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  • Don't Go Ask Alice; Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Part Three

    Lawrence J. Hammar|Updated Feb 16, 2024

    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...

  • Don't Go Ask Alice; Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Part Two

    Lawrence J. Hammar|Updated Feb 1, 2024

    The real author of Go Ask Alice, not “Alice” and not “Anonymous, but a disaffected Mormon mom from Utah, Mrs. Beatrice Sparks, has the fictive diarist try her best to “stay away from drugs,” to “keep away from boys,” but drugs. “Alice” (never named) gets clean--and then relapses. She goes to j ail--and gets out. On probation, she’s caught in a police raid--then gets out and runs away. She hitchhikes with Doris--also a victim of drug-use and sexual abuse. She does more drugs, r...