Go Ask Alice

Before I knew this book- about marijuana as a gateway drug to acid, insanity and whoredom- was actually written by a Mormon housewife, it stood sentinel for me as a defining piece of literature on how thin the veil is between being a teenage girl and a fucking maniac. Now that I know it was a judgey warning text by a bored housewife, and of course it is- because it plays into insanity as a fantasy of freedom. Beatrice Sparks may have thought she was saving teenagers, but perhaps she was just playacting the independence and experimentation she couldn’t readily access. She may be writing a horror story, but she makes it all sound kind of fun. In that way, this makes her the craziest bitch of them all.