Go Ask Alice

infobox Book |
name = Go Ask Alice
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks)
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre =
publisher = SIMON PULSE
release_date = March 5 1971
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
pages = 213 pg
isbn = ISBN 0133571114
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Go Ask Alice" is a controversial 1971 book about the life of a troublesome teenage girl(age 14-16 she writes in the diary for about three years) drug user that is considered a classic of American young adult literature. The book purports to be the actual diary of an anonymous teenage girl who died of a drug overdose in the late 1960s and is therefore presented as a testimony against drug use. Alice is not the protagonist's name; the actual diarist's name is never given in the book. A woman named Alice is mentioned briefly in one entry during the diarist's stay in Denver; she is a fellow addict the diarist meets on the street. Despite this, reviewers generally refer to the diarist as "Alice" for the sake of convenience.

It caused a sensation when published and remains in print as of 2008. 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," press interviews and copyright records suggest that 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 was on drugs too".)

Plot summary

The novel, or diary, deals with the downfall of a young teenage girl in America, and her journals over the course of two years and a few days. At the beginning of the book, "Alice" is a typical, insecure, middle-class teenager preoccupied with boys, diets, and popularity. Her fortunes take a sharp turn for the worse when her family moves to a new town and she finds herself less popular and more isolated than ever before. Unhappy in the new town, she is overjoyed to be allowed to return to the old town to spend the summer with her grandparents. During this stay she is invited to a party by an old acquaintance; there she unwittingly ingests LSD that had been added to random bottles of Coca-Cola and distributed to the party guests as a game. The other guests had mistakenly assumed Alice was aware of what the "game" entailed. After this first unwitting, but pleasurable, experience, she seeks drugs deliberately, and rapidly proceeds to marijuana,and amphetamines. She describes her drug experiences intricately; the more extreme the supposed diarist's drug experience, the more sophisticated and descriptive her writing becomes.

A pregnancy scare and the return to her new town encourage her to turn away from drugs; however she soon willingly falls in with the drug crowd where finally she finds acceptance. She starts dating a drug dealer and sells drugs to grade-schoolers for him. After realizing he was using her, she turns him in to the police and runs away from home with her new friend Chris, moving to San Francisco. She opens a boutique with Chris, however she misses her family. After being given heroin and then being raped by Chris' boss, Shelia and her boyfriend, she and Chris return home.

She is welcomed back warmly by her family, but finds herself ostracized by the community and has difficulty keeping her resolve to avoid drugs. She soon weakens and, while high, runs away again. She spends time living on the streets, a period during which her diary is not dated and entries were purportedly recorded on scraps of paper or paper napkins. She finds herself having sexual relations with strangers and loses track of everything, but her fear for her family finally gives her enough courage to ask a priest to help her return home.

When she returns home she vows to stay completely off drugs, and succeeds, even without the support of Chris who has now moved away. However, she is again ostracized by her former friends who continue to label her a police informant, and is ignored by the "square" kids. While babysitting, Alice is drugged without her knowledge. She has a violent, bad trip, during which a neighbor locks her in the closet, where she badly injures herself trying to claw her way out, and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. After being released she returns home, is finally happy and over her drug addiction. She starts a new romance with a student, Joel, at her father's university. She gets her life back on track and finally makes the decision to stop keeping a diary.

An editorial note informs readers that three weeks after the last entry the diarist died of an overdose. Although it remains unclear whether Alice's overdose was accidental or premeditated, or what drug or drugs specifically prompted her death, the key issue is that this girl -- whose life the reader has followed in intimate detail -- was just one of the thousands who died because of drugs that year.

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 promoting herself as the book's editor.

Searches at the U.S. Copyright Office [ [http://www.copyright.gov/records/cohm.html U.S. Copyright Office - Search Copyright Records ] ] 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 Aileen 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 "Alice" 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.Fact|date=March 2008

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. [ [http://www.shutitdown.net/text/askalice.html "Curiouser and Curiouser": Fact, Fiction, and the Anonymous Author of Go Ask Alice ] ] 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 ", , " and "". 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. [ [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/15/reviews/981115.15oppenht.html Just Say 'Uh-Oh' ] ] 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 (what many critics would expect of anti-drug propaganda) and the relatively small amount of space dedicated to relationships and social gossip seem uncharacteristic of a teenaged girl’s diary. Furthermore, the book uses many long words, such as "gregarious" and "impregnable", which are uncommon in casual pieces of writing, especially those of teenagers. [Barbara Mikkelson, [http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp 'Go Ask Alice', Urban Legends Reference Pages, July 7, 2001] .]

Censorship controversies

Because "Go Ask Alice" includes profanity as well as relatively explicit references to runaways, drugs, sex, and rape, conservative 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 1977 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 Berkley 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. [ [http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm ALA | 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 ] ] 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.

TV film adaptation

In 1973, a television movie adaptation of "Go Ask Alice" was aired as an "ABC Movie of the Week" entry. Directed by John Korty, it followed the sequence of events described in the book, although many situations were condensed into a single brief scene or even as a flashback recalled by the protagonist as a way of fitting events into the 74 minute running time. The cast included Jamie Smith Jackson as the diarist, William Shatner and Julie Adams as her parents, Mackenzie Phillips as Doris, with cameos by Ruth Roman and Andy Griffith. In the film the diarist is named 'Alice' outright.

References

External links

* [http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/goaskalice/ Go ask Alice at Spark Notes]
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* [http://www.shutitdown.net/text/askalice.html "Curiouser and Curiouser": Fact, Fiction, and the Anonymous Author of Go Ask Alice.]