I was young, and people thought I was getting away with something.
Right: either way, thatâs the bottom line.
I donât think thereâs anything you can do about it. Actually, you can complain about it. But then you sound like youâre complaining, and itâs not good to complain. It definitely made me pretty crazyâI took it out in other ways, I acted out a lot. But it was easy to bring out bad things in me, because I was emotionally troubled for all sorts of reasons anyway.
Once I wrote my book, which was about being crazy, it stopped bothering me. Even when I got terrible reviews, I donât think it was because people had issues with me. It was with the writing. I suppose itâs me as far as Iâm the one that did the writing, but itâs legitimate criticism, because it keeps happening. Itâs not unfair. Theyâre getting it from somewhere. Is it purely about the text? Noâbut so what?
And if your stance in Creatocracy is your stance, you donât really care. The style and the argument and who you are as a writer seemed intertwined: to oversimplify, youâve made it if people are paying attention.
I think controversial is the closest you can get to everyone agreeing with you. Either youâre controversial, or nothing at all is happening. No one is universally praised.
Do you know when youâre going to be controversial?
It seems like my writing always is. Either itâs controversial, or no one notices.
So you donât write to be controversial, but you donât care that you are.
Thereâs no way to make everybody love you.
I think there are plenty of writers who would strive for everybody loving them, particularly with social media, maybe particularly in the âwomenâs mediaâ sphere I work in. Making your flaws known in a vulnerable way is for some people connected to that goal. I wonder: what would have happened if youâd written Prozac Nation when Twitter was around?
It was pretty nutty as is, so I imagine it would have been even more nutty. But I have good friends and I like being with them. Iâm not terribly tempted by whatever it is I could get out of Twitter. Iâm on it, but I never look at it. Iâve noticed this idea that Facebook is so five years ago, but I feel like it has more impact. If I want to spread the news, itâs better to do it there.
Itâs like that for web traffic too. Facebook is the one.
Why is that?
The mystical algorithm, the size of peopleâs networks, Iâm not sure.
I just feel like Twitter is useless. And if I post anything at all on Facebook, people are really responsive. Itâs people you have a relationship with, and with Twitter, the followers thingâwhat is that? Itâs bizarre. It seems not very useful.
Whatâs your relationship like with the internet?
I have almost no relationship with the internet. I read the Times every day online. I feel like everyone should do that. Iâm really wary that one day there will be no New York Times. I tell people to subscribe, because how else are you going to know why things are the way they are? If you read the Times, youâll know everything.
[ I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and when I come out, Elizabeth asks me if I survived it in there. âI hope the catâs litter didnât need to be changed,â she said.]
Iâm very down with pet stuff, Iâve got this monster dog at home.
My dog just died. Thatâs the one thing I canât handle. Iâm fine with cancer, but that was really the worst thing. She died in January. Itâs been awful. She had cancer, actually.
Jesus. Had you been diagnosed when you found out?
Yeah, Iâd found out about me in early January, and about her in mid-December. And it was a blood thing for her, it was too late to do anything.
What kind of a dog was she?
A mix, a border collie. I was very, very attached to her. I got her when I was 36 and she was just a baby. Dogs are so wonderfulâtheyâre definitely improvements over humans. I trained her to be a therapy dog, and she walked without a leash. She used to come on the subway.
What was her personality like?
She was very funny. She would sit on the couch like a person and she would imitate people. She was very smart, and very funny. She made people laugh.
What was her name?
Augusta. I never went anywhere without her. And itâs strange now, because Iâm home a lot, without her.
Are you working on anything right now or waiting till youâre done with treatment?
Waiting. Iâm still on Cipro, and all that.
Iâm wondering about how you write: quick, or slow, or many drafts, or what?
I can write a 1000-word piece really fast, or a first draft. But I go back and fix a lot of things. Iâm really fussy about getting every word to be the right word. You have to do that. Every word counts. If you care about words, you canât even be sloppy about text messages, you canât be sloppy about anything. You have to care about words all the time.
