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Go Ask Alice

Anonymously penned Jefferson Airplane-referencing perma-controversial purported diary of a sixties teenager, pretty much your average football-team-captain-lusting-after girl next door until she was slipped some crazy acid courtesy of a spiked drink, causing her to ‘see’ the evil radioactive waves in jello pudding and consequently slide into depression, schizophrenia and ultimately overdose-assisted suicide. Presumably originally intended as a cautionary tale, its lurid ‘square’s eye view’ of lysergic imagery made it into an illicit cult favourite with adolescents in search of risk-free literary kicks, and can still be found in large quantities in university halls of residence to this day. Also inspired a TV Movie adaptation starring – haw – William Shatner.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Matt Patton

    April 2, 2010 at 1:24 am

    The book was actually the work of a Mormon youth counselor named Beatrice Sparks, who claims she was the “editor” of this book (copyright documents describe her as the author). If the book WAS based on the actual diary of one of Sparks’ patients, it’s suspected that she used only part of it and inserted a lot of anti-drug preaching (as well as a lot of sex and profanity–Sparks sounds like the perfect writer for a tabloid). Sparks came out with a second book a few years later, allegedly the diary of another patient who supposedly was driven to suicide by involvement with the occult. The boy had committed suicide, but his family attacked the book and stated flatly that most of the book was a piece of fiction. Sparks has apparently churned out several reams of “horrors of sex and drugs” books over the years, most of which have apparently managed to sink without a trace.

  2. Charlotte

    April 19, 2010 at 5:39 pm

    I really want to read this book. It sounds awesome.

  3. Richard Davies

    June 22, 2010 at 8:21 pm

    Some people have read this & assumed it was a real transcription of a diary.

    For more into read: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp

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