Go Ask Alice: Difference between revisions

Go Ask Alice is a controversial 1971 book about the life of a troubled teenage girl. The book continues its claim to be the actual diary of an anonymous teenage girl who became addicted to drugs, but this has been dismissed as false. Beatrice Sparks is listed as the author of the book by the United States Government^{[clarification needed specify agency or department]}. The novel is presented as a testimony against drug use. The diarist's name is never given in the book.

The story caused a sensation when published and remains in print as of 2011. Revelations about the book's origin have caused much doubt as to its authenticity and factual accounts, and the publishers have listed it as a work of fiction since at least the mid-late 1980s. Although it is still published under the byline "Anonymous", it is largely or wholly the work of its purported editor, Beatrice Sparks. Some of the days and dates referenced in the book put the timeline from 1968 until 1970.

The title is from the lyrics to the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit". Grace Slick wrote the song based on perceived drug references in the classic novel Alice In Wonderland. (On July 14 [page 36 of the 2006 edition], the writer says she "feel[s] like Alice in Wonderland" and "maybe Lewis G. Caroll [sic] was on drugs too.")

The book was made into an ABC Movie of the Week in 1973.

Plot summary

An unnamed fifteen-year-old begins keeping a diary. With a sensitive, observant style, she records her thoughts and concerns about issues such as crushes, weight loss, sexuality, social acceptance, and difficulty relating to her parents.

Her father, a college professor, accepts a teaching position at a new college. The diarist is optimistic about the move. After the move the diarist feels like an outcast at the new school, with no friends. She then meets Beth and they become best friends. When Beth leaves for summer camp the diarist returns to her hometown to stay with her grandparents. She reunites with an old school acquaintance, Jill, who is impressed by the diarist's move to a larger town, and invites her to a party. At the party, glasses of soda—some of which are laced with LSD—are served. The diarist unwittingly ingests LSD and has an intense and pleasurable drug trip.

Over the following days the diarist continues friendships with the people from the party and willingly uses more drugs. She loses her virginity while on LSD. She becomes worried she may be pregnant, and her grandfather has a small heart attack. These events and the tremendous amount of guilt she feels begin to overwhelm her. She begins to take sleeping pills stolen from her grandparents. On returning home she receives sleeping pills from her doctor. When those are not enough she demands powerful tranquilizers from her doctor. The friendship with Beth ends as both girls have moved in new directions.

The diarist meets a hip girl, Chris, when she shops at a local boutique. The diarist and Chris become fast friends, using drugs frequently. They date college boys Richie and Ted who deal drugs. They begin selling drugs for the boyfriends, passing back all the money made. One day they find the boys stoned and engaging in a sexual act. Realizing Richie and Ted were using them to make money the girls turn them in to the police and flee to San Francisco. They vow to stay away from drugs. Chris secures a job in a boutique with a glamorous older woman, Sheila. The diarist gets a job with a custom jeweler whom she sees as a father figure.

Sheila invites the girls to lavish parties where they resume taking drugs. One night Sheila and her new boyfriend introduce the girls to heroin and rape them while they are stoned. The diarist and Chris, traumatized, move to Berkeley where they open a jewelry shop. It is a small success, but the diarist misses her family. Tired of the shop, the girls return home for a happy Christmas.

Back home, the diarist finds extreme social pressures and hostility from her former friends from the drug scene. She and her family are threatened and shunned at times. Chris and the diarist try to stay away from drugs but their resolve lapses. The diarist gets high one night and runs away. She drifts through homelessness, prostitution, hitchhiking, and homeless shelters, before a priest reunites her with her family. She returns home but she is drugged against her will, has a bad trip, and is sent to an insane asylum where she bonds with a younger girl named Babbie. Chris escapes the problems when her family moves to a new town.

The diarist finally is free of drugs. She becomes romantically involved with a student from her father's college, Joel. Relationships with her family are improving, as are friendships with some new kids in town. She is worried about starting school again, but feels stronger with the support of her new friends and Joel. In an optimistic mood the diarist decides she no longer needs a diary; now she can communicate with her family and friends.

The epilogue states that the subject of the book died three weeks after the final entry. The diarist was found dead in her home by her parents, either by an accidental or premeditated overdose. It doesn't matter how she died but the point the author was tring to make is, she is just one of the teens who died of drugs that year out of thousands.

Authorship

Go Ask Alice was originally promoted as nonfiction and was published under the byline "Anonymous." However, not long after its publication, Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counselor, began making media appearances presenting herself as the book's editor.

Searches at the U.S. Copyright Office^[1] show that Sparks is the sole copyright holder for Go Ask Alice. Furthermore, she is listed on the copyright record as the book's author — not as the editor, compiler, or executor, which would be more usual for someone publishing the diary of a deceased person. (According to the book itself, the sole copyright is owned by Prentice-Hall.)

