Monday, October 24, 2022

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

 



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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