My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous [Paperback]

Susan Cheever (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first half of Wilson's life was a perpetual battle with alcohol; the second, a continual struggle to secure both his day-to-day sobriety and the organization that became Alcoholics Anonymous. Cheever's portrayal of Wilson's story never resorts to hagiography and doesn't dodge the controversies that other biographers have exploited, such as Wilson's womanizing and LSD use. The author of Note Found in a Bottle places greater emphasis on Wilson's rural Vermont childhood; his father's early desertion; his mother's stern, Calvinist nature; and the influence of his few male friends and authority figures. As a boy and adolescent, Wilson bounced among various activities and social groups, seldom sticking with one for long. He tended to seize upon short-term promises of happiness and security, whether a questionable job prospect or, with disastrous consequences, his first alcoholic drink. He grabbed impulsively at the first marriage opportunity, with Lois Burnham, four years his senior, and his drinking severely tested their marriage. In 1935, Wilson's contact with the Oxford Group and its Christian reform philosophy, and with Robert Smith, an Ohio doctor and alcoholic, laid a fragile foundation for the program and fellowship they would build into the worldwide organization for recovering alcoholics. Until his death in 1971, Wilson worked to strengthen the evolution of AA and never entirely abandoned his search for a better cure. Although the compression of so much material disserves Cheever's intentions, the resulting lumpiness is oddly consistent with Wilson's life and character.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New England Journal of Medicine

The brief personal introduction that ends with ". . . and I'm an alcoholic" is often parodied in film and print, but it captures the central discovery that Bill Wilson stumbled on as he found the path to freedom from his own addiction to alcohol. It was by talking to other drunks about his own drinking that Wilson made his first steps toward sustained sobriety. The most famous of such conversations occurred with Dr. Robert Smith on June 10, 1935, marking the official date of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The rest is history. But history is different from "the story," and in her book My Name Is Bill, Susan Cheever draws on her skills as a writer and on her personal experience with alcohol to develop this story in a masterly fashion. The book is as much a biography of Bill Wilson as it is a collection of stories, which are skillfully stitched together in a roughly chronological order. The result is at the same time pleasant to read and a scholarly insight into the life of this celebrated person. Cheever accomplishes this feat through the use of evocative descriptions of characters and scenes and the foreshadowing of future events. AA meetings are full of stories -- stories of failure, success, fallibility, and redemption. Each chapter in this book is a brief story that spans a handful of pages and is linked with the other chapters to draw the reader in and onward. Along the way I learned about Wilson's childhood and the departure of his alcoholic father at a critical stage in his boyhood; that event left the young Bill with an emotionally distant and critical mother, who ultimately also left him and his sister, this time in the care of their grandparents. He was steeped in the secular spirituality of the Swedenborgians, an influence that set the stage for the complex relationship that AA has with God ("as we understood Him," according to the organization's Twelve Steps). By virtue of having grown up during a time of the ascendancy of the temperance movement in the United States, Wilson made his own teetotaling oath, which was later broken many times by his subsequent devotion to alcohol. One of the four sections of the book describes this descent into alcoholism -- Wilson's "drunkalog," told and retold countless times, officially in the "Big Book of AA" and at the innumerable meetings that he attended as the organization's cofounder. It was during his active drinking years that he became engaged with and influenced by the Washingtonian and Oxford Group movements -- influenced particularly by their demise. The failures of these two temperance groups resulted in large part from the fact that their dominating, charismatic leaders were involved in social and political influence peddling. The two groups served as beacons of negative example that shaped the early genius of AA -- namely, its insistence on the anonymity of its members and on having no opinion about "outside matters" and an organizational structure that is a decentralized, leaderless democracy. As Bill Wilson once said, "Alcoholics Anonymous was safe -- even from me." The question of whether Wilson stepped down from his leadership role in AA because he recognized the threat he presented as the celebrated cofounder or because he was not able to pursue his outside interests in the spotlight of such a public life is not settled by this biography, but both rationales are equally likely. Cheever richly describes the personal struggle of this small-town Vermonter, who turned down an honorary doctoral degree from Yale since receiving such an accolade would have risked linking AA with a personality rather than with a fellowship of drunks. Cheever also fleshes out a thread begun in the book's early chapters that lets the reader in on Wilson's struggle with depression and anxiety, an exploration of his interest in the occult and in the practice of communicating with the spirit world, and speculation about his sexual exploits. Each of these stories provides insight into the complexity of this modern hero. (Figure) There are other biographies of Wilson, including an approved autobiography. But Cheever's story -- which is illustrated by photographs of the people, places, and things of his life -- is relatively unencumbered by a personal agenda. Moreover, Cheever's skill as a storyteller makes this an enjoyable reading experience. Timothy I. Mueller, M.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (August 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743405919
• ISBN-13: 978-0743405911
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #90 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Recovery > Twelve-Step Programs

