The Back of His Head

A.A.'s biography of Bill records the offer (Pass It On): "When Time magazine wanted to put Bill on its cover — that is, put the back of his head on the front of the magazine — Bill declined, and declined the cover story as well." Read the offer again: it already conceded his anonymity. No face, no name, technically inside the letter of the Tradition. He refused anyway, and his accounting is the hardest arithmetic in A.A.'s history: "I denied recovery to an awful lot of alcoholics — some of these may already be dead." What he weighed against those lives was what the piece would manufacture: "a clear and colorful public image of me as a person." One image, then a precedent, then every power-driver holding a clipping that proves it's allowed. "Therefore, I declined the publicity, and I must confess it wasn't easy." The Tradition was not kept by men who found it painless. It was kept by a man who counted the cost and paid it.