Editing Go Ask Alice (section)

==Authorship and veracity controversies==
Although ''Go Ask Alice'' has been credited to an anonymous author since its publication, and was originally promoted as the real, albeit edited, diary of a teenage girl, over time the book has come to be regarded by researchers as a [[fake memoirs|fake memoir]] written by Beatrice Sparks,<ref name="Esq"/><ref name=nilsenreminiscing /><ref name=yagoda /><ref name=mikkelson /><ref name=white /><ref name=hendley /><ref name=katsoulis /><ref name=goldberg /> possibly with the help of one or more co-authors.<ref name=oppenheimer /> Despite significant evidence of Sparks' authorship, a percentage of readers and educators have continued to believe that the book is a true-life account of a teenage girl.<ref name=yagoda /><ref name=katsoulis /><ref name=goldberg />

===Beatrice Sparks authorship controversy===
''Go Ask Alice'' was originally published by [[Prentice Hall]] in 1971 as the work of an unnamed author "Anonymous". The original edition contained a note signed by "The Editors" that included the statements, "''Go Ask Alice'' is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user....Names, dates, places and certain events have been changed in accordance with the wishes of those concerned."<ref name=yagoda>{{cite book |last=Yagoda |first=Ben |date=2009 |title=Memoir: A History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tp1vhUQf68EC&pg=PT158 |location=New York City |publisher=Riverhead Books (Penguin Group (USA)) |page=PT158 |isbn=978-1-101-15147-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Anonymous |date=1971 |title=Go Ask Alice |location=[[Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey]] |publisher=Prentice-Hall Inc. |edition=First }}</ref> The paperback edition first published in 1972 by [[Avon (publisher)|Avon Books]] contained the words "A Real Diary" on the front cover just above the title,<ref>{{cite book |author=Anonymous |date=1971 |publication-date=1972 |title=Go Ask Alice |location=New York City |publisher=[[Avon (publisher)|Avon Books]] |page=Front cover |no-pp=yes |lccn=74-159446 |edition=First paperback |id=Avon Catalog N431}}</ref> and the same words were included on the front covers of some later editions.<ref name=adams /> [[File:Go_Ask_Alice_-_Avon_Books_paperback_edition_cover_art.jpg|thumb|left|The cover art of the Avon Books paperback edition of ''Go Ask Alice'' presented it as "A Real Diary".]]

Upon its publication, almost all contemporary reviewers and the general public accepted it as primarily authored by an anonymous teenager. According to Lauren Adams, ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' magazine was the only source to question the book's authenticity on the grounds that it "seem[ed] awfully well written".<ref name=adams /> Reviews described the book as either the authentic diary of a real teenage girl,<ref name=oppenheimer /><ref name=loebker /><ref name=durchschlag>{{cite news |last=Durchschlag |first=Beth |date=1971-08-25 |title=The Girl Who Lived Next Door&nbsp;– Till Drugs Killed Her |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/181381679/ |newspaper=[[Courier-Post]]|location=Camden, New Jersey|page=30|access-date=2017-01-07 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  |quote=For Alice was real and could have lived next door; her parents...decided to let her story be told.}}</ref> or as an edited or slightly fictionalized version of her authentic diary.<ref name=janke>{{cite news |last=Janke |first=Lynn |date=1971-12-18 |title=Death Hovers Over Dismal Drug Scene: Overdose Victim Leaves a Diary |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/105774143/ |newspaper=The Indianapolis Star |page=6 |access-date=2016-12-21 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  |quote="Go Ask Alice," written anonymously, is based on the actual diary of a girl "turned on" to drugs when she was 15.}}</ref><ref name=cumberland>{{cite news |last=Cumberland |first=Donna, Assistant Librarian |date=1972-01-21 |title=Library Jottings: Books For Winter |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/18268671/ |newspaper=[[The Herald Bulletin|Anderson Daily Bulletin]] |location=[[Anderson, Indiana]] |page=8 |access-date=2016-12-21 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  |quote=The diary is published by her parents, who wish to remain anonymous...Some events have been changed to protect them, so the book is classified as fiction...}}</ref> Some sources claimed that the girl's parents had arranged for her diary to be published after her death.<ref name=foster /><ref name=durchschlag /><ref name=cumberland /> However, according to Alleen Pace Nilsen, a "reputable source in the publishing world" allegedly said that the book was published anonymously because the parents had initiated legal action and threatened to sue if the published book could be traced back to their daughter.<ref name=nilsenhouse />

