Pretentious AA spoof by an imaginary semioticist!

1. AA’s “Big Book”:
A Secular Decomposition of Chapter 4
By Anonymouse
Abstract
This inflammatory, and deeply nihilistic, monograph provides a semiotic parsing of the “We
Agnostics” chapter of the Fourth Edition of AA’s “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).1
Part I of the paper consists of a brainy discussion of non-trivial syntactic issues in the text. In
particular, this segment identifies the core symbolic terms and abstractions in Chapter 4, and
explores their relation to each other, to their denotata, as well as to AA’s well-known tautological,
solipsistic worldview. Also supplied, in the form of hissy endnotes to the text (which is
reproduced here, without permission, in its mind-numbing totality), is a listing of the grammatical
infelicities that abound in Ch. 4 – one of the many transparent, if not disgustingly sophomoric,
ploys used by the author of the text (see below) to establish his so-called “salt of the earth” props.
Part II is concerned with textual pragmatics. A clarification of the intended effects of this body of
symbolic terminology on secular alcoholics (who might read the chapter in some unguarded,
hung-over moment of intellectual so-called weakness) animates the lively discussion. Important
(underhanded) rhetorical techniques, as well underlying (false) assumptions, contained within the
chapter, are identified explicitly, especially those used as so-called talking points in AA meetings
by evangelical boors. The third segment of the paper, cleverly known as Part III, attempts a
contextual semantic assessment of its own obfuscatory argumentation.
Finally, the paper concludes with a refutation of the persistent, and, yes, malicious, theory that the
author of this chapter, and in fact of the “Big Book” itself, was not the Wilson of AA record (see
below), but in fact another Wilson, an English doppelgänger, whose actual name first appeared a
hundred years earlier, as a character in a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, which was published in
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. An important study supporting this provocative view (by
the well-known late Algerian intellectual, Jacquie Derrida, whose landmark study, W. Griffith
Wilson and Poe’s Opium-laced Imagination, is frequently, if not incessantly, invoked in some of
the tonier AA Topic meetings) will be examined, and the staggering implications of this
revolutionary (but “deeply misguided”) theory discredited.
Before proceeding (with the hard sell portion of this abstract), it should be stated here for the socalled record that it was in fact one of the co-founders of AA who wrote the “Big Book” in the late
1930s. The 400-page completed manuscript, the plagiaristic writing of which some otherwise
sane, recovering alcoholics in AA view as a providential miracle, a veritable act of God, directly
inspired by Holy Scripture, was subject to various revisions by members of the then-nascent
movement, including the Akron, Ohio-based other co-founder of AA, a Dr. Robert Smith, an
(understandably, given his occupation, not to mention, battle-axe wife) alcoholic proctologist who
not only suffered from notorious sleep disorders, but was an reformed, intolerant religious
fundamentalist to boot, one noticeably (and sadly) contemptuous of both the once “gentler sex”
(he was given to characterize female substance abusers as “fallen women”) and agnostics.2
Nevertheless, it is useful to recognize, for the purposes of this academic discussion, that it was a
1
“Alcoholics Anonymous,” Fourth Edition, Copyright 2007, Alcoholics Anonymous World
Services, Inc.
2
Id., “Doctor Bob’s Nightmare.”

2. Copyright ©2007 Anonymouse. All rights reserved.
44-year-old, long-term unemployed, Republican, anti-union, skirt-chasing, failed Wall Street
hustler, a latter-day Christian theist, formerly deeply fond of the sauce, one William Griffith
Wilson who, while living off his older wife’s (and her family’s) largesse, was irrefutably the
primary author of AA’s basic text, and not as been suggested, the infamous and mysterious
English stand-in of Poe-derived fame. Any freshman English major would immediately recognize
the non-Poetic (as it were) condescending tone of the text: from the outset, it reminds the
alcoholic reader of his place, reinforcing the notion of Griffith as “The Teacher,” the ignorant
alcoholic, his “student.” This ego-manic stance also supports a thematic notion in AA, namely,
that of the alcoholic as a helplessly depressed and confused and penurious addicted know-nothing,
who, in order to “recover” from his or her “disease,” must “surrender” to a salvific deity − doing
so, of course, only after following a rigid set of “spiritual” instructions by The Teacher, the allknowing, didactic, autodidact writer of the “Big Book,” Griffith himself.
The affinity of
Wilsonean phraseology to that found in similarly intimidatory or reductive linguistic tropisms in
so-called BDSM-inspired “literature” (of particular interest to the discussion here is the protosexual obsession in AA with “falling on one’s knees” as a profound and necessary act of lurid
“humility”), military manuals, and the grotesque writings circulated in various quasi-religious USbased cults, is examined in salacious detail.
Speaking technically, it equally useful to mention here that the body of the text explicitly mentions
the root-term “agnostic” (or its derivatives) seven times, “atheist,” five. The chapter contains
3788 words, excluding its title. This problematic title is open to interpretation. Its plural
nominative form implies that the chapter was written by, or on behalf of, agnostic members of
AA. As pointed out above, the former was not the case, although common sense suggests that
Wilson’s early experiences in convincing or dealing with agnostic substance abusers, usefully
informed the writing of this portion of the “Big Book.” Hell, he probably was a filthy agnostic
himself at one time; after all, he was not above such things as drinking his wife’s hard earned
money (although in all fairness, she later became a multi-millionaire, many times over, in fact,
thanks to the royalties extracted from the sale of the so-called “Big Book” at AA meetings).
However, the argument concerning the title’s plural nominative form (this is the We-equaling-two
reading) as direct textual evidence of the so-called doppelgänger theory is conclusively
demolished in the paper − which, of course, is yet another excellent reason for you to buy it.
Without question, or rather, with many (unpleasant, if not nasty and small-minded) questions, this
paper convincingly demonstrates that Chapter 4’s overall focus is on presenting AA and its
approach to alcoholism to a demoralized, deeply-addicted (to mood-changing substances as well
as to simplistic, yes-or-no Life philosophies) pool of ex-Oxford Group (this was a fascist-loving
organization that was the precursor to AA, whose “6 Tenets” formed the basis of its famed “12
Steps”) God-doubting (primarily as a result of the Oxford Group’s leader’s embrace of Hitler and
Mussolini) members that morphed (as many reformed substance abusers are wont to do) into the
born-again, proselytizing backbone of AA. The paper also points out that although two of the
three demographic-specific chapters are explicitly so designated (cf., “To the Wives,” “To
Employers”], this deliberately-inconsistent titular naming convention was only ostensibly for the
sake of variety − disguising a more Machiavellian (if you think God is out to get you, He is) issue,
namely, the unapologetic (as stated in the so-called “Big Book”, alcoholics in AA never apologize
for believing in God) attempt to hoodwink bona fide alcoholic skeptics, which in truth was
Wilson’s true motivation for writing this grossly manipulative chapter that completely
misrepresents for its own rhetorical purposes the commonly-accepted position of most Agnostics
(note the conventional capitalization of the term, intentionally unobserved in Ch. 4), be they
alcoholic or not.
For the complete paper (including the bonus discussion on “Natural Wines”), send a check
for $10 to:
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NY, NY 10001
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