Reviewed
by Christy
Most people of a certain age have probably heard of (and read)
Go Ask Alice – an anonymous (but allegedly real!) diary of a troubled
teenage girl. I have hazy memories of reading it in middle school (or did my
best friend read it and tell me all about it? We did that a lot too, Flowers
in the Attic being one scandalous example.) Regardless, one of us may have read
it but both of us were aware of it. The unnamed diarist (whom, for simplicity's
sake, many people just call Alice) has a normal family life, not at all the
type of person one would assume to take drugs. That is until July when someone
slips LSD into her coke at a party! Less than a week later, she is injecting
crack. By October, she's run away to California and opened up a clothing
boutique with another runaway. (She is all of fifteen.)
Alice was not real. It was a novel
masquerading as an authentic diary. It was a huge hit, however, spawning
multiple re-prints and a tv movie-of-the-week starring William Shatner and Andy
Griffith. Beatrice Sparks, the Mormon homemaker who was actually the author,
was devastated that her name was nowhere on the cover. She tried selling some
of her more straightforward novels (ones that would give her name prime real
estate on the front), but no one was interested. Thus, she kept creating
"diaries" and attaching "edited by Beatrice Sparks" (or in
the case of Jay’s Journal: edited
by Dr. Beatrice Sparks, who also discovered the international bestseller Go
Ask Alice). When a grieving mother, Marcella, saw an article about
Sparks and her alleged work with troubled youth, she reached out to her.
Marcella’s son Alden had struggled with addiction and depression before dying
by suicide at only seventeen. She wanted his death to mean something, and to
possibly spare any other mothers from burying a child. She asked Sparks to publish
his diary as a cautionary tale. Sparks agreed. Jay’s Journal was
released in 1978. In it, “Jay” struggles with addiction and depression. He
becomes involved with a satanic group and practices disturbing occult rituals
until he dies by suicide. Marcella and her family were horrified. This was not who Alden was. The book became the
source of local urban legends and, more than once, was used as “evidence” to
corroborate the so-called satanic ritual abuse that would fuel the subsequent
satanic panic of the 1980s. As if losing a loved one wasn’t difficult enough,
now Alden’s family had to watch his name dragged through the mud and constantly
tidy up his routinely vandalized headstone.
Rick Emerson takes a deep dive into this
niche pop culture moment. I found it immensely interesting and enraging in
equal parts. Emerson keeps a light, almost irreverent tone when it’s
appropriate, and it (mostly) doesn’t bleed into the more somber parts. But
sometimes it does, and I felt he should’ve reeled that in a bit. However, he
clearly has a lot of sympathy for Alden’s family. One thing that really
bothered me is that not only does he not cite his sources; he claims he did not
do so because the information is freely “available on the internet” and
besides, he wanted fast pacing, and notes would just bog that down. To be
frank, that is absolutely absurd and sounds like a high schooler’s logic.
Especially since he does have some
notes throughout. I don’t think he’s lying, by any means, but let’s be
professional here.
I wasn’t too upset about Go Ask Alice because honestly,
advertising it as a real diary was a pretty smart marketing gimmick. Reading it
as an adult, though, I can’t believe I fell for it. It’s just so histrionic and
over the top. Jay’s Journal is another thing entirely. The family was
deeply scarred by its existence, and its claims of authenticity sent
reverberations throughout the next decade. The fact that Sparks went on to
write several more “diaries” with no real repercussions is kind of heartbreaking.
I found all of this fascinating, and I do recommend the book because I have
barely scratched the surface of Sparks’ unhinged fraud.
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