World Famous Comics: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
By: Marya Hornbacher Publisher: HarperCollins Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: HarperCollins Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 304 Publication Date: January 14, 1998 Release Date: December 29, 1997
Product Description: Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of five, she returned from a ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed and cried -- because she thought she was fat. By age nine, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school while watching The Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve.
Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs and, ultimately, any sense of what it meant to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-creates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family and cultural causes that underlie eating disorders.
Hornbacher's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a news service in Washington, DC, she is in the grip of a such a horrifying bout with anorexia that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Hornbacher's body becomes a battlefield: the death instinct with the drive to live, mind and body locked in mortal combat.
Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back -- on her own terms. A landmark book from a 23-year-old writer of virtuoso prose, Wasted takes us inside the experience of anorexia and bulimia in a way that no one else has ever done.
Amazon.com Review: "I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine).
Terribly Disturbing Wasted is Marya Hornbacher's terribly disturbing memoir of her experiences with anorexia, bulimia, and other self-destructive behaviors. Her eating disorders begin at age nine and continue until about age 20. During this period her weight fluctuates between 135 and 52 pounds. She is hospitalized or institutionalized several times for extended periods. At age 19 she nearly dies. In addition to her eating disorders, Marya is a heavy abuser of alcohol and various drugs (pot, speed, cocaine, heroin) and is sexually promiscuous starting at a young age. At the time of writing (age 23) it is not at all clear that she has recovered.
For readers who enjoy shockingly graphic descriptions of other people's deeply disturbed lives, this book is for you. May your number be small.
For readers trying to understand the origins and triggers of eating disorders, this book offers a vast array of possible causes, so vast that it is nearly useless.
For readers wanting to understand what an eating disorder is like, this book provides a truly horrible catalog of symptoms, behaviors, and consequences.
For readers actually struggling with eating disorders, this book will probably do no good, and may do harm. In the Introduction, Marya states, "I am not here to spill my guts and tell you how awful it's been..." However, that is precisely what she proceeds to do. This book is about little else besides the grim awfulness of her eating disorders and her other self-destructive behaviors. It offers no hope whatsoever. Moreover, much of this memoir has a strangely neutral tone, as if Marya is unwilling to render any moral commentary on her own past, as if she maintains some sort of fondness for it and perversely enjoys the attention it brings her.
The wisest and most helpful words in this book come from one of Marya's friends, who never had an eating disorder, but who tells Marya that she tried to make herself throw up once. But she stopped herself. She was "gripped by the sudden sense that what she was doing was wrong...a crime against nature, the body, the soul, the self."
catharsis of my thoughts i cannot believe how relieved i felt after reading this book. i myself have anorexia and connect on so many levels with the author. the anger, the superiority complex, the fatal drive for "just a little bit more"... I believe the point in time in which the author wrote the memoir was perfect, where she is still the cannonball firing herself into life. her mind was still in the element of anorexia which makes it all the more puncturing for your eyes to read, revealing the struggle keeps going and going. her following book, "madness", follows up on her life after the beginning of the illness and is also very good. this provides her later wiser point of view and her difficulties with bipolar 1.
Wasted by Marya Hornbacher This book offered me a lot of insight into an actual sufferer's life, rather than what clinicians say a sufferer's life should be. Of course, Marya states that her family was dysfunctional to some extent, but it wasn't how the doctors had cut it out to be. I think it helped me understand my eating disorder better.
interesting I read this book when I was already in solid recovery, and for me it was not triggering. If I had read it in an earlier stage it probably would have been, but what would have triggered me would be the envy I would feel over her results, as well as a desire to compete, to be as good at it, and the most triggering thing would have been the absence of any sort of happy ending, I would have been left feeling there was no hope of recovery. However, I don't see so much of a problem with the thing many others have focused their complaints on, the "tips and tricks". Since, frankly, those can easily be found in other places if one wants to find them, and its nothing particularly new.
What I both liked and disliked most about this was the way I could relate to it, there are so many things I recognize in my own life, from the early onset puberty, to the promiscuity in her teens, and especially her behaviour and personality. The reason I dislike the similarities of personality is of course that I didn't like her personality in the book, she does in my opinion come off as selfish, unlikeable, self absorbed, whiny, and the hardest part for me in reading about this is that 5 years ago, this was ME.
Also, the general approach to eating disordered people when I first went into treatment kind of glorified "us", describing us as selfless, driven, hardworking people-pleasers, almost saints - and I never felt the label fit me, I felt like I was being ascribed a number of traits I didn't have. And to be honest, I was left feeling for a long time that I was probably not that sick, since I didn't fit the label, I was probably doing it "wrong". I didn't particularly like having to explain that I was not in fact a saint, I just happened to throw up my food, so for me I think Wasted described the disease excellently, the way I experienced it.
Well, my personality has changed extremely since ED is no longer in my life, but I still look back with regret at all the pain I caused my family in those years, and the relationships and friendships I invariably destroyed, because when my ED was at its worst, I was impossible to live with, or like for that matter.
As for the book glorifying EDs, I must say it does in some way feel to me like it tries to. OR rather, I agree that its very clear it was written by someone who was still far from recovered, and still very much in the ED mentality, still missing her ED, and I do feel there is an undertone of "see how sick I was", and a feeling sometimes that she is bragging. For me that's not a problem now, rather it makes the book feel more realistic, and gives a very stark look at an eating disorder from the inside.
Ive recommended this book to family and friends who do not have eating disorders, since for me, it's a very good account of how I was, thought, felt, when I had my ED, it explains me better than I could myself. I like this book, but, I would not recommend it to someone still in the midst of an eating disorder, but to anyone else who wants to know what its like, yes.
Excellent read albeit quite triggering for most Marya is a fabulous writer! I am looking forward to reading her other book next. That being said, this book is very triggering for most!!!!! In fact, when i brought it with me to an inpatient ED Unit, and upon check-in, it was taken from me as "contraband". It triggered me on several occasions before entering the facility - but I was unable to put it down because it is such a captivating story. So, read with caution - that's all I can say. If you are newly recovered from an ED - or knee deep in its deceptive hold, don't look to this book for help. It won't help you. In fact, it'll probably set you back a few notches. This is probably best read by those whom are sympathetic to our disease, but not actually suffering from it.
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