Chapter 1
“While these real-time documents provide the most unassailable evidence for what happened in Alcoholics Anonymous between late 1934 and early 1939, that history is further embellished by the later writings and statements of four early participants in the story: Bill Wilson (A.A.’s founder), Ebby Thatcher (the man who first exposed Bill to the ideas that led to the creation of A.A.), Jim Burwell (an early atheistic member of A.A.), and Ruth Hock (A.A.’s first secretary). The word ‘embellished’ is used here deliberately to emphasize the fact that each of these four major eyewitnesses has proven to be unreliable, to one degree or another, once their testimony is critically compared with the available archived materials.”
Schaberg’s tone feels a little coy here. “Embellished” is not a term used to convey the normal inaccuracy that goes with a flawed human memory, but instead the exaggeration and elaboration that comes with a generally intentional distortion of the truth.
He elaborates though that it’s “not meant to impugn everything that was said at some distance from the actual events, but knowing how defective and creative memory can be demands that we check and, if possible, correct those errors by comparing them with the more reliable, more believable evidence provided by contemporary documentation.”
It sounds like a focus on fact-checking, but we also get some narrativizing to preface that right away:
“Bill Wilson, the man who contributed more ‘factual’ information than anyone else to the traditional story of A.A., was by far the worst offender when it came to accuracy regarding their early history. This may sound harsh to Wilson’s many worshipful admirers in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is an undeniable fact… Wilson’s divergence from the truth was so common and so pervasive that it can only be compared to a dark cloud looming over any attempt to write an accurate history of A.A.’s early years, obscuring and even falsifying what happened at several key points in the story.”
“Wilson became increasingly aware of the need to curb his natural tendencies toward grandiosity… Bill regularly sidestepped these ego traps by modifying the facts, changing the story in ways that deflected attention away from himself.”
Embellished, indeed. Bill isn’t around to defend himself anymore, and while I know many AA members certainly are, I’ll still keep that in mind. I’m a little wary of works that begin by rhetorically priming the reader for a position before laying out something concrete to interpret. Schaberg explicitly points to Pass It On for corroboration, citing that Wilson was “never reluctant to stretch a fact for the sake of emphasis” and “was never likely to pass up the opportunity to deliver a parable where he thought it could do some good.” These do feel a little euphemistic to me.
“Finally, many aspects of the true stories just did not make for comfortable retelling once Alcoholics Anonymous became a successful national institution. This was the case, for instance, concerning A.A.’s early partnership with the Oxford Group”
While I don’t agree with everything about A.A. and have expressed that openly, I will repeatedly give it credit for providing a genuinely accessible fellowship network of people pursuing recovery and a fulfilling sober life.
The Oxford Group has no such distinction. Frank Buchman, its founder, thought a utopia on Earth would be possible through Christian dictatorships and wanted to convert Hitler. Wilson has credited the Oxford Group for being the primary source of the spiritual principles behind the Steps. I had assumed that this only meant that there was some overlap in membership before Wilson tried to create a space exclusively for alcoholics. “Partnership” implies something deeper than that, which piques my interest.