May 3, 2002

Addicted in Academe

By ANONYMOUS

For scholars of literature, folklore, therapy, and popular culture, Alcoholics Anonymous offers riches: a written and oral genre ("tell me your story," one drunk says to another); highly developed narrative codes (what it was like, what happened, what it's like now); a central text (Alcoholics Anonymous, known as the Big Book); and a recognizable semiotics (the coffee cup, the church meeting room with folding wooden chairs). Like folklore, AA loves a story, passes it on, and fine-tunes it for

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