From previous books, we know that Susan Cheever, a columnist for the
Long Island newspaper Newsday, has suffered heavily under the yoke of
alcohol, both as the child of author (and hard drinker) John Cheever
and as an adventurous souse in her own right.

Perhaps this helps explain why, for her new book, she profiles
history's most influential drunk, William Griffith Wilson, known to
legions as Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

One needn't hunt for the biographer's motivation; Wilson was the
genre's low-hanging fruit. Despite having cofounded a miraculous
fellowship of more than 2 million and having inspired dozens of other
12-step programs for addictions to food, cocaine, sex, spending, and
other substances and behaviors, Wilson has been the subject of only two
previous treatments, both sanctioned by his widow and written before
1975.

What's harder to fathom is why Cheever chose to bury the book's
greatest revelation: In a 38-chapter book, Cheever waits until Chapter
35 to discuss Helen Wynn, the woman with whom Wilson apparently lived,
at least part time, even though he and his wife, Lois, never divorced.
Further, Wynn wasn't the only other woman: Cheever cites Wilson's
"erotic hunger," and says that "whatever inhibitions he may have had
were swept away" in the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

A critic could quibble over whether another writer would have delved
into that discovery deeper, and sooner, considering that it raises
questions about Wilson's honesty and big-picture sobriety. But it would
take an acolyte to combine the notions of "brilliant spiritual
development" and "flawed by sexual compulsion" in the same sentence.

Unquestionably, it is an explosive issue: Did the figure behind this
monumental spiritual movement merely swap addictions - the equivalent
of switching deck chairs on the Titanic - from booze to sex? Some might
seize upon that as evidence of AA's weak foundation, but by doing what
had been impossible - saving millions from a condition previously
untreatable - AA's 12 Steps prove their own legitimacy. A more proper
point to draw would be that even people who birth or husband great
movements are still human. Think of Martin Luther King Jr. Or JFK.

For Cheever's book, the news crowns a story that, even without it,
is richly informative and full of revelation, both to the general
reader and to those who've read the Big Book, AA's basic text, which
Wilson wrote in consultation with his peers. Who knew, for example,
that Wilson could have been Forrest Gump's brother? He was a Mayflower
descendant, his wife's cousin married John D. Rockefeller, Thomas
Edison tried to hire him, and he created a form of market research long
before his other great discovery. Later, when his celebrity would help
explain it, he hung out with A-bomb scientist Robert Oppenheimer,
regularly consulted with Bishop Fulton Sheen, and was friends with the
author Aldous Huxley.

The richness of Wilson's life is also riven with pathos, no more so
than because he became unable to experience the relief that others
found in AA's rooms. Others could blend in, find comfort in being one
of many. But tens of thousands of AAers and their families held him
almost as a saint, and he always had to be "on."

As fascinating as Wilson is, one could argue that he is the book's
second most interesting figure. Lois Burnham Wilson stayed by her
husband's side through 53 years of marriage, and one has to wonder how
and why. When they met and courted, he was jobless and a school
dropout. Then came his first drink, in New Bedford in 1917, which
quickly brought them to the gates of hell: extended unemployment,
social ostracism, severe depressions, several institutionalizations,
even physical abuse - Cheever writes that Wilson once threw a sewing
machine at his wife. And all that, of course, preceded Helen Wynn, a
relationship Lois had to be aware of, Cheever adds.

Cheever notes, of course, that Burnham founded a movement of her
own: Al-Anon, the fellowship of individuals who may not be addicts
themselves but whose lives are unhealthily intertwined with them. But
the closest Cheever comes to explaining Burnham's incredible . . .
patience (or dependence) is that she "seemed to be an amazingly good
sport."

Perhaps someone else will come along to tackle that question. It's
fair to say that with Bill Wilson, Cheever already had more than enough
to fill a book.