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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
Momentary Expression through Addiction - Page 5
by Sarah Pacella
Commentary: “Momentary Expression Through Addiction”
by Yana Zeltser
When I walk into a bookstore I find myself overwhelmed by the number of shelves laden with autobiographies and memoirs. Some of these books are authored by famous media personalities: best-selling writers, movie stars, journalists, stand-up artists, talk show hosts, and even political figures, while other books come to us from lesser-known personalities and rely on telling compelling or inspiring stories of their lives; these people are travelers, war veterans, activists, cancer survivors, and drug addicts, to name a few. All of these writers engage in the task of presenting to the world the self that they have carefully constructed through their writing. In her essay, “Momentary Expression through Addiction,” Sarah Pacella takes on the challenge of examining the complications that arise in the “expression of self” with a focus on the autobiography of a recovering addict, Elizabeth Wurtzel. Through a skillfully manipulated dialogue between Wurtzel’s memoir and the examinations of the self from Robert Jay Lifton and Sidonie Smith, Pacella challenges the notion that an autobiography is limited to expressing a singular self; an autobiography, Pacella argues, presents us with a writer’s protean self, and Wurtzel’s addict self is just one of them, a momentary self that is ready to slip into another role at any moment: a writer, a friend, a daughter.
A significant portion in “Momentary Expression Through Addiction” is lent towards an examination of the multifaceted role our society plays in shaping the writer’s self: "The autobiography of Elizabeth Wurtzel,” Pacella states, “teaches the audience of the memoir that a self is more than just a reflection of society; but the autobiography also recognizes that social norms can be reflected from external to internal pressures of the individual that can lead someone to addiction." There is fine line that an autobiography walks between portraying a privately suffering momentary self and portraying a momentary self that seeks self-gratification and profit by opening itself up to society when the autobiography is published. Why should Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir matter? This is the question I’ve found myself asking while reading Pacella’s essay, where the tight focus on the memoir may create a misleading impression of Wurtzel as a literary ingénue. I did not find out till later that the memoir was not Wurtzel’s first work; indeed, she has earned a Rolling Stone College Journalism Award for essay writing, and burst onto the literary scene in the 1990’s with her first memoir, the bestseller Prozac Nation. What significance could Wurtzel’s success with her first memoir play in shaping the protean selves we find in the new autobiography? What role did society’s perception of the earlier book contribute to the momentary selves, and the addict self in particular, which Wurtzel presents in her latter book?
Had there been the opportunity to expand this essay, it would benefit from considering how society and the media shape the writer’ role in something as personal as an autobiography being opened up to the public, but as it is, the essay is already thought-provoking. “[It] can be said that an autobiography is an expressive compilation of momentary selves presented by the autobiographer,” Pacella offers. Her essay takes on the ambitious task of exploring the fluidity of protean selves one encounters in an autobiography of a writer who is more than just an addict, and succeeds to both elucidate and to open up to further debate the position of the writer’s self in our increasingly complex society.
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