More About the Author

I was born in New York City and have lived here on and off my entire life--in fact I went to nursery school a few blocks from where I write this. It took me a long time to admit I was a writer--I had a career as a teacher and I loved it. When I was married I couldn't get a teaching job so by an amazing stroke of luck I went to work for my local small town newspaper. After a long time as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I took off to write a novel when I was 35 and I haven't looked back.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars God and Drunks, February 22, 2005

By 

Michael F. Drummy (Denver CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (Hardcover)

Is there really a need for yet another biography of William G. Wilson, the now famous co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and author of the original "Twelve Steps" of recovery? At last count, at least half a dozen full-length versions of Wilson's life have appeared in print since his death over 30 years ago. A number of the earlier biographies (e.g., Robert Thomsen's Bill W. [1975] and the anonymously written Pass It On [1984]) are, while certainly of some historical interest, unabashedly biased, sentimentalized, and verging on the hagiographic. Recently, however, more critical readings of "Bill W."'s life have been undertaken. Francis Hartigan's own Bill W., published in 2000, belongs to this class, as does the volume by Susan Cheever that is the subject of this review. These latter efforts provide a welcome and healthy corrective to the accounts of Wilson's life that tend, perhaps unintentionally, to lionize him out of all proportion.

There is little question that Bill Wilson was one of the most influential and quixotic figures of the past hundred years. In fact, Aldous Huxley regarded him "as the greatest social architect of the twentieth century" (Hartigan, 4). The significance of Cheever's particular contribution to the growing literature surrounding Wilson and the movement he spawned lies principally in her facility as an accomplished writer to provide a narrative context as well as fresh insight into and new understanding of this fascinating man. Unlike most of Wilson's previous biographers, she brings to life with exceptional skill those scenes from his life that are unusually compelling. At times it is indeed like reading a good novel.

In so doing she invites the reader to consider Wilson's simple yet turbulent Vermont upbringing as the key to understanding his unparalleled successes as well as his dismal failures. For, despite bringing into existence and nurturing the AA movement into a worldwide phenomenon, Wilson was nonetheless financially unstable, wracked with chronic depression for most of his life, a notorious womanizer and, by some accounts, a lousy sponsor to newcomers to the program of recovery he helped create. Cheever often treats these various episodes with deft humor and critical compassion. In relating Wilson's infamous first drink of alcohol, at the tender age of 22 at a cocktail party in New Bedford, Massachusetts (where he was stationed prior to shipping out to France during World War I), Cheever describes the circumstances that led the "gawky soldier" to break his promise to himself not to drink:

Bill had never seen a mansion like the Grinnells'.... [T]he glowing rooms and fragrant gardens beyond were filled with people chatting, drinking, and laughing. Bill didn't see anyone he knew.... Then there were the socialites, the men in evening clothes, and the butlers circulating with silver trays of glistening cocktails. Bill Wilson had never seen a butler.
Secretly writhing, he began to think about making his escape when one of the Grinnell sisters appeared next to him. He tried to smile and avoid saying anything stupid. Then someone put a cocktail in his hand, a Bronx cocktail, it was called. The sweet drink made of gin, dry and sweet vermouth, and orange juice shimmered in its glass. (74)