Thatâs the one thing I ever got about reading anything by Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000-hour thing. It used to be that writing felt like a massive struggle. Now itâs not.
But thereâs one thing: I have been trying desperately to write something about Augusta, but I canât do it without crying. Which really means I shouldnât do it. You shouldnât write because youâre full of feelings. You write because itâs work.
It never felt like you were writing your feelings when you were writing memoir?
No, because at that point, it was just hard work. When youâre writing purely emotional stuff, itâs just never good. With Augusta, I think it might be coming out okayâbut Iâm just in tears. All I can say is that sheâs the best thing that ever happened to me, which is true. And still, thereâs a better way to say it, but I just canât.
I tried to explain this to Jim last night: the reason I love her so much, the reason thereâs no human that can compare to this. Itâs that you get a puppy, and itâs no fun. They make a mess of your house. Itâs really hard workâitâs not easyâand itâs lucky that theyâre cute, but mostly theyâre not cute. They make you get up really early, and they need to be walked in the middle of the night, and they eat everything, and it feels like itâs never going to get better. And it doesnât get better for a long time. Itâs a huge commitment. I had no time for anything else but taking care of Augusta when I got her.
Then she calmed down, and then I missed how crazy she was, and we were just great friends for most of her life. And I just canât explain it without crying. I canât get another dog now because I have a whole bunch of stuff to go through, so I donât have enough timeâ
You mean treatment-wise?
Yeah, but as soon as Iâm done Iâll get another dog. I have to have chemotherapy first. I start in April. I wish I was the kind of person who could transform your life so that you donât need chemotherapy, but Iâm not. And I guess if they say you need it, you probably do.
Your book is about talent, but you donât spend that much time talking about who you think is actually talented.
I think a lot of people are really talented. The last book I read was Martin Amisâs book about Auschwitz, and I loved it. I couldnât put it down. Heâs always great. But really, I learned to write from listening to music, which, thank godâpeople love listening to music, but they donât love reading. Music is a better way to learn things.
I feel the same way, maybeâI donât know if I know exactly what you mean.
I read a lot, growing up, but I really was a music fan. Thatâs really what I wanted to do, but I just didnât have that kind of talent. I donât mean that I literally learned to write from musicâprobably I learned to write from things I read. But I just thought that the best thing ever would be to be a rock star. I idolized Bruce Springsteen. I thought he did everything right. His whole thing is connecting to people. Heâs unapologetically sappy.
The music industry has the better idea. In 1994, when I was thinking about Prozac Nation, they were selling lots of albums, and the book industry was a mess, like it always is. Even when the book industry was doing well, they were doing badly. Today, Amazon is not the problem; Amazonâs probably helped.
So I never understood writers who said they didnât want to do press, that wanted to be a special hidden figure. As a writer, youâre lucky that people like what you do. Itâs weird that you wouldnât at every opportunity try to connect with the people who love your work. Books are things people should like. Itâs bad if we start thinking about the publishing industry as special. Itâs not special. Thatâs why I wanted to be on the cover of my books, because I wanted people to know who I was and who they were reading. I always thought the more it was like music, the better it would be. And my publishers didnât think a memoir was a good idea, and look!
Do you ever feel like you presaged the personality-driven aspects of the internet?
Itâs so over the top. Weâve turned into a complete culture of personality. This is how fame has become a disorder: when you get something that you havenât earned, you go crazy.
Was it weird for you to get famous?
Iâm not really famous.
I think youâre kind of famous.
It hasnât made me not me. Not even when Prozac Nation came out. I was still taking out the garbage. And it happened in pieces. First I was writing at the New Yorker, Iâd gotten attention in college for things Iâd done there. You sort of start to expect it. But maybe I could have done the more clever thing and branded myself more.
Well, I donât think you really had to. What you did was pretty distinct, and now some version of your style is kind of ubiquitous in some arenas.