Not long after ''Go Ask Alice''{{'}}s publication, Beatrice Sparks began making public appearances presenting herself as the book's editor.<ref name=white /> (Ellen Roberts, who in the early 1970s was an editor at Prentice Hall,<ref>{{cite book |last=dePaola |first=Tomie |date=2015 |title=The Magical World of Strega Nona: A Treasury |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKTjDAAAQBAJ&pg=PR6 |location=New York City |publisher=Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin Group (USA))|page=vi |isbn=9780399173455 |author-link=Tomie dePaola }}</ref> was also credited at that time with having edited the book;<ref>{{cite news |date=1975-03-08 |title=Teachers To Discuss Textbook Censorship |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/52861588/ |newspaper=[[Kansas City Times]] |location=[[Kansas City, Missouri]] |page=4A |access-date=2016-12-21 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  |agency=[[The Kansas City Star|The Star]]'s Own Service}}</ref> a later source refers to Roberts as having "consulted" on the book.)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://chrispygal.weebly.com/home/ok-this-is-really-happening |title=Christine Potter: Time Travels: OK, This Is Really Happening... |last=Potter |first=Christine |date=2015-09-25 |website=Chrispygal.weebly.com |access-date=2016-12-29 |quote=I worked with editor Ellen Roberts, who'd consulted on the old YA diary ''Go Ask Alice''. |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161229193738/http://chrispygal.weebly.com/home/ok-this-is-really-happening |archive-date=2016-12-29 }}</ref> According to Caitlin White, when Sparks' name became public, some researchers discovered that copyright records listed Sparks as the sole author—not editor—of the book, raising questions about whether she had written it herself.<ref name=white /> Suspicions were heightened in 1979 after two newly published books about troubled teenagers (''Voices'' and ''[[Jay's Journal]]'') advertised Sparks' involvement by calling her "the author who brought you ''Go Ask Alice''".<ref name="Esq"/><ref name=nilsenhouse /><ref name=adams /><ref>{{cite news |author=B. Dalton |author-link=B. Dalton  |date=1978-10-15 |title=Voices (advertisement) |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/165717619/ |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |page=18 (Book Review section) |access-date=2017-01-06 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  }}</ref>

In an article by Nilsen, based in part on interviews with Sparks and published in the October 1979 issue of ''[[School Library Journal]]'', Sparks said that she had received the diaries that became ''Go Ask Alice'' from a girl she had befriended at a youth conference. The girl allegedly gave Sparks her diaries in order to help Sparks understand the experiences of young drug users and to prevent her parents from reading them. According to Sparks, the girl later died, although not of an overdose. Sparks said she had then transcribed the diaries, destroying parts of them in the process (with the remaining portions locked in the publisher's vault and unavailable for review by Nilsen or other investigators), and added various fictional elements, including the overdose death. Although Sparks did not confirm or deny the allegations that the diarist's parents had threatened a lawsuit, she did say that in order to get a release from the parents, she had only sought to use the diaries as a "basis to which she would add other incidents and thoughts gleaned from similar case studies," according to Nilsen.<ref name=nilsenhouse />

Nilsen wrote that Sparks now wanted to be seen as the author of the popular ''Go Ask Alice'' in order to promote additional books in the same vein that she had published or was planning to publish. (These books included ''Jay's Journal'', another alleged diary of a real teenager that Sparks was later accused of mostly authoring herself.<ref name=dieterle />) Nilsen concluded, "The question of how much of ''Go Ask Alice'' was written by the real Alice and how much by Beatrice Sparks can only be conjectured."<ref name=nilsenhouse /> Journalist Melissa Katsoulis, in her 2009 history of literary hoaxes ''Telling Tales'', wrote that Sparks was never able to substantiate her claim that ''Go Ask Alice'' was based on the real diary of a real girl and that copyright records continued to list her as the sole author of the work.<ref name=katsoulis />

Urban folklore expert Barbara Mikkelson of [[snopes.com]] has written that even before the authorship revelations, ample evidence indicated that ''Go Ask Alice'' was not an actual diary. According to Mikkelson, the writing style and content—including a lengthy description of an LSD trip but relatively little about "the loss of [the diarist's] one true love", school, gossip, or ordinary "chit-chat"—seems uncharacteristic of a teenage girl's diary.<ref name=mikkelson /> The sophisticated vocabulary of the diary suggested that it had been written by an adult rather than a teen.<ref name=mikkelson /><ref name=bisbort>{{cite book |last=Bisbort |first=Alan |title=Media Scandals |year=2008 |series=Scandals in American History |url=https://archive.org/details/mediascandals0000bisb |url-access=registration |location=Westport, Connecticut |publisher=Greenwood Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/mediascandals0000bisb/page/93 93] |isbn=9780313347658 |issn=1942-0102 }}</ref> Mikkelson also noted that in the decades since the book's publication, no one who knew the diarist had ever been tracked down by a reporter or otherwise spoken about or identified the diarist.<ref name=mikkelson />

