Was the writing of the
Big Book a difficult job?
Answer
As the chapters were done,
we went to A.A. meetings in New York with the
chapters in the rough. It wasn't like
chicken-in-the-rough, the boys didn't eat those
chapters up at all. I suddenly discovered that I
was in a terrific whirlpool of arguments. I was
just the umpire. I finally had to stipulate,
"Well boys, over here we have the holy rollers
who say we need all the good old-fashioned stuff
in the book, and over here you tell me we've got
to have a psychological book, and that never
cure anybody, and they didn't do very much with
us in the missions, so I guess you will have to
leave me just to be the umpire. I'll scribble
out some roughs here and show them to you and
let's get the comments in." So we fought, bled
and died our way through one chapter after
another. We sent copies out to Akron and they
were peddled around and there were terrific
hassles about what should go in this book and
what should not.
Meanwhile, we set
drunks up to write their stories or we had
newspaper people to write the stories for them
to go in the back of the book. We had an idea
that we'd have a text and then we'd have stories
all about the drunks who were staying sober.
(Transcribed from tape, Fort Worth, Tx., 1954)
