Go Ask Alice, a commentary and distraction from insufferable work conditions

[originally posted on myspace on July 29, 2008 - Tuesday]

And oh, the torture…the water is out (or something) here which means no bathrooms and NO COFFEE. Ugh.

Foreword:

This post sparked my reminiscing about the book. If you never read Go Ask Alice, then I seriously doubt you were ever a pre-teen/teenage girl, as it seems all of them have read it at some point in time. It's essentially the diary of a teenager (apparently, not a real person, but more on that later) who goes through a predictable (now) path of experimenting with drugs to addict destruction to brief redemption back to being given LSD laced peanuts.

And moving on:

I was a bookworm as a child. I read everything in the "Young Adult" aisle (was it even called that back then?) from Judy Bloom to Christopher Pike. I remember when I bought Go Ask Alice. It was a now defunct bookstore, in a mall that still exists but is empty and due to be tore down soon (as soon as the economy recovers). It was towards the middle of the YA row, on the top shelf. It's dreary cover, it's song reference title, it all immediately appealed to me. And once I read the plot synopsis (for some reason, I was deeply interested in fiction about troubled youth – drugs, runaways, etc), I had to buy it.

I'm not sure how old I was at the time, probably late junior high/high school freshman.

And, oh, I bought this book, hook, line and sinker. I remember it scaring me, to think that this all happened to a real person, that this could happen to me or someone I knew. It was similar to the time I watched the pilot episode for Beverly Hills, 90210. It premiered during my first week of high school (possibly even the evening after my first day at high school) and I remember thinking, alternatively excited and petrified, high school is going to be like that??

Sadly, I didn't fully understand fiction, escapism or exaggeration for the sake of ratings back then. But I digress.Like any morally preachy book, this book freaked me out. Drugs were bad. Drugs would make you go from normal teenager to addict to whom all sorts of bad things happen to (again, referring back to long ago post, there is yet another example of the "bad" girl getting punished). And after she tries to clean herself up, she gets sucked back in. And though, I never babysat before and never planned on babysitting ever, even as cool as the Babysitters' Club made it sound, I was paranoid forever about ever babysitting after reading the LSD laced peanuts scene. Essentially, the lesson (though I guess I didn't listen) is that even if you try something just one time(even inadvertently), you are DOOMED.

I remember reading a few times back in the day but haven't thought about it much sense. I kind of thought it was cool that an ex of mine had a copy of it a few years back (and now, looking back on it, geez, the was kinda lame on his part). I didn't find out until more recently that an author (a biased, pro-Establishment author…apparently, a Mormon youth counselor) wrote it, that it was not the work of a "real-life" teen. Finding that out didn't upset me greatly (or much at all), though apparently, there has a ton of backlash about the book's author when others find out that revelation (just look the book up on amazon or read above referenced somewhat bitter/angry post).

Sadly, my copy (my well worn, much read and loved copy) is in storage somewhere now. After reading the above mentioned post and thinking back on some of the passages, yeah, it was corny. It was a bit heavy handed and, in hindsight, preachy and absolutist. The prose did seem, at times, very un-teenager like (but since I was reading it in the 1980s/1990s and it was written, I guess in the 1960s/1970s, I assumed teens back then were more formal and stuffy sounding anyway). But, through all the books (and books and books) I've read, it stuck with me. And I remember where I bought the thing, I remember a majority of the scenes (especially the scarier ones), that's got to be some sort of testament to the impact it has on it's audience (young and dumb and not aware of preachy authors with agendas).

My point is that it served its ultimate purpose – scare preteen/teen aged girls from (temporarily) getting mixed up in that crazy (yet swinging) scene…and I'd much rather have that than the current state of Young Adult lit – brand name brandishing, famous for no reason celebutard adoring Gossip Girl fluff. The fact that you can read it now, as an adult, and obviously see that it was written by an adult and not a real-life teenager…who cares?

Interesting note – Go Ask Alice is (was?) a banned book. I assume it was written to scare kids but yet, it gets banned out of schools so they can't read it…hmm.