In hindsight, commentators have suggested various motivations for the publishers to present ''Go Ask Alice'' as the work of an anonymous deceased teenager, such as avoiding literary criticism,<ref name=goldberg /> lending validity to an otherwise improbable story,<ref name=goldberg /> and stimulating young readers' interest by having the book's anti-drug advice come from a teenager rather than an adult. Sparks said that while there were "many reasons" for publishing the book anonymously, her main reason was to make it more credible to young readers.<ref name=nilsenhouse /> Although the book has been classified as fiction (see [[#Fiction|Treatment of book as fiction and non-fiction]]), the publisher has continued to list its author as "Anonymous".

===Controversies involving other works by Sparks===
Sparks was involved in a similar controversy regarding the veracity of her second diary project, the 1979 book ''[[Jay's Journal]]''.<ref name="Esq"/> It was allegedly the real diary, edited by Sparks, of a teenage boy who died by [[suicide]] after becoming involved with the [[occult]].<ref name=goldberg /> The publisher's initial marketing of the book raised questions about whether Sparks had edited a real teenager's diary or written a fictional diary, and recalled the same controversy with respect to ''Go Ask Alice''.<ref>{{cite news |last=Schwartz |first=Sheila |date=1980-09-21 |title='Jay's Journal' Deplorable  |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/114376157/ |page=17B |newspaper=Poughkeepsie Journal |location=[[Poughkeepsie, New York]] |access-date=2017-01-05 |via=Newspapers.com |url-access=subscription  }}</ref> Later, the family of real-life teenage suicide Alden Barrett contended that ''Jay's Journal'' used 21 entries from Barrett's real diary that the family had given to Sparks, but that the other 191 entries in the published book had been fictionalized or fabricated by Sparks, and that Barrett had not been involved with the occult or "devil worship".<ref name=dieterle>{{cite news|last=Dieterle |first=Ben |date=2004-06-03 |title=Teen Death Diary |url=http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_2004-06-03.cfm |url-status=dead |newspaper=Salt Lake City Weekly |location=Salt Lake City, Utah |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060629192655/http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_2004-06-03.cfm |archive-date=2006-06-29 |access-date=2016-12-22 }}</ref>

Sparks went on to produce numerous other books presented as diaries of anonymous troubled teens (including ''Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager'' and ''It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager'') or edited transcripts of therapy sessions with teens (including ''[[Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets]]''). Some commentators have noted that these books use writing styles similar to ''Go Ask Alice''<ref name=adams /> and contain similar themes, such as tragic consequences for spending time with bad companions, a protagonist who initially gets into trouble by accident or through someone else's actions, and portrayal of premarital sex and homosexuality as always wrong.<ref name=goldberg /> Although Sparks was typically listed on these books as editor or preparer, the number of similar books that Sparks published, making her "arguably the most prolific Anonymous author in publishing",<ref name=bisbort /> fueled suspicions that she wrote ''Go Ask Alice''.<ref name=adams /><ref name=bisbort />

===Linda Glovach authorship claims===
In a 1998 ''New York Times'' book review, Mark Oppenheimer suggested that ''Go Ask Alice'' had at least one author besides Sparks. He identified Linda Glovach, an author of [[young-adult novel]]s, as "one of the 'preparers'—let's call them forgers—of ''Go Ask Alice''", although he did not give his source for this claim.<ref name=oppenheimer /> ''Publishers Weekly'', in a review of Glovach's 1998 novel ''Beauty Queen'' (which told the story, in diary form, of a 19-year-old girl addicted to [[heroin]]),<ref>{{cite book |last=Glovach |first=Linda |date=1998 |title=Beauty Queen |location=New York City |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-06-205161-5 }}</ref> also stated that Glovach was "a co-author of ''Go Ask Alice''".<ref name=pw>{{cite magazine |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Beauty Queen |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-205161-5 |magazine=[[Publishers Weekly]] |location=New York City |publisher=publishersweekly.com |access-date=2016-12-22 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161222161131/http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-205161-5 |archive-date=2016-12-22 |quote=FYI: Glovach is a co-author of Go Ask Alice.}}</ref>  No sources were offered for the claim of Glovach's alleged involvement with the work, which is not widely accepted.

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