Mirth, Ego, Delusion

Evil Triplets

“I have of late—but wherefore
I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of
exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to
me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why,
it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapors.”

Well, Will, I’m not quite in that stage of depression—I don’t see the world as a “foul and pestilent congregation of vapors”— but that mirth thing, yes. I have lost all my mirth.

Losing your mirth — all of it! — sucks. Mirth, mirth, where have you gone? Can I get you back?

I have 50 drafts in my folder. I could polish one up for the next fifty days and probably come up with ideas for more. But I don’t. I’ve lost my ego-boosted confidence along with my mirth. Which brings up Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Elizabeth Wurtzel was a brilliant writer who died an untimely death in 2020. I think I mentioned her in a previous post but I can’t be arsed to verify my own archives, I’m so out of mirthful energy.

I can now call her brilliant because it costs me nothing to say so. She died far too young. But I wasn’t part of her cheer squad — well, no, I was one of those “what is she complaining about?” mean girls.

“She wrote a fucking best seller! She was thin! She was decent-looking!” (My mother thought if you looked good, you had no reason to complain. None. I guess I’m my mother’s daughter.) ¹

Seriously and sincerely, however well-written and honest Prozac Nation was, it glamorized a killer — depression. Maybe that wasn’t Wurtzel’s fault. The publishing biz is a racket, it’s part of show biz.

But glamorize depression it did — what was that cover but glamorization?

“Lizzie” looked like a punk rock queen in that pic. It was a come on pic.

Why didn’t they put a cover pic of the real face of depression — a woman who hadn’t bathed or brushed her teeth in two months? Because it wouldn’t have sold books. Her second book, something stupid about bitches, was produced because in the publishing show biz you have to have a follow-up — and the knives were out for her. She got chopped up and did what all nice Jewish girls who don’t know what to do did — she went to law school. Yale Law School.

Oh yeah, they filmed Prozac Nation with Christina Ricci playing Wurtzel and this was the poster, no further comment. I guess there are some guys who want to bed women who haven’t bathed in two months….²

When they made a movie of The Hours they put a prosthetic nose on Nicole Kidman to make her look like an ugly woman writer. Virginia Woolf in real life was lovely. Elizabeth Wurtzel gets Christina Ricci half-naked.

Yeah. I hated her. But no one deserves a death like hers. It jarred me.

And I don’t know what it was but some signal in the universe told me to look up Elizabeth Wurtzel a few weeks ago — yes, out of the blue, there was no unconscious prompting — and I found this:

I am the author of Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel. Ask Me Anything.

It was full of wisdom and kindness and I felt bad that I’d disliked her for just doing what she had to do succeed in a cutthroat industry.

Someone asked her a whiny question about writing and she answered with utmost grace:

Being a writer is extremely hard. This has always been true. It was true for Chaucer. It was true for Shakespeare, who wrote plays to please the queen. No one cares if you write. It has to matter to you so enormously much that you visit your ego upon the world and give it no choice except to care. I agree that this is harder now, not just because there are all these outlets that don't pay, but also because there are ALL THESE OUTLETS. Because of the Internet, there is too much content and not enough audience. It is so hard to distinguish oneself. Here is the trick, I think: You have to be brave as a writer. You have to write in a pure voice that is distinct and rare. It really is not hard. That does not require facility with words so much as it requires lack of fear. Of course, that is hard. Fear is the thing that gets in the way of everything: love, happiness, success.

I happen to think there were many more opportunities twenty years ago to get a job as an editorial assistant at a magazine and write little articles until you could get assigned bigger pieces. But in terms of becoming an author of a book, the odds are as stacked against you or for you as ever. It is really difficult. But I think if you are sure this is what you must do, you need to be fearless and proceed. It really only works if it is a matter of no other choice.

I love every word of this, including the apparent contradiction: “Being a writer is extremely hard.” followed by “It really is not hard.”

She’s talking about two different things. You have to read the words in between those two sentences, so go back and read them. The conditions of writing are and always have been “hard” but once you get over that and you connect with your voice you’re home free.

(In my current mood I’d say: when you connect with your “mirth” you can fly. No mirth, no flight.)

The sentence that really hit me like a brick was this:

No one cares if you write. It has to matter to you so enormously much that you visit your ego upon the world and give it no choice except to care.

“No one cares if you write.”

So true. You have to make them care. You have to “visit your ego upon the world.”

I’ve lost that, at least temporarily. I’ve lost my confidence. Who indeed should care what I write here?

There’s such a thing as being too realistic. When you think about the immensity of geologic time, all this fuss and bother seems a very little thing.

But we care, don’t we?

Ego, mirth, and delusion. They’re all related.

I’m still not going to read Elizabeth’s books. Too little time to waste on stuff that isn’t essential.³ Still, I thank her for coming to me at just the write right time.

1. More of this in her Times obituary.

2. Hey, I got back a little mirth there!

3. Next up: Lone Star by T.R. Fehrenbach.