Week 7 Prompt

“Don’t Believe Everything You Read – Fake Memoirs”

For this week’s prompt, I began by reading the Wikipedia entry on ‘Fake Memoirs’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_memoirs) and was surprised to see ‘Go Ask Alice’ by Anonymous on the list. I remember reading this in a high school Psychology class; this wasn’t too long ago, around 2006 – and I honestly can’t recall my instructor telling the class about the controversy surrounding the book, or the fact that a Psychologist, Beatrice Sparks (Sparks is listed as the author – not editor – of the book by the U.S. Copyright Office) , actually penned the book.

I was a sheltered, only child back in high school. I had received no exposure whatsoever to the lifestyle and choices depicted in the book, and had no friends who had ever experimented with or had access to drugs. We were very overprotected and naïve, and some of the passages from the faux-journal shocked me! That being said, I think that this book, even if it does not contain ANY real passages from a drug user’s diary, still has some form of literary merit. However, I feel sort of duped! I don’t think it’s ethical for professors or parents to present fake memoirs to readers or students, or publishers to present these titles to the public as nonfiction when they are in fact works of fiction. Does the fact that these specific instances never happened to the author in question, or the main character in question, lesson the impact that the work can have on the reader? Stories like this do in fact happen, and I know I was moved by the work, despite its reclassification as fiction. Elissa Gershowitz of The Horn Book Magazine claims that the nonfiction tag was intended to ‘scare readers straight,’ but I don’t know how true that claim actually is amongst its intended audience of teens.

In the late 1970’s, the book was being banned in public schools for encouraging ‘experimentation with drugs and sex and having no redeeming social or literary value’ (Library Journal, 920). SPOILER ALERT - Considering Alice DIES at the end of the book, I have a hard time believing that the book is likely to encourage its readers to go out and recreate the lifestyle of Alice, including living on the streets, trading sex for drugs, and other illustrious themes from the book. However, I can see how parents and educators may be concerned that the partying, new experiences and feeling ‘in control’ that Alice felt throughout the book, as the fictional character claimed, could be a lure for some impressionable young readers. I spoke with several YA librarians at the library where I work – where we have a HUGE number of teen patrons due to the large high school located close to us – about the title’s popularity nowadays. They informed me that the title is still popular now, and that as of last week, 2/3 of our copies were checked out. Perhaps the controversy, including the title’s inclusion on ALA’s 100 Most Frequently Challenged Book List for 1990-2000, has inspired a new generation of readers to see what all of the fuss is about.

When considering the fake memoir controversy of an author such as James Frey, who sold his book through the media as a true-life account, I definitely felt more betrayed than with the story of Go Ask Alice. I never had a ‘real’ face to put to the story, but with Frey, I was angered at his purposeful deception.  In Praise of the Fake Memoir by Robin Hemley, Hemley, who has taught a class specifically on the Fake Memoir at the University of Iowa, believes that many religious texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, share some similarities with the fake memoir, which I can agree with. I love her statement that ‘…in the best works, Truth as such is beside the point.’  (122)

I wish I knew back in high school that Go Ask Alice a fake memoir. I really like the idea of a YA display of ‘fake memoirs’ that would invite readers to judge the book based on literary merit itself. Perhaps even packaging two books together – with one title being a true biography, and one being a fake memoir, and having the reader, upon completion of the books, decide which one they liked better (if they had a favorite), which they felt more likely to a be a true account, and other questions.

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Gershowitz, Elissa. “What Makes a Good “Bad” Book?.” Horn Book Magazine 89.4 (2013): 84. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 24 2014.

“Go Ask Alice” Banned; “Fever” Book Burned.” Library Journal 103.9 (1978): 920. Education Source. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Hemley, Robin. “In Praise of the Fake Memoir.” English Language Notes 49.2 (2011): 119-124. Humanities Source. Web. 24 Feb 2014.