In an October 1979 interview with Alleen Pace Nilsen for School Library Journal, Sparks claimed that Go Ask Alice had been based on the diary of one of her patients, but that she had added various fictional incidents based on her experiences working with other troubled teens. She said the real girl had not died of a drug overdose, but in a way that could have been either an accident or suicide. She also stated that she could not produce the original diary, because she had destroyed part of it after transcribing it and the rest was locked away in the publisher's vault.

Sparks' second "diary" project, Jay's Journal, gave rise to a controversy that cast further doubt on Go Ask Alice's veracity. Jay's Journal was allegedly the diary of a boy who committed suicide after becoming involved with the occult. Again, Sparks claimed to have based it on the diary of a patient. However, the family of the boy in question, Alden Barrett, disowned the book. They claimed that Sparks had used only a handful of the actual diary entries, and had invented the great majority of the book, including the entire occult angle.^[2] This led many to speculate that "Alice's" diary—if indeed it existed—had received similar treatment. No one claiming to have known the real "Alice" has ever come forward.

Sparks has gone on to produce many other alleged diaries dealing with various problems faced by teenagers. These include Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager, Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets, Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager and It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager. Although billed as "real diaries," these do not appear to have been received by readers or reviewers as anything other than fiction.

There have recently been hints that at least one other author was involved in the creation of Go Ask Alice. In an essay called "Just Say Uh-Oh", published in the New York Times Book Review on November 5, 1998, Mark Oppenheimer identified Linda Glovach, an author of young-adult novels, as "one of the 'preparers'—let's call them forgers—of Go Ask Alice", although he did not give his source for this claim.^[3] Amazon.com's listing for Glovach's novel Beauty Queen also states that Glovach is "a co-author" of Alice.

In an article on the Urban Legends Reference Pages (snopes.com), urban folklore expert Barbara Mikkelson points out that even before the revelations about Go Ask Alice's authorship, there was ample internal evidence that the book was not an actual diary. The lengthy, detailed passages about the harmful effects of illicit drugs and the relatively small amount of space dedicated to relationships and social gossip seem uncharacteristic of a teenaged girl’s diary.^[4]

There are some errors of consistency. On page 16 the author has not "had time to write for two days". In the same paragraph she refers to the last entry as "yesterday" when she says, "I've apologized to every room about the way I felt last night" even though according to her first sentence she would have felt that way two nights ago, not "last night". On pages 79-80, the text describes the girl living with a friend in Coos Bay, Oregon, where she enthuses over the Diggers' Free Store and the Psychedelic Shop. Both establishments were in San Francisco. Another error is on page 2 when the author writes "It's my birthday. I'm 15." Then later in the book on page 46 in August the author writes "After all I've just turned 15 and I can't stop life and get off" meaning she didn't turn 15 eleven months ago.

Diarist's name

The diarist's name is Carla. On p. 113 of the novel, While having sexual relations with a man who deals her drugs, his son yells to his mother, "Mama, Daddy can't come now. He's humping Carla." This is the only time in the book that she quotes someone else speaking about her. Alice is not the protagonist's name.A girl named Alice is mentioned briefly in one entry during the diarist's stay in Coos Bay, Oregon. The girl is an addict whom the diarist briefly meets on the street.

However some commentators refer to the diarist as "Alice" in error, or for the sake of convenience.

In the ABC Movie of the Week filmation of Go Ask Alice—broadcast 24 January 1973—the protagonist is herself named Alice.

Censorship controversies

Because Go Ask Alice includes profanity as well as relatively explicit references to runaways, drugs, sex, and rape, parents and activists have sought to remove it from school libraries. Bans started in the 1970s: Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1974, Saginaw, Michigan in 1975, and Eagle Pass, Texas and Trenton, New Jersey in 1976 through removal from local libraries. Other libraries in New York (1975), Ogden, Utah (1979), and Florida (1982) required parental permission for a student to check out the book. Additional bans occurred in 1983 in Minnesota and Colorado, 1984 in Mississippi, and 1986 in Georgia and Michigan. Also, in 1993 in New Jersey and West Virginia, 1994 in Massachusetts, 1998 in Rhode Island, 2003 in Maine, and in Feb 2007 Berkeley County School District in South Carolina. The American Library Association listed Go Ask Alice as number 23 on its list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s.^[5] The book was number 8 on the most challenged list in 2001 and up to number 6 in 2003. The dispute over the book's authorship does not seem to have played any role in these censorship battles.

References

External links

• Go ask Alice at Spark Notes
• Go Ask Alice at IMDb