STACKS PAGE
Works by Eliot Taintor
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Recovery
September Remember (1945)
"The advantage of the present 300-page pamphlet (disguised as
a pulp-style novel) over the shorter booklets distributed by AA, lies in its
detailed revelations of group activity. While the formal weekly meetings are
devoted to inspirational talks by ex-alcoholics, coffee is drunk in no blue-nose
spirit; good fellowship abounds ("You can get that sense of abandon without
liquor"). AA members feel a natural solidarity: the way they would "get up and
talk at meetings, really let their hair down, made -other contacts seem thin and
superficial. Other people shadowy." And while AA insists that it has no ambition
to impose sobriety on the nation, its members feel a natural willingness to
share their benefits with any applicant. They are "on call," so to speak, day
and night, answering requests for aid or enlightenment from strangers or
backsliding fellows. Each member is at once both patient and physician: only
from a fellow alcoholic can they receive that acceptance, without condescension,
which society has withheld. As physician, setting an example to others, they
have an incentive toward sobriety, but it seems to me they gain something more
valuable as well: the privilege of adult responsibility without its full rigors.
They feel free to become a child—a patient--again, whenever necessary. But in
practice, of course, this dual role must cause some paralyzing inter-alcoholic
confusions--depending on who is treating whom at the moment. Prestige is gained
primarily through one’s success in not drinking; second, through one’s talent
for mutual aid. Occasionally an unregenerate member is subjected to social
ostracism. ("But probably every field has it lunatic fringe.") " -- The New
Republic, May 21, 1945
OUT OF PRINT