Five years ago today, it’s likely that author Koren Zailckas would have been at happy hour, getting drunk on Marshall Street.

But yesterday, the former SU student relived part of that inebriated experiences for 300 students, reading from her best-selling memoir.

‘Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood,’ describes Zailckas’ alcohol experiences from age 14 through her four years at Syracuse University.

Zailckas, who graduated in 2002, answered about three dozen questions before the 5:30 p.m. reading in Gifford Auditorium, the first of SU’s Raymond Carver Reading Series this year. Many audience members were part of Living Writers, a popular English course for first-year writers – one Zailckas took while at SU.

‘I know you’re all supposed to ask me questions,’ Zailckas said, wearing the same beaded necklace she wore on the first day of that class seven years ago. ‘I’m emotionally prepared for it.’

The questions ranged from literary to personal, some praising, others more critical. One student asked how she decided to write the book, and she explained that at age 23 she became preoccupied with a memory from her drunken childhood and felt compelled to write about it. She’d also been angry at the media’s reports that young women drank to keep up with their male peers, and felt the media knew nothing of college life or the female psyche. The rest of the book poured out of her.

‘It’s exhausting and terrifying to go back and relive your experiences,’ Zailckas said. ‘It’s not therapeutic. It drove me to therapy.’

Because she wrote the book with a young female audience in mind, Zailckas did not expect such supportive responses from parents and older people who had experienced similar addictions. When one female student asked for her advice about drinking, she said that she does not like lecturing young women about how to handle alcohol, and hopes the book did not come across that way.

Zailckas, a magazine major at SU, had much difficulty finding work. She finally found a job at Men’s Journal, which did little to get her a byline. Now magazine editors call her and ask her to write stories, she said.

Soon she will see her first magazine byline: She recently completed an article for Glamour magazine about college party Web sites which will appear in the January issue.

She has also begun planning another book, a memoir about her struggle with anger and aggression. Her drinking, she realizes now, camouflaged that deeper struggle.

Zailckas expressed a hint of that anger and hurt when one student asked how she felt knowing she manipulated her life in order to make a fortune.

‘I don’t feel like I’ve manipulated my life in any way,’ Zailckas said, her voice sharper than in earlier responses. ‘I haven’t seen a dime, I swear to God. If anything I feel like I’ve sacrificed.’

But the writing process and the book’s success have helped fill the void alcohol once filled, she said.

While at SU, Zailckas spent most her time drinking and drunk, even though she always made the Dean’s List and graduated with honors. But if she could relive her four years at SU, as one student asked, she’d try so much more. She’d go snowboarding, make a short film, see concerts, she said. She’d also make new friends, a feat she didn’t realize until recently.

‘I forgot that there are people who really cared about me here,’ Zailckas said. ‘They certainly weren’t the people I was drinking with.’

The visit to SU – her first since her graduation in 2002 – is one of many on a college lecture circuit. Mary Karr, of the English department, suggested Zailckas as a speaker for the series, said Chris Kennedy, director of the Creative Writing Program.

But the reading terrified Zailckas.

‘I hate this place,’ she said, her green, wide-set eyes darkening. ‘I hate the person I was when I was a student here. I hated who I was then and I hate that person now.’

Zailckas tried to forget her parents, her former friends and professors would be reading this often humiliating account of her experiences. She did, however, muster the courage to give her family a copy to read.

‘I was a real sissy about it,’ Zailckas said. ‘(But) who tells their parents everything they did in college?’

One audience member asked why Zailckas mentioned eating disorders, cutting and other destructive behaviors in her book. She responded that she did not suffer from them but finds they are often connected, especially for young women.

‘We’re all looking for an escape, a way out of our boxes,’ Zailckas said. ‘I chose booze.’

After the questions, students left took a break and returned for the reading. Most seemed impressed with her work and responses.

‘She was exactly the narrator I envisioned,’ said Dan Trester, a freshman English and textual studies major. ‘I related to her book and I definitely touched base with i

Published on September 28, 2005 at 12:00 pm