Go Ask Alice...a fake!
Formerly by "Anonymous" -
author is actually Beatrice Sparks
Publication Date: January 1971
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Genre: Diary novels
ISBN: 9780133571110
When I was in high school in 1971, a new book was released called Go Ask Alice. Word was going around the school that it was a true story about a teen who kept a diary of her horrid spiral into drugs and sexual promiscuity and eventually died of a drug overdose. The author was only known as "Anonymous" and at the time the book was considered non-fiction. I was 16, very naive and had no idea what life was like for a drug addict. The book made a profound impact on me. I was horrified and frightened by what I read, wishing the girl could have overcome her addiction.
I was surprised to discover years later that the memoir was actually fake, concocted by the book's editor, a woman named Beatrice Sparks who was a Mormon youth counselor. Sparks admitted in 1979 that she wrote the book, partially basing it on information from a girl's diary who was one of her patients. She also added to the story fictional scenes and experiences from some of her other teen patients. Sparks admitted to destroying part of the girl's diary after she transcribed it and keeping the rest locked away in a vault. At the U.S. Copyright Office, she is listed as the book's author, not the editor, and holds the sole copyright over the book. No one has ever come forward claiming to have known "Alice" or confirm any part of the book (Frater, 2010; Winnipeg Public Library, 2013).
Sparks has published other books that she claims were from real-life diaries of troubled teens. She claims that Jay's Journal was based on a diary of a former teen patient who committed suicide. The teen's parents were very dismayed when they discovered the book contained fictional accounts of Satanism and very few true facts from their son's diary. Sparks also claims to have a PhD yet this claim has never been confirmed (Frater, 2010; Winnipeg Public Library, 2013).
Go Ask Alice is now classified as fiction; however, Sparks' other books are listed as non-fiction. "Alice" may be a fake but I am thankful she had such a powerful impact on me!
References
Frater, J. (2010). Top ten infamous fake memoirs. Listverse. Retrieved from http://listverse.com/2010/03/06/top-10-infamous-fake-memoirs/
Winnipeg Public Library. (2013). April fools! - Readers' Salon. Retrieved from http://winnipegpublibrary.wordpress.com/tag/hoaxes/
"Go Ask Alice" was one of my favorite books as a youth. I read it many times and never knew the truth until this week! The fact that it was actually written by a Mormon Youth Counselor is insane! Just like you, even though it did turn out to be a fake, "Go Ask Alice" was one of the books that greatly impacted my youth.
ReplyDeleteHas she ever gotten in legal trouble for using information from those real life teen diaries? It doesn't say she was a psychologist, just a youth counselor, but I feel like that there should still be a form of doctor-patient confidentiality. You said the one boy's family was angry over falsified information in Jay's Journal, but I curious if there were other negative reactions. She seems like a very shady lady to me...
ReplyDeleteI have not found any information stating that Beatrice Sparks encountered legal problems after writing Go Ask Alice. I did find information from Scopes.com (2014) regarding one of the signs that the book might have been fake:
ReplyDelete"The final proof, however, lies in plain sight on the book's copyright notice page: This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people of real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or deal, is entirely coincidental." There was also an additional comment on the Scopes.com site (2014); "It's not necessarily wrong to present a cautionary tale as a first-person narrative - that storytelling device has been used effectively as long as folks have been spinning yarns." It seems like there was much complaining about what Beatrice Sparks did by writing fake memoirs but I couldn't find any record of legal action. I imagine she became quite wealthy from writing stories that were partially fiction and partially non-fiction, stating that the accounts were from real diaries. I thought she could have been sued for something since she seemed to falsify more than Go Ask Alice.
Mikkelson, B. (2014). Go ask alice. Scopes.com. Retrieved from http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp