the Web and Ms. Wurtzel

This morning I was reading Glenn Reynolds, the sharp and prolific web commentator/aggregator, on his Instapundit site, where he writes:

"ELIZABETH WURTZEL COMMENTS ON AUTOADMIT, something we've all been waiting for. I think her attitude is colored by this savage Jim Treacher parody on her narcissistic reaction to the 9/11 attacks."

Please excuse, but I'm too web-clumsy to link to the piece. Nonetheless, he's right in that EW's attitude about the web-smearing of her fellow classmates is undoubtedly colored by Treacher's savaging of her; but Reynolds also perhaps demonstrates the very phenomenon EW points to. (An early, unedited version of her piece can be found on this site as a guest-post, from Monday. Disclosure: EW has been a pal going on fifteen years, during which I've enjoyed her talent for always saying or writing something remarkable, in one way or another.)

Backing up… a few months after the attacks of 9/11 a Toronto journalist gave to New York tabloid column an account of his interview with Wurtzel in which she allegedly was unmoved by the human cost. Was the Toronto journalist's account of their conversation reliable? Was the NY tabloid columnist's? I don't know… but she did protest to the tabloid that she had no such thing. Her protests fell on deaf ears. The Toronto journalist's account proliferated, and presumably led to the aforementioned savaging by Treacher that still lurks in a corner of the web. Her 9/11 quotes are a canard that trail her, as evidenced by Reynolds, even now when as a budding attorney she writes on a substantive matter.

Did she say that. I don't know… but strongly doubt it. I was actually with Wurtzel for a good portion of September 11th. We met up in the early evening at the friend's apartment where she'd taken over the couch. She'd been driven out of her own apartment by the cataclysm a block and a half away. That day, I saw more, and I lost more, than I hope I ever have to again. I had to deliver some sad news, but on the other hand I got to share a beer in the late afternoon with my brother, whom my family had been quite convinced all day was a goner. Enough said. Elizabeth, on the other hand, saw something that no person should ever have to see. That she’s never written about what she actually saw and, so far as I know, never mentioned it to more than one or two people, including me in the immediate aftermath, I respect. This of course would be a rare instance of her not saying whatever popped into her head. Part of what she said to me that night, in one version or another, over and over, as she wept hysterically for hours was “I can’t think about it. I can’t believe what I just saw. I can’t think about those people. I can only think about my cat. My cat is still in my apartment. I can’t bear to think about those people. I can't think about what I saw, what just happened.” What part of this was trauma and somewhat impersonal, and what part grief sprung from sympathy from those nearby? Let's say it was a mixture. In any case, it was perfectly clear, even to her, that she was trying to hold on to her mind by blocking out an overwhelmingly horrific vision and concentrating on one small living thing in her world. Another close friend, older, was hundreds of miles from where we were that day, and simply following her natural inclination tried in her mind to embrace as much of the experience and feeling as she could. And, soon enough, her circumference expanded around her fairly miserably. A year later she descended some for some time into her first ever bout of mental illness. If a week later Elizabeth was going to travel from being swamped by constantly re-envisioning what she's seen to mostly speaking about her cat, I for one was not going to begrudge her.

Did that Canadian reporter report honestly what she'd said? It doesn't fit with Elizabeth's experience, and the things she was saying at the time of the interview, so I seriously doubt it. When the Canadian journalist called a NY Tabloid and dish on her... honestly?

Did Jim Treacher in his savaging of my friend, admit that he himself really had no sense of what she'd said in interview, and knew nothing about the reliability of the Toronto journalist who’d offered his account? Probably not. But now this account does have a kind of authority by virtue of its continued presence on the web.

I've long suspected that since Elizabeth is so forthcoming about her own bad behavior that journalists feel the normal rules don’t apply to her. Long ago I took her to a book party where she bumped into a NYT journalist whom I like very much. On seeing him, she exploded, “How could you have written that! I said nothing like that at all.” Apparently he'd quote her in a self-damning way in a NYTimes Style section article. I was astonished that he actually admitted to her that she was right, and he reluctantly apologized, then reversed himself, adding, “But come on, you’re laughing all the way to the bank.” That’s not the proper attitude a writer should have for their subjects, even if their subject is another writer, a self-dramatizing one at that.

Elizabeth has a point. Civility, like history, doesn’t always find its ideal spokesperson.