Go Ask Amy.....

Usually when I get bored at work what I will do is look something up on Wikipedia and click on all the links associated with that article. I just saw a film with Richard Gere called "The Hoax" which is a true story about Clifford Irving an author who claimed he was writing a biography on movie mogul Howard Hughes with Hughes full cooperation. Irving, got a one million dollar advance on the book and there was a lot of hype surrounding the publishing of this book, because at the time Howard Hughes was very reclusive and known to not give any interviews to anyone. As it turns out the whole story was a hoax and Clifford Irving faked the Howard Hughes interviews and was arrested for fraud and embezzlement.

Anyhow last week I was bored at work and I looked up Clifford Irving and clicked on all the links associated with his article on wikipedia. One of which was literary hoaxes. One of the articles linked under literary hoaxes was an article about a book that came out in the early 70's called "Go Ask Alice". The book is supposedly the diary of a teenage girl from a nice upper middle class family who got mixed up in the world of sex, drugs (namely weed and LSD) and rock and roll and died from a drug overdose. The book for many years was a pretty controversial book for kids (12 to 17 year olds were its target audience) to read and many schools across the US banned the book because of it's frank description of sex and drug use. And as it turns out the woman who "edited" the book was a devout Mormon and she is thought to have been the real author of the book.

Well the article about this book had me intrigued. And so this weekend as I was making my rounds I stoped off at the McNally bookstore on Prince Street and picked myself up a copy, when I asked the girl who worked behind the counter in what section of the store I could find a copy of the book; she looked at me with a straight face and said "you didn't read this book in secret when you were in the fifth grade...every kid did"!! And I looked at her with straight face and said no I just read the article about this book on wikipedia last week. Once I got home I dug right in and the book made me seriously laugh it read like a really bad after school special. You can tell a lot of urban legends about weed and LSD grew out of this book.

I just had a vision in my head as I read it of this story getting the John Waters treatment on film. I could see Britney Spears as "Alice", Patty Hearst and Tab Hunter playing the parents and Lindsay Lohan as the best friend "Chris". I'm surprised John Waters hasn't turned this book into a film already with Divine as "Alice" and Mink Stole as "Chris".

Very campy this book!!

Two GNYC shows at the Mean Fiddler and Arlene's this weekend. Details later this week.

I leave you with a clip of the Jefferson Airplane preforming "White Rabbit" at "Woodstock"...the lyric "Go Ask Alice" in "White Rabbit" is were the book gets its title from.