Rating: 
Summary: better than prozac nation
Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel has to be one of the most brilliant writers to emerge from Gen-X and post-Gen-X America. I loved Prozac Nation (popularized recently in the movie), but I have to say that More, Now, Again is Wurtzel at her height as a writer. Wurtzel expertly conveys her emotions through both her words and writing style. While reading the book, I felt almost as anxious as if I were living it myself. Yes, it's a memoir of addiction, but More, Now, Again is an excellent book for anyone who has been living in the success-driven society present sice the 80s. Read this book, and you'll learn more about yourself than you ever knew.
Rating: 
Summary: Escapist page-turner plus dark insight
Review: Wurtzel spins a tale that brings several harrowing years of her life vividly into the mind of the reader. Creative, bright, driven, and always close to the edge, speed addiction completely takes over her life for a couple years, eclipsing people and food and most events like going outside. I loved a number of insights and turns of phrase I hope I'll remember for years. (Complaining that she can't go to Betty Ford because she dislikes the name of one nurse, she adds, "I'll never make it in rehab with this attitude. On the other hand, without this attitude [and her life in shreds], I wouldn't need to be in rehab." Her style is at its best in describing her darkest addiction experiences almost as if we're reading a diary - quite a trick, particularly when she bumps up against real people and things in her strung-out state and they insert into the narrative like gawky Martians. How it seems clever and rational for a bright Harvard girl to be living in a Florida strip motel as a hollow-eyed, anorexic shell and going to six different emergency rooms for the same problem in three weeks; how to explain while thrown in jail for shoplifting that you need to snort speed or your head will explode, and you'll call the ACLU. The story takes her on through several cycles between rehab's and twelve-step programs and relapses, but the ultimate recovery story was as moving and convincing as any. "Less than Zero" meets Ann Sexton meets Eric Bogosian meets Leaving Las Vegas....
Rating:
Summary: Addictive
Review: I found this book exhilarating. When I bought it at a seventy-five percent off bookstore, I wasn't expecting much. From the moment I picked this book up and began reading it, it was as if I were on a journey of discovery - the quotes - the momentum Wurtzel picks up before she completely lets you down - I became disgusted but infatuated with this story. It's a real life tale of abhorrence, lust, sex, drugs, and rock & roll. I became enthralled from the first moment, and when I finished the last page, I was almost upset to have to put it down - upset because the book had ended. Although it is impossible for me to think of this disgusting person as a role model or even as a decent human being, she happens to be an amazing writer. BUY THIS BOOK! Read it slowly and take in the madness. Don't stop reading it until you have finished and comprehended every last phrase.
Rating: 
Summary: Spun-Out, Self-Absorbed and Exhausting
Review: There is some sort of parallel between reading Wurtzel's account of her horrible spiral into addiction and rubber-necking on the highway as you pass the scene of an accident. This is by far her most erratic and stream-of-consciousness writing, and while it matches with her explanation of what she was dealing with while writing it, this doesn't make the memoir any easier to stomach.It ends up going on too long, and the self-indulgence becomes grating. I feel memoirs should be more well crafted, without taking for granted that readers will shell out good money to read something that seems like it was haphazardly put together from journals or something. I do respect her candor and bravery in addressing her addiction in print, but it seems so much less thoughtful and focused than her other work. This could have been a short essay for a magazine, but a whole book?! I have enjoyed her books in the past, but I couldn't escape the feeling that she was selling herself out just to get a book out, almost using herself as a voyeur into her own life in order to sell books. If you must, check this out of your library and give it a try before spending money on it...
Rating:
Summary: Jonesing Reader demands More, right Now, AGAIN!
Review: With More, Now, Again, Elizabeth Wurtzel surpasses her premiere best seller, Prozac Nation. Wurtzel, still battling depression, initally receives a small dose of Ritalin to improve her concentration and mood. And it works, at first. The problem starts when Lizzie likes the Ritalin a little too much and plunges headlong into the smarmy world of addiction with all of its repulsive correlates. The addict's desperation along with her brilliant manipulations lucidly, with tongue fully in cheek, depicted here.
Wurtzel does not glamorize addiction -- to the contrary, she almost excoriates herself upon the alter of versilimitude. Although some readers may find the graphic nature of addiction too foreign or too incomprehensible, other readers will be thankful for her courage in writing about her struggles so candidly. Ultimately, Wurtzel redeems herself by slyly poking fun at herself and winking at the astute reader.
Amazingly, Lizzie, even while tweaking, (or later, sober, recalling)is able to access with surgical precision the desperation, compulsiveness and the damage done. Her (often) entirely self-serving motives and concurrent self-mockery are comical, a needed respite in a book of this nature. Similarly, the meta-conversations between Lizzie, another person, along with Lizzies unspoken *real* thoughts lend humanity and humor to the character's struggles and the author pulls them off brilliantly.
