buntyskid's review against another edition
4.0
I read this as an e-book, and it was a bit confusing at first because I didn’t realize that the uppercase names indicated that the text that followed was an interview from that person.
Not the straightforward biography I was expecting, but an oral history, a collection of interviews from people who had known Edie.
It took me awhile to figure out the format of the book, especially at the beginning which was all about ancestors, and I wasn’t familiar with who was speaking. So many nicknames!
There was tons of information about people in Edie’s life that didn’t relate directly to Edie, which was not that helpful. It could definitely have been tightened up and had more of the focus on her, specifically.
For example I didn’t really need to know a great deal about the swastika-wielding motorcycle guys she briefly hung around with towards the end of her life. This included a picture of a dead guy’s casket with a Nazi flag over it—extremely offputting.
It took quite a while for her to get to New York and for the real important art scene stuff to happen to her.
The introduction to Andy Warhol was explained quite well and the making of the movies, and everything at the factory was very enlightening.
Also interesting to hear more of the details on the Bob Dylan connection.
The real revelation to me in the book was what a good artist Edie was. The photographs show some of her pencil drawings of animals, and she was super talented. So it’s a shame that everything in her life became about her looks and her persona, when she could’ve been an artist in her own right. And not just Andy’s arm candy.
Very sad about her brothers, and her awful father and weak, passive mother.
Sad also that even the sisters in the family couldn’t or didn’t support Edie either. So many lost souls. Poor Little Rich Girl indeed. Very sad.
I rewatched the movie Factory Girl afterwards and understood a lot of things better regarding the facts of her life, shown in the movie.
One ( probably) manufactured scene showed her calming the horse they used in the cowboy movie. The actors were mistreating it, they didn’t know what they were doing, the horse was upset. She jumped in and settled the horse. Seemed like it could have been true, given her love and connection to horses, even if it didn’t really happen that way.
The book did cover the fact that they had the horse in the studio, and that it was freaked out.
So much to say about Image vs Reality in this book.
Wonder what happened to her art. Poor Edie.
Not the straightforward biography I was expecting, but an oral history, a collection of interviews from people who had known Edie.
It took me awhile to figure out the format of the book, especially at the beginning which was all about ancestors, and I wasn’t familiar with who was speaking. So many nicknames!
There was tons of information about people in Edie’s life that didn’t relate directly to Edie, which was not that helpful. It could definitely have been tightened up and had more of the focus on her, specifically.
For example I didn’t really need to know a great deal about the swastika-wielding motorcycle guys she briefly hung around with towards the end of her life. This included a picture of a dead guy’s casket with a Nazi flag over it—extremely offputting.
It took quite a while for her to get to New York and for the real important art scene stuff to happen to her.
The introduction to Andy Warhol was explained quite well and the making of the movies, and everything at the factory was very enlightening.
Also interesting to hear more of the details on the Bob Dylan connection.
The real revelation to me in the book was what a good artist Edie was. The photographs show some of her pencil drawings of animals, and she was super talented. So it’s a shame that everything in her life became about her looks and her persona, when she could’ve been an artist in her own right. And not just Andy’s arm candy.
Very sad about her brothers, and her awful father and weak, passive mother.
Sad also that even the sisters in the family couldn’t or didn’t support Edie either. So many lost souls. Poor Little Rich Girl indeed. Very sad.
I rewatched the movie Factory Girl afterwards and understood a lot of things better regarding the facts of her life, shown in the movie.
One ( probably) manufactured scene showed her calming the horse they used in the cowboy movie. The actors were mistreating it, they didn’t know what they were doing, the horse was upset. She jumped in and settled the horse. Seemed like it could have been true, given her love and connection to horses, even if it didn’t really happen that way.
The book did cover the fact that they had the horse in the studio, and that it was freaked out.
So much to say about Image vs Reality in this book.
Wonder what happened to her art. Poor Edie.
jedbird's review
5.0
5* for nostalgia
I first read this when it showed up on the paperback rack at the grocery store in 1983. A teenager in the Pacific Northwest, I knew who Andy Warhol was, but I had only the vaguest ideas about how people lived in New York, and I'd never even conceived of the kind of capital-S Society Edie Sedgwick came from. I devoured the book and became obsessed with anything to do with Warhol or the New York art world. I wanted to be Edie. Her few years of sizzling notoriety seemed worth dying young, and dying pointlessly.
I had forgotten how much of the book is taken up with Edie's family's history. It's not boring, and establishes a foundation for all that comes after. Wealth, madness, death, misery. After some time hanging around Cambridge in the early 60s, Edie goes to New York and meets Andy. People describe her as beautiful and childlike. Andy puts her in films where she's charismatic more than anything. She gets into drugs. Bob Dylan's people convince her she could be a real Hollywood actress (she could not), which creates a rift between her and Andy. She fritters away her inheritance and does buckets of drugs. After a point, she's just circling the drain.
Reading this as an adult, Edie seems tragic and even pathetic. I'm glad I didn't find my way into a version of her life when I was young. I've always liked this book for the stories of the Factory.
I first read this when it showed up on the paperback rack at the grocery store in 1983. A teenager in the Pacific Northwest, I knew who Andy Warhol was, but I had only the vaguest ideas about how people lived in New York, and I'd never even conceived of the kind of capital-S Society Edie Sedgwick came from. I devoured the book and became obