Bill W. And Mr. Wilson by Raphael Matthew J

Author:Raphael, Matthew J. [Raphael, Matthew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Historical, Self-Help, Substance Abuse & Addictions, Alcohol, test
ISBN: 9781558493605
Google: mj4sI04-uMkC
Amazon: 1558493603
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
Published: 2002-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

Part three: What We Are Like Now

Seven – Writing the Big Book

With a touch of hype, perhaps, Nan Robertson calls Alcoholics Anonymous “one of the greatest publishing successes of all time,” having sold five million copies by 1985, the year of A.A.’s fiftieth anniversary.113 The Wilsons’ share of the royalties put them on easy street by the 1960s and made Lois rich after Bill died in 1971. In 1986, two years before her own death, she received nearly a million dollars from the sales of his books. None of this bounty could be returned to A.A. directly. It would have violated the Seventh Tradition: “Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions,” even from the cofounder’s wife. But Lois donated much of her income to the Stepping Stones Foundation for research on alcoholism.

Ironically, Wilson’s turnabout from a floundering business career led to his becoming not only a Number One man, in effect, the CEO of his own corporation, but also the manly provider he always wished to be. Although Wilson’s new vocation as a writer issued from his verbal facility, the peculiar discipline of writing itself was dauntingly unfamiliar at first. Nell Wing, Wilson’s loyal longtime secretary, recalls him as “a dedicated, tireless talker” who would often harangue his guests at Stepping Stones with protracted monologues. “Not many people interrupted him once he got started.”114 But this man who was never at a loss for words nonetheless struggled in writing the Big Book.

What became Alcoholics Anonymous was begun during the spring of 1938, while other fundraising initiatives were in progress.115 In short order Wilson drafted the two opening chapters: “Bill’s Story” and “There Is a Solution.” His method of composition was to make extensive notes to himself and then bring them to the Newark office of Honor Dealers, Bill’s business venture with Hank P. (They were trying to organize northern New Jersey’s gasoline dealers into a buyers’ cooperative.) Wilson would extemporize from his notes, giving dictation to Ruth Hock, recently hired as the company’s secretary and sole employee. She later recalled how Bill W. had stood behind her as she typed up his words, stopping after each section to “look back over the typed pages while his thoughts were still working in that vein” (PIO, 193). In another account, Hock remembered Bill’s chain-smoking and his pacing back and forth as he expounded his ideas: “At various intervals he would include his philosophizing off the subject using lengthy, flowery metaphors that would later be edited out.”116 The first two chapters were revised in consultation with the New York group and then multilithed for limited circulation to prospective financial backers. (In this format only, “Bill’s Story’’ came after, rather than before, “There Is a Solution.”)

On a tip from one of the recently installed (and nonalcoholic) trustees of the Alcoholic Foundation, a newly formed trust for the still nameless bunch of drunks, Wilson approached Eugene Exman, editor of religious books at Harper and Brothers. Exman, who had built Harper’s list

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