Elizabeth Wurtzel Endorses Obama

I've known Elizabeth Wurtzel for about eight years now. We were introduced by a Hasidic rabbi in New Haven whose guest room Elizabeth was staying in when she was having a hard time getting any good writing done in New York. I had never read Prozac Nation, so she wasn't a celebrity to me, just a new friend who kept the same late hours that I did (we had a couple 3 a.m. conversations, in those, my grad-student days of yore). We saw Saving Silverman together somewhere near Union Square, then drifted apart and didn't talk for a long time.

In the intervening years, she's written one underperforming book and come in for a lot of criticism. But I admire what she did four years ago: she applied to law school. It seems as if ever writer I know in New York is a grad-school dropout, or a grad-school never-was. Some of them need more learning (even if, as I have written elsewhere, grad school ain't always the solution). Very few decide in their late thirties that what they need is more school.

As she finishes up with law school, she has been reentering the public sphere, writing good op-eds for national newspapers. On this podcast interview with her, you can hear her views on Barack, Hillary, feminism, and law school. (For almost a year now, I've been hosting a regular podcast for the New Haven Independent, a superb experiment in local online journalism, a website with a full-time staff of two that regularly scoops the daily newspaper.) No naked photos, I promise.

Comments

[cyndeewi]

Awesome! thanks for the post Mark!