Wurtzel is aware that a cultural climate dominated by national tragedy and international unrest may not be entirely receptive to the confessions of a socially privileged, middle-class drug addict, but remains hopeful.

“I think people are sick of cultural analysis,” she says frankly. “I think now we need people to tell stories.”

***

“Elizabeth, you photograph too well to be depressed,” writes one fan on an Internet message board that is dedicated to her work, but is rife with love poetry and depression confessions.

The debate over Wurtzel’s use of her image began with the charmingly vulnerable confrontation of Prozac Nation’s cover, but really blew up with Bitch. Its original cover presented a topless Wurtzel, grinning knowingly and extending her middle finger at the world.

The book, a brazen celebration of bad girls and contradiction, was ostensibly not about Wurtzel herself, and the photo triggered uproar among the press, few of whom failed to mention it in reviews. It also helped attract considerable attention among readers, who have unfailingly responded better to Wurtzel than the press and made her books bestsellers.

It seems regrettable that a writer’s airbrushed nipples might garner more discussion than her prose, and Wurtzel admits that the “photo doesn’t represent me at all.” But she insists that, publicity ploys aside, “that picture was just kind of an execution of what I was trying to say, which is that you can be many things all at once. That I felt like feminism hadn’t accomplished its goals if a woman doesn’t get to be many things at once.”

Still, the cover of More, Now, Again features only words, though there is a photo on the back cover of her reclining that she likes. “There’s no way I’m ever doing that again,” she says, exasperated by the furor over her Bitch cover shot. “But can you imagine anyone ever complaining that like, Joni Mitchell was on the cover of her album? It’s the stupidest thing.”

Three years ago, in a contentious Time cover story on the future of feminism, Wurtzel, who had just published Bitch, was one of few other young writers and public figures accused of replacing feminist action with self-seeking navel gazing.

But Wurtzel’s position in the young feminist canon is debatable. She may embody some of its philosophies in her apologetic zeal for personal liberty, but analyzing gender no longer seems a priority to her. When asked about the topic, she admits she hasn’t thought much about it since Bitch, and struggles to articulate her position through a slew of personal anecdotes and desultory political tangents.

“I guess I always had this idea that as long as you did the right thing, as long as you had the basics, you could then do anything else you wanted,” is what she settles on. She pauses. “That isn’t really how the world sees things, so something is missing.”

***

Hunched in the chill, we head down a street, past the onetime residence of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. “Does anybody really remember what she wrote?” Wurtzel demands, pointing it out.

“‘O World, I cannot hold thee close enough?’” I offer.

She frowns. “Maybe. Anybody, what people remember is the persona, and her name. They don’t remember what she wrote. Same with Dorothy Parker: People remember these witty things she said and all the crazy things she had going on, but they don’t know that she wrote all these short stories.”