But whatâs going to happen to people who have invented themselves on the internet, and then are going to try to do something legitimateâI mean, whatâs going to happen to Cat Marnell?
Oh yeah, I bet everyoneâs always comparing you guys.
Iâve met her, and I wonder if sheâs capable of sustaining a narrative over the course of a book.
She has charisma.
That doesnât mean she can write a book. Thatâs the thing. You canât just invent yourself on Instagram and thatâs it. Itâs weird: what will she do? Maybe nothing. Maybe this will all fall apart.
Iâd be interested to read her book.
But what could she possibly say? What is there to say?
Ideally, I guess, what she would be doing is something similar to what you did, right? That she would be Zeitgeisty in a similar way?
What is she supposedly writing a book about?
I think: being young, taking speed. I donât really know.
I guess you could get a book out of that. You could get a book out of anything.
And you want to do another one.
I do. Thereâs always something. Now thereâs this. Now, when I was thinking that nothing was going on, suddenly I have breast cancer.
But I donât want to write a book about breast cancer. Itâs already been done, just very badly. You do have to be funny on this topic. Itâs the stupidest thing to have happen to you. Heaven forbid you think this makes you a better person. If all this stuff doesnât make you a worse personâI mean, itâs very annoying. How could it not make you annoyed? If I donât come out of this a worse person, whatâs wrong with me?
Have you read that Meghan Daum essay about her near-death experience?
No. Did she become a worse person? I like her essays.
I do too. It wasnât thatâitâs in her new collection, The Unspeakable, where she almost dies at the end of this essay called âMatricideâ thatâs ostensibly about mothers, and matriarchal antagonism, and then suddenly at the end she gets this crazy illness and almost dies. People starts treating her like a spiritual object, and sheâs like, âLeave me alone, Iâm embarrassed.â
Someone sent me this horrible e-card telling me to ârelax and recuperate.â I canât believe I didnât respond by saying, âFUCK YOU.â Itâs really demeaning. Sympathy cardsâwho needs your sympathy? Sympathy is an insult. One thing you donât need or want is sympathy.
Thereâs a personality type that wants it.
WHO?
I think a lot of people!
I really donât want anyoneâs sympathy. I did when I was depressed. Now all these people with their fucking sympathy cardsâI want to say to them, where were you when I needed you, when I could not stop crying for 10 years? That was bad. This is whatever. Iâm getting the best fucking care from people who are not you, because youâre not an oncologist, youâre just the person sending me these fucking sympathy cards.
Right. Youâve been through your ordeal already.
Yeah, thank god I went through all that, because Iâm fine now. And I donât need your sympathy card!
Do you feel like that period of your life has already eclipsed this thing thatâs currently happening to you?
This is nothing. Everything is nothing after all that. Everything. Whatever is coming my way in the future is nothing.
Having serious emotional problems is really hard. Insurance doesnât cover it, nobody cares, you are not a sympathetic person at all, youâre awful. No one wants to help you. Iâm pretty good at making people somehow help me anyway, and still no one cared. Somehow I was amazingly demanding, and I found people who gave me incredible help. But it was awful, itâs the worst kind of problem to have, because youâre awful, youâre hideous. And youâre really in pain. Unbelievable pain that no one cares about, you canât even find it in yourself to care about. You just want to die.
And if you can find a way to get out of that, which most people donâtâmost people find a way to keep going underneath all of it, somehowâthen everything after that is easy. Even this is not that bad. They have cold caps now, so you donât lose all your hair.
Thatâs good. You have really good hair. Were you worried about that?
Yes, but Iâm not anymore. And even if I end up losing all my hairâcompared to everything Iâve ever had to deal with, thatâs something I can deal with. I have been so unimaginably sad, felt so terrible. I canât ever imagine ever feeling as bad as I felt before. I figure it only gets better.
Creatocracy is available through Thought Catalog here.
Contact the author at [email protected].