Although Go Ask Alice has been credited to an anonymous author since its publication, and was originally promoted as the real, albeit edited, diary of a real teenage girl, over time the book has come to be regarded by researchers as a fake memoir written by Beatrice Sparks,[3][2][4][5][6][7][25][26] possibly with the help of one or more co-authors.[1] Despite significant evidence of Sparks' authorship, a percentage of readers and educators have continued to believe that the book is a true-life account of a teenage girl.[4][25][26]
Beatrice Sparks authorship controversy
Go Ask Alice was originally published by Prentice Hall in 1971 as the work of an unnamed author "Anonymous". The original edition contained a note signed by "The Editors" that included the statements, "Go Ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user....Names, dates, places and certain events have been changed in accordance with the wishes of those concerned."[4][50] The paperback edition first published in 1972 by Avon Books contained the words "A Real Diary" on the front cover just above the title,[51] and the same words were included on the front covers of some later editions.[35]
The cover art of the Avon Books paperback edition of Go Ask Alice presented it as "A Real Diary".Upon its publication, almost all contemporary reviewers and the general public accepted it as primarily authored by an anonymous teenager. According to Lauren Adams, Publishers Weekly magazine was the only source to question the book's authenticity on the grounds that it "seem[ed] awfully well written".[35] Reviews described the book as either the authentic diary of a real teenage girl,[1][13][23] or as an edited or slightly fictionalized version of her authentic diary.[24][52] Some sources claimed that the girl's parents had arranged for her diary to be published after her death.[11][23][52] However, according to Alleen Pace Nilsen, a "reputable source in the publishing world" allegedly said that the book was published anonymously because the parents had initiated legal action and threatened to sue if the published book could be traced back to their daughter.[28]
Not long after Go Ask Alice's publication, Beatrice Sparks began making public appearances presenting herself as the book's editor.[6] (Ellen Roberts, who in the early 1970s was an editor at Prentice Hall,[53] was also credited at that time with having edited the book;[54] a later source refers to Roberts as having "consulted" on the book.)[55] According to Caitlin White, when Sparks' name became public, some researchers discovered that copyright records listed Sparks as the sole author—not editor—of the book, raising questions about whether she had written it herself.[6] Suspicions were heightened in 1979 after two newly published books about troubled teenagers (Voices and Jay's Journal) advertised Sparks' involvement by calling her "the author who brought you Go Ask Alice".[3][28][35][56]
In an article by Nilsen, based in part on interviews with Sparks and published in the October 1979 issue of School Library Journal, Sparks said that she had received the diaries that became Go Ask Alice from a girl she had befriended at a youth conference. The girl allegedly gave Sparks her diaries in order to help Sparks understand the experiences of young drug users and to prevent her parents from reading them. According to Sparks, the girl later died, although not of an overdose. Sparks said she had then transcribed the diaries, destroying parts of them in the process (with the remaining portions locked in the publisher's vault and unavailable for review by Nilsen or other investigators), and added various fictional elements, including the overdose death. Although Sparks did not confirm or deny the allegations that the diarist's parents had threatened a lawsuit, she did say that in order to get a release from the parents, she had only sought to use the diaries as a "basis to which she would add other incidents and thoughts gleaned from similar case studies," according to Nilsen.[28]
Nilsen wrote that Sparks now wanted to be seen as the author of the popular Go Ask Alice in order to promote additional books in the same vein that she had published or was planning to publish. (These books included Jay's Journal, another alleged diary of a real teenager that Sparks was later accused of mostly authoring herself.[57]) Nilsen concluded, "The question of how much of Go Ask Alice was written by the real Alice and how much by Beatrice Sparks can only be conjectured."[28] Journalist Melissa Katsoulis, in her 2009 history of literary hoaxes Telling Tales, wrote that Sparks was never able to substantiate her claim that Go Ask Alice was based on the real diary of a real girl and that copyright records continued to list her as the sole author of the work.[25]
Urban folklore expert Barbara Mikkelson of snopes.com has written that even before the authorship revelations, ample evidence indicated that Go Ask Alice was not an actual diary. According to Mikkelson, the writing style and content —including a lengthy description of an LSD trip but relatively little about "the loss of [the diarist's] one true love", school, gossip, or ordinary "chit-chat"—seems uncharacteristic of a teenage girl's diary.[5] The sophisticated vocabulary of the diary suggested that it had been written by an adult rather than a teen.[5][58] Mikkelson also noted that in the decades since the book's publication, no one who knew the diarist had ever been tracked down by a reporter or otherwise spoken about or identified the diarist.[5]
In hindsight, commentators have suggested various motivations for the publishers to present Go Ask Alice as the work of an anonymous deceased teenager, such as avoiding literary criticism,[26] lending validity to an otherwise improbable story,[26] and stimulating young readers' interest by having the book's anti-drug advice come from a teenager rather than an adult. Sparks said that while there were "many reasons" for publishing the book anonymously, her main reason was to make it more credible to young readers.[28] Although the book has been classified as fiction (see Treatment of book as fiction and non-fiction), the publisher has continued to list its author as "Anonymous".
Controversies involving other works by Sparks
Sparks was involved in a similar controversy regarding the veracity of her second diary project, the 1979 book Jay's Journal.[3] It was allegedly the real diary, edited by Sparks, of a teenage boy who died by suicide after becoming involved with the occult.[26] The publisher's initial marketing of the book raised questions about whether Sparks had edited a real teenager's diary or written a fictional diary, and recalled the same controversy with respect to Go Ask Alice.[59] Later, the family of real-life teenage suicide Alden Barrett contended that Jay's Journal used 21 entries from Barrett's real diary that the family had given to Sparks, but that the other 191 entries in the published book had been fictionalized or fabricated by Sparks, and that Barrett had not been involved with the occult or "devil worship".[57]
Sparks went on to produce numerous other books presented as diaries of anonymous troubled teens (including Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager and It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager) or edited transcripts of therapy sessions with teens (including Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets). Some commentators have noted that these books use writing styles similar to Go Ask Alice[35] and contain similar themes, such as tragic consequences for spending time with bad companions, a protagonist who initially gets into trouble by accident or through someone else's actions, and portrayal of premarital sex and homosexuality as always wrong.[26] Although Sparks was typically listed on these books as editor or preparer, the number of similar books that Sparks published, making her "arguably the most prolific Anonymous author in publishing",[58] fueled suspicions that she wrote Go Ask Alice.[35][58]
Linda Glovach authorship claims
In a 1998 New York Times book review, Mark Oppenheimer suggested that Go Ask Alice had at least one author besides Sparks. He 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.[1] Publishers Weekly, in a review of Glovach's 1998 novel Beauty Queen (which told the story, in diary form, of a 19-year-old girl addicted to heroin),[60] also stated that Glovach was "a co-author of Go Ask Alice".[8]
