Go Ask Alice sold millions, but who was "Alice?" How did the publisher get ahold of her diaries? Was the interlocutor really a "child psychologist?" As questions began to emerge in the late '90s, by then, we'd lived through Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs," Ronald Reagan's D.A.R.E. classes and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say 'No'" campaigns.
Rick Emerson's Go Unmask Alice (BenBella Books, 2022) took the "bright, shiny object" of Go Ask Alice down a rabbit-hole. Beatrice Sparks, born in 1917, was a Mormon from "a broken home," an unsuccessful poet, a fraudulent advice-columnist, a stressed-out mother and wife. Mrs. Sparks was long a fan of Art Linkletter and had pitched television project ideas to him. In 1970, Art Linkletter's 20-year-old daughter Dianne fell out of, jumped from or was pushed out of a window to her death. Beatrice Sparks seized on his grief and his proclamation that even LSD "flash-backs" could make kids not just say the darnedest things, but think they could fly. She pitched him a sad story: strait-laced student takes drugs and dies. He signed her to his literary agency and found her a publisher-the same Prentice-Hall that operated the book club I joined!
Mistakes were made. "Anonymous" was retained because Prentice-Hall didn't think kids would trust an adult author's name. Nothing was known about the source material. Mrs. Sparks's story changed with every telling. Maybe "Alice" was a young girl staying at a B.Y.U. Summer camp, Brenda, who had confided in her. Maybe not. Several years later Mrs. Sparks published Jay's Journal, purported to be the diary of Alden Barrett, a young Mormon boy who had killed himself with his father's shot-gun. His mother had found 67 of his journal entries, had learned of Mrs. Sparks, and had sent them to her so that Alden's suicide would mean something. Funny, though: Jay's Journal changed "Alden" to "Jay," tripled the number of journal entries to 212, and turned him into a certified Satan worshipper who knew and practiced Satanic rituals, attended sexual orgies, summoned demons and committed animal mutilations.
Go Ask Alice fueled drug disinformation in the '70s. Jay's Journal fueled Satanic Panic in the '80s. Each is based on miniscule reality. Each was fabricated by a religion-bound middle-aged woman. Instead of the real epidemics of alcohol abuse, pharmaceutical opioid addiction, pharmaceutical company collusion and corrupt physicians we blame marijuana and immigrants. Instead of the real epidemics of sexual violence committed by priests, policemen, politicians, fathers and husbands, we still worship at the altar of stranger-danger. Remember the McMartin preschool fabrications? Fells Acres Day School? Georgian Hills Daycare Center? Wenatchie?
I surely don't blame Mrs. Kuenzli. She didn't know. But visit any Barnes & Noble and see how Mrs. Sparks's books are dubbed and displayed. More Satanic Panic is just around the corner.
Reach me at svafinebooks@gmail.com or at http://www.svafinebooks.com.
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