Compare this to Wilson's own typically terse account of the same event:

War fever ran high in the New England town to which we new, young officers from Plattsburg were assigned, and we were flattered when the first citizens took us to their homes, making us feel heroic. Here was love, applause, war; moments sublime with intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement I discovered liquor. I forgot the strong warnings and the prejudices of my people concerning drink. (Alcoholics Anonymous [4th ed., 2001], 1)

Of course, these first few apparently innocent drinks of Wilson's were anything but. They simply removed the cover of the alcoholic bottomless pit into which he would gradually descend for the next seventeen years until his last drink in 1934. Cheever covers this dark period of his life with considerable care and an eye for detail. While there is very little to be found in these pages that has not already been dealt with elsewhere, Cheever weaves together a colorful narrative that concludes with some speculations on the significance of Wilson's role in the history of American religious thought. Taking her cue from Dr. Ernie Kurtz, the author of the excellent Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous (1991), Cheever argues that 1934, the year of Wilson's last drink, "is an important year in the history of American religion ... when the strains of the old and new religions merged into a kind of neo-orthodoxy in which God becomes simultaneously beyond, beneath, and above human possibility. Bill Wilson often referred to himself as a brilliant synthesizer. He was fond of saying that no one founded A.A. but that it had grown organically from the needs, ideas, and solutions of dozens of men and women" (122-123).

Perhaps the reason AA has proven over the years to be arguably the most consistently successful treatment for alcoholism is that it tolerates a level of diversity among its membership that is rarely found elsewhere. The appeal to agnostics made by Wilson in the fourth chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous is a good example of this. He argues for recognition of what might be termed a universal religious sensibility, not unlike that of theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher of the 19th century or Paul Tillich of the 20th. Cheever views Wilson's own personality and background as reflective of this tolerance. She claims that AA, as Wilson lays it out in his writing, "revels in its own paradox. It does not avoid contradiction; in fact, it embraces contradiction" (235). In many respects, the following observation of Cheever summarizes her understanding of Wilson's personality and the program of recovery that was shaped by it:

Bill Wilson's nature sometimes seemed to have been designed for the task at hand - the job of synthesizing six or seven different streams of philosophical thought, some from books, some from other teachers, and some from the very air he breathed while growing up in a small Vermont town. He had the understanding to see what worked and what didn't work for himself as well as for other drunks, and the stubbornness to persist in trying to help his tiny program spread.... His experiences - as a child growing up in a temperance state, as an Army officer, as a Vermonter - all added up to a background that helped him understand the way power and political opinions could corrupt even the best intentions of the most intelligent people. He was not a perfect man, but he was the perfect man for the job (234-235).

As is well known by those who follow such things, Wilson's reading of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience had a profound impact on his understanding of how best to create in the alcoholic the spiritual experience necessary to recover from alcoholism. He experimented with LSD near the end of his life for much the same reason. He was a spiritual seeker in the best sense of that term - but not for himself alone. Long after he had recovered from alcoholism he came close to converting to Catholicism, eventually deciding against it because of the effect - negative or otherwise - he thought it might have on AA. Cheever makes it clear that virtually everything Bill Wilson explored or engaged in after he stopped drinking was driven by the question of how it would help another alcoholic or strengthen AA. Above all, he was a pragmatist. Something was of value only if it proved effective.