Elizabeth Wurtzel is extraordinarily talented, and More, Now, Again is her finest work (IMHO).... Thing is, Lizzie, you've left me (high and dry) and *jonesing* for your next tome. So please, get writing, Now! I want More! And so do it Again! (wheels turning round and round, he goes black jack, do it again --Steely Dan)
Rating: 
Summary: a good book... but grotesquely realistic
Review: Wurtzel's writing remains vital, though this is not as satisfying as 'Prozac Nation.' She maintains her voice of honesty, refusing to censor the disgusting qualities of self-adulation/egomania and grotesque drives which lead to her downfall into the depths of addiction. There are parts of this novel that are uncomfortable to read due to the graphic nature of her descriptions of self-mutilation; her rationalizations for her behavior make one cringe. However, I think this book is worth reading. It's actually a bit refreshing the way Wurtzel lets it all hang out. Most characters in similar books are dramatized and overly romanticized so that you will like them. To be quite honest, I doubt anyone is going to idolize Wurtzel after reading this book. She is truly an ugly person, though she's generous enough to let you judge her in the same objective way which she judges every person she meets(with respect to their value within the context of our society). She even offers up her pseudo-intellectual commentary with disclaimer for her own semi-concious motives/drives. In my opinion, she does add a bit too much contextual reference/name dropping (ie citing movies and books almost incessantly) to her own experiences--it's annoying at times and may actually make the work less significant in the long run, but it does get you to see the true E.W. that Wurtzel herself sees in the mirror. This is truly a work of surrender for which we must thank Wurtzel. Wurtzel's works are a vital contribution that may lend relatives and friends an inside view of depression so that they may truly see what a miserable and insurmountable trap that deep depression represents. EW's voice is articulate and honest. In a sense, she's like a defense lawer at the gates of heaven, pleading reprieve for those who have chosen the path of suicide.
Rating: 
Summary: ENOUGH, ALREADY, PLEASE
Review: Stoned or sober, Wurtzel herself can be so selfish, so nasty and so pampered -- she checks into $450-a-night hotel rooms on a whim, gives drug dealers her publisher's FedEx account number and leans on friends so heavily that they wind up more haggard than Wurtzel herself -- that even readers who've gone through a similar hell may find it difficult to relate Wurtzel's experiences to their own. Were her publishers also stoned? Something has gone terribly wrong with this book. The problem goes back to one of the most basic questions you encounter in writing classes: How do you create a "boring" character without being a terrific bore yourself? She succeeds admirably; she succeeds too well. Elizabeth Wurtzel has set out to create a selfish, shallow, repetitive, exasperatingly stupid, hideously self-centered, morbidly narcissistic, excruciatingly dull, pre-recovery persona. I honestly had no idea that this sort of material could actually get published. Reading the first 329 pages of this book is like nothing so much as listening to a girlfriend from Hell yammering on endlessly about every aspect of her pitiful life. It's a form of rampant egotism, the belief that even your shopping lists will be of interest to people. Like all narcissists, she suffers from a basic lack of empathy. ''I've never been much interested in terrorism. It seems like someone else's problem,'' she says of the Oklahoma bombing trial. ''The victims of Timothy McVeigh start to really irritate me," Wurtzel cannot write and certainly never touched the depths of addiction, and found little worth recording in the shallows. A better title would have been Me, Myself, I.
Rating:
Summary: puhleese
Review: This woman would be pitiful if she were not so apallingly arrogant. She is genuinely sick; however, one cannot feel sorry for her in the face of her meanspirited remarks. She has had every advantage, yet she obviously learned nothing at Harvard. She boasts that she is the leading non-fiction writer of her generation and that she is the 'prettiest girl she knows." This is good because no one else thinks so. She may have a ph.d. in the reader's digest or in junk food, but she certainly is not worldly, knowledgeable or scholarly. I haven't read one good review of any of her books. How in heaven's name could this sloppy work have been published? The publishers were evidently high as well. I feel sorry for the poor trees that sacrificed their lives for the paper.
Rating:
Summary: give me a break
Review: this woman needs to get a grip, stop writing, and go back to school to learn English grammar. She's knowledgeable about tv guide and junk cereal, but she hasn't got a clue how to write. But it's ok because she's "the prettiest girl I know." She's a pathetic twerp. I feel sorry for the poor trees used to make the paper for this 'book.'
Rating:
Summary: Exactly what is this book about?
Review: First of all, this is not a memoir. It is not a collection of experiences. It is not even a book on addiction. It is Elizabeth Wurtzel's thoughts and opinions on everything (which mind you, does include TV shows, snacks and everything else one could imagine.
Second, this book is not about addiction. Wurtzel's addiction is not the pointt and it occupies so little of this book that one feels as if he has been robbed.
Even though the author does write in an entertaining way, her attempts on cynicism fail triumphantly because all she cares about is claiming how good she is, how much better than anyone else she can get, how stupid everyone around her seems to her. There is actually quite a few bits in the book where Wurtzel proudly announces her very modest ideas on herself and others, some of which are more than annoying: they are abnormal and strange, and sometimes astonishingly selfish and spoiled (e.g. Wurtzel accuses the families of victims of a terrorist act of being too sentimental, and exaggerating about the goodness of their dead!).
I don't know how the author's friends felt about her book, but I 've got a few guesses. She is actually speaking of everyone around her as if they are worthless trash and enjoys being the diamond in the rough.
But the worst thing about this book is that it is totally pointless. Nothing important actually happens to Elizabeth Wurtzel. We do not see what addiction is about. Nothing justifies writing this book.
Things that show why her addiction was terrible do not appear here. The most dramatic thing that happens to Ms. Wurtzel is missing a photoshoot she had scheduled. In fact, all we get is a bit of information on Elizabeth Wurtzel's tastes in general.
But drugs? No. They do not play a part in this book. It is not a confession or even an account.
This book concerns only its author's need for attention, her narcissism and her ego.
If you want to know about drug addiction, this is not for you.
|
