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)
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