Akron and New York · 1938–January 1939
A sober newspaperman got Akron’s stories on paper. New York wrote its own, and fought over every cut.
“Who were we, said the writers, to edit their stories?”
The text told how the program worked. The stories were to show that it did, and to reach a distant reader in a way the text alone might not. Most of the long recoveries had happened in Akron, so Akron had to supply most of them.
Akron balked. Some members wanted no part of a book they thought was a commercial venture. One got it into his head that Bill W. and Dr. Bob would make a fortune, wanted his share, and got drunk. Another withdrew his story as a fraud, then put it back. “For a time, we thought the whole Akron group might break up over the book,” Dorothy S. M. remembered.
Akron had a man for the job. Jim S. had been a well-known newspaperman until drink put him on Akron’s skid row. Dr. Bob had him hospitalized, and he sobered up. Then he went after the members with real sobriety and sat over them until their stories were on paper. Dr. Bob wrote his own. His daughter, Sue, typed some of the others for practice.
New York had no Jim. Each member with a real record of sobriety wrote his own story, and Bill and Hank P. edited them. The writers objected. Bill admitted it was a good question, and they edited them anyway.
By late January 1939 the story section was done, Bill wrote: eighteen stories from Akron, two of them by Clevelanders and one a wife’s, and ten from New York.
It’s 1938, in Akron, Ohio. The book needs stories, and most of the long recoveries are here. But some of the Akron drunks think the book is a racket. One man pulls his story, calls it a fraud, and puts it back.
Dr. Bob has a man for the job: Jim S., a newspaperman who drank himself onto skid row. Jim sobers up and goes after the Akron members, sitting over them until their stories are on paper. Dr. Bob writes his own.
In New York there’s no Jim, so the drunks write their own, and Bill and Hank edit them. Who are you, the writers want to know, to edit our stories?
By the end of January 1939, the stories are done. Eighteen from Akron, ten from New York.
Compare the accounts
Everyone agrees Jim S. got them written. How much of the writing was his depends on who is telling it.
In the order they were written down. Bill’s account was written eighteen years after the events; Lois W.’s memoir and the interviews in Good Oldtimers about forty years after.
18 years after
“In most cases Jim interviewed the prospects and wrote their stories for them.”
Jim had been lifted off skid row two years before the book. The one wife’s story was by the wife of an Akron member.
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. AA’s own brief history of the book tells it the same way.
40 years after
“One of them, a newspaperman named Jim, helped with the writing.”
Akron’s group was larger, she wrote, and with Jim’s help its stories came out more numerous and better written than New York’s.
Lois Remembers, chapter 10.
About 40 years after
“He made rewrites, but he was always careful to keep the flavor.”
In her telling, Dr. Bob found Jim when the stories were already late, and Jim helped the members write their own.
Interviewed for Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, chapter XI.
80 years after
His history of the writing, Writing the Big Book, goes furthest: Jim, in his account, essentially wrote the Akron stories himself, from his talks with the members.
As reported in The Fix. Not quoted here.
For a closer look
How the drafts were read in Akron; the one story by a wife; and why the Oxford Group was unhappy with the book.
Bob E. remembered the rough drafts coming from New York and going over them with Dr. Bob in his living room. “I was one of the chosen few,” he said. Dorothy remembered the chapters being read aloud at the Akron meeting, with comments sent back to Bill.
Good Oldtimers suggests both may be true: a few saw the early chapters, and more saw them as the book went on.
Bill later wrote that Akron supported the book better than New York did. The authors of Good Oldtimers, having heard about the trouble in Akron, suspected Bill “might have been assuming that his part of the stove was warmer.”
One of the stories in the first edition was a wife’s, Marie B.’s. Bill called it an early forerunner of the family groups that became Al-Anon.
He remembered her as the wife of an Akron member. Good Oldtimers says her husband was from Cleveland.
The chapter for wives was a different matter. Bill wrote that one himself, in their voice, which is told in 3 · To Wives.
In Akron the alcoholics still met at T. Henry Williams’s house, among Oxford Group members, and many thought of themselves as Oxford Groupers. The Group was disappointed in the book. It never mentioned the Oxford Group, and its Twelve Steps took the place of the Group’s four absolutes.
Bill later told T. Henry that Catholics were coming into AA, and the book couldn’t give the Group the credit it deserved. In New York the alcoholics had already gone their own way in 1937. In Akron, by Bill’s account, many members thought they were the Oxford Group until the book came out.