Nonetheless, the self-imposed burden of how his personal behaviour might affect the movement at large eventually proved too much to bear and, near the end of his life, Wilson stopped attending meetings of the very organization he helped to create. Cheever's treatment of this period in Wilson's life is done with uncharacteristic empathy and understanding. To the best of my knowledge, she also relates for the first time in print the agonizing last weeks of his life when, lying on his deathbed in the final stages of emphysema (Wilson was a life-long smoker who never was able to quit), he began to request whiskey from his nurses. (According to the nurses' records the whiskey was never supplied to Wilson.) A self-proclaimed "rum hound" to the very end, Cheever poignantly remarks that "[i]t's a measure of the power of alcohol that even in his last days alive, Bill Wilson still wanted a whiskey" (249).

Susan Cheever's excellent account of the life and times of Bill Wilson should rightfully take its place alongside the other biographies of this remarkable individual. It is a fair and insightful treatment of the life of a drunk whose pioneering ideas with the Twelve Steps "have entered the common consciousness and changed how we define being human in a way certainly as powerful as the ideas of Sigmund Freud or Thomas Jefferson" (254). "Bill W." discovered a unique way of being human AND religious in an increasingly secular world and, in so doing, helped millions of people. I believe Ms. Cheever has acquitted herself well in telling us his story.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A balanced look at an imperfect Titan, March 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (Hardcover)

Bill Wilson was the driving force behind the creation and growth of AA, and laid the foundation for many other 12-Step programs. The result is that millions of people are recovering from Alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, compulsive gambling, sex addiction, and the list goes on. There is no denying his great contribution. There's also no denying his shortcomings, but if he were a perfect man we would not have this groundbreaking spiritual program of recovery.

I think Susan Cheever did a great service to Bill and all the people who have benefitted from his work by showing that he was a man, not a saint, not the devil, a man who did great things. The book shows also that Bill knew that AA should not rely on the leadership of one or a few flawed people, and that it should be led by a group conscience. I suspect Bill knew he had serious problems (the biggest being depression, the root of all the others)and that a larger group, a democracy, should carry the fellowship in to the future.

Great writing, great research, great story. Thanks Susan Cheever.

91 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Deeply Disappointing, March 5, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous (Hardcover)

Having read Note Found in a Bottle, I was eager to see this biography. For all her superior writing skills and fresh access to archival material, Cheever has added little or nothing to existing works on Wilson.

LSD, niacin, smoking, and adultery are addressed in the same shallow terms as before, no new information appears. Important AA issues are not covered any better than in previous books and sometimes worse-e.g.: Marty Mann was not the first woman in AA, she was preceded by at least three others, one of whom outlived her and remained sober from the mid-40s on. Cheever has failed to research the Oxford Group beyond AA sources, which tend to soft-pedal criticism to avoid offending the pro-MRA subculture (`Back to Basics') within AA. The Oxford Group's excesses in matters of money, property and prestige, the Group's political entanglements with extreme right-wing governments, the use of deception and emotional manipulation in attempts to recruit public figures (Aldous Huxley was reported to have made one of his rare displays of public anger at the slimy approaches the O.G. made to him), all are ignored. Sam Shoemaker's eventual expulsion of the OG from his church, and his subsequent reconnection with Bill Wilson go unmentioned.

Worse yet for Cheever, or her editors, snippets of background atmosphere are riddled with obvious factual errors. Speaking of the relatively short passage on Huxley: Cheever claims that 'Citizen Kane' was an adaptation of Huxley's novel, 'After Many a Summer Dies the Swan,' a howler obvious to anyone who has read the book and/or seen the film. Cheever reports Huxley's death in 1956, wrong by seven years. She devotes an incoherent paragraph to "the `kinesthesiology'(sic) of the body advocated by Australian therapist F.M. Alexander..." claiming the Gerald Heard was a student (he wasn't), that the Alexander Technique is called the `Alexander method,' (it isn't), that the Technique is `a cure for depression' (it isn't), and that Alexander was a `therapist' (he most adamantly was not).

The ONLY new thing I learned from this book is that Wilson asked his attending nurses for whiskey on several occasions during the last weeks of his illness, and that they talked him out of it.