My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
by Susan Cheever
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Book Summary Information
Author: Susan CheeverEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-23
ISBN: 0743405919
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Book Reviews of My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
Book Review: Nailing Genius
Summary: 5 Stars
Two decades ago, I took up with a recovering alcoholic, and in a show of support, I attended several open Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. After a while, I had to confess that I found them really hokey. "That's because you are not an alcoholic," he replied. "If you were, you'd recognize the genius of the mind that created it. It's brilliant."
For the last two days, I've carried Susan Cheever's book about Bill Wilson around with me, reading, I must admit, compulsively. Cheever, whose father John's important fiction covers the period in which AA grew up, brings a literary eye to the development of a character familiar in American public life: the charismatic leader. If it's not perfect in every factual detail, it is rich in content about our society, addictive substances, and our own craving for a savior.
As in the lives of most alcoholics, there's a lot of pain. Surviving divorce in New England when it was rare, abandoned by a mother who remained nevertheless demanding, losing a sweetheart whose family had adopted him as their own--Cheever describes these events in Bill's early life in a sympathic but unsentimental way. She's less successful in blending the history of Vermont from colonial times to the present, but even with awkward flashbacks and forwards, this secondary narrative tells us a lot about the world that informed Bill's character. He was politically conservative, but doggedly independent; someone who with little tutoring found within himself both musical and engineering talents. He attended his family's Congregational church but failed to find the spiritual sustenance that he needed. His admission to a prestigious boarding school coincided with an impressive spurt in physical and mental growth, but he dropped out when felled by depression after his girlfriend died.
By the time he takes up drink, we are prepared for a daunting ride. To anyone familiar with the genre of drunkalogues, it's predictable, but Cheever keeps the story moving by putting Bill's various binges in personal and historical context. By the time he gets to his Akron meeting with Dr. Bob Smith, AA's co-founder, all the elements are in place. It's perhaps unfair that Bill W.'s story gets more attention than Bob S.'s, but, steady and conventional (once sober) are less compelling than mercurial and brilliantly insightful. If the latter gifts are more impressive, so are Bill W's weaknesses--his inability to give up the tobacco that eventually kills him, the depressions that leave him weeping publically, and the perpetual womanizing. Amazingly, he works out the Twelve Traditions that guide the organization while clinically depressed. The more successful he and AA become, the more he craves anonymity.
Especially if you're unfamiliar with the practices of AA, it's instructive to see how they developed from the experiences of these two men and their cohorts. I was surprised that Bill W. had a powerful (although perhaps drug-induced) conversion but that he remained determined not to define God for anyone else. If he lacked impulse control in some areas of his life, he exercised it in others where most popular leaders fail. Cheever is even-handed about Bill's long marriage to the former Lois Burnham, whose life's work supported him and helped establish Al-Anon for families of alcoholics. While some might write the two off as codependent, Cheever brings sympathy to this long alliance. Perhaps someone will write a book about the women of AA, but, as Cheever notes, it was born in a man's world, and many people thought only men could become alcoholics.
Finally, Cheever's book makes clear that Bill W. knew that AA was not the final solution for alcoholism. He saw a psychiatrist. He experimented with LSD and Vitamin B--the first in hopes of finding a shortcut to conversion and the latter as an fixative for chemical dependency. He missed the days when he could attend meetings himself without being recognized.
Ultimately, dying of emphysema, he desperately wanted a drink. I found myself thinking: Why not? But his caretakers refused him, perhaps thinking of the millions who would follow. He was still a drunk, but he was their drunk.
Summary of My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous
In this definitive and groundbreaking biography, acclaimed author Susan Cheever offers a remarkably human portrait of a man whose life and work both influenced and saved the lives of millions of people. Drawing from personal letters, diaries, AA archives, interviews -- and Cheever's own experiences with alcoholism -- My Name Is Bill is the first fully documented, deeply felt account of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.Entertainers Books
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