# Go Ask Alice **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976 "2016-02-12T22:07:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/21 "2016-02-13T02:45:17Z")
Read it in the mid-late 70s. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/22 "2016-02-13T02:52:10Z")
60, never heard of it. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/23 "2016-02-13T03:10:31Z")
61 Saw the movie because Wife likes glurge (to laugh at) and Shatner (she sent him a picture she drew of him in junior high). There’s no accounting for taste. ---
**Author:** ![Lo-Slung\_Denim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f6c823/32.png) [@Lo-Slung\_Denim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lo-Slung_Denim)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/24 "2016-02-13T03:12:53Z")
Yes, I read it, but as a teenager. 9 sounds a little young! I think there was a copy getting passed around school. It was not so well-worn as the copy of Judy Blume’s Forever though! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Brynda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Brynda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynda)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/25 "2016-02-13T03:16:19Z")
55, read the book and saw the movie. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/26 "2016-02-13T03:54:56Z")
Yep, yep, yep. I think it came out in the early-mid 70s. I believe I was either in junior high or had just started high school. Naive little me took it as gospel. When the accusations emerged, I was floored, even though in the back of my mind I remembered thinking “if she [the diarist] ran away and was high most of the time how could she write the way she did?” ---
**Author:** ![Chicken\_Fingers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Chicken\_Fingers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicken_Fingers)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/27 "2016-02-13T04:24:31Z")
I remember lots of us reading it in the early 70s, as teens. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/28 "2016-02-13T04:54:12Z")
70’s in High School. I grabbed it in class from a female classmate, randomly opened it up, and saw the sentence “[another day another blowjob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Go_Ask_Alice)” and decided I needed to read it. The book didn’t live up to that one line. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/29 "2016-02-13T05:05:20Z")
I’m 41, and while I knew of it, I knew of it as one of those old, boring books that teachers tried to get us to read. I’m pretty sure I knew, or suspected, it wasn’t really a diary, but I’m not sure if I knew it was a deliberate misrepresentation or assumed it was fiction written in diary format. I tried it once, and it was…dreadful. Didn’t even finish the first chapter, I don’t think. ---
**Author:** ![Locrian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/locrian/32/14146_2.png) [@Locrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Locrian)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/30 "2016-02-13T05:46:30Z")
45, never heard of it. And I thought this was about Jefferson Airplane. :shrugs: ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/31 "2016-02-13T05:51:45Z")
I read it as a tween in the mid 1970s. I can’t imagine a junior high anywhere assigning it, because it’s loaded with profanity and sexual content. Yeah, we all thought it was a true story, and knowing what I do now, nobody could possibly experience all those things themselves in such a short period of time, although I’m sure all those things happened somewhere, to somebody. Not long after I read it, I saw the movie on late-night TV. It was made in 1973, and got it from Netflix when I found out they had it. ZOMG that movie was atrocious. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/32 "2016-02-13T06:27:27Z")
> [@Biggirl](#): > > From what I remember it was first marketed as autobiographical but was found to be totally made up. To me it was clearly an adult’s idea of how a nice girl ends up a messed up xrug addict. Sort of like Reefer Madness for the '70s. Yeah, I googled it and found [this on Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp): The final proof, however, lies in plain sight on the book’s copyright notice page: [INDENT]_This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental_ It’s not necessarily wrong to present a cautionary tale in the form of a first-person narrative — that storytelling device has been used effectively as long as folks have been spinning yarns. But it is unfair to maintain that something is a “true story” when in fact it’s manufactured hooey. There are enough real teens who lead short, tragic lives that we don’t need to invent any more. [/INDENT] ---
**Author:** ![AppallingGael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9bd4f/32.png) [@AppallingGael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AppallingGael)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/33 "2016-02-13T06:37:49Z")
I’m 50 (have been for months in fact but don’t think I’ve ever expressed it so starkly, anyway…) and I read my younger sister’s copy. I remember it was by “anonymous” so I figured it had to be a true story, because why be anonymous otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/34 "2016-02-13T09:47:31Z")
I’m 70, and read it when I was in training to be a crisis intervention counselor. It hadn’t been written when I was the appropriate age. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/35 "2016-02-13T10:15:51Z")
> [@AppallingGael](#): > > I’m 50 (have been for months in fact but don’t think I’ve ever expressed it so starkly, anyway…) and I read my younger sister’s copy. I remember it was by “anonymous” so I figured it had to be a true story, because why be anonymous otherwise? That was the other reason why I took it as gospel. The TV movie, IIRC, was atrocious. Most of those “cautionary teen movies” were, whether it was Go Ask Alice or Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway starring Jan Brady or Sarah T., Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic starring Linda Blair…and a plunger. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/36 "2016-02-13T11:33:08Z")
> [@Richey84](#): > > Same author actually. The author’s name is Beatrice Sparks and she wrote several of these types of stories. She was a therapist and claimed that her stories were based upon the experiences of her patients but she never produced any of these diaries for review. I think it’s assumed that she made it all up. Well, “based on” can be pretty loose as we often see with all kinds of “based on a true story” tales. I think the most likely explanation would be a few kernels of truth, to get her mind going, with a whole lot of embellishment to fill out the rest. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/37 "2016-02-13T12:12:55Z")
Alice? Who the fuck is Alice? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/38 "2016-02-13T14:03:35Z")
Read it in high school. Decent narrative structure, a bit melodramatic. Yes, it got a lot of attention for awhile, lots of adults recommending it (“then you’ll see why we tell you not to do drugs”) others calling it trash (“unfit for young adults to be reading”). > [@Biggirl](#): > > From what I remember it was first marketed as autobiographical but was found to be totally made up. To me it was clearly an adult’s idea of how a nice girl ends up a messed up xrug addict. Sort of like Reefer Madness for the '70s. I’ve often used it as an example of fiction passing as memoir, alongside of a few examples going the other direction, in explaining why I’m simultaneously hawking mine as fiction and as memoir. ---
**Author:** ![chaika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chaika/32/405_2.png) [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/39 "2016-02-13T14:10:24Z")
I read it when I was in 6th or 7th grade and it freaked me right out. It was one of those slightly disreputable books that became very popular due to adult disapproval. We were all convinced every word was true, despite the disclaimers and assurances that it was a work of fiction. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2016, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976/40 "2016-02-13T14:28:22Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Alice? > > Who the fuck is Alice? This is something that should never, ever be uttered. Or am I in the wrong thread? 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/go-ask-alice/745976.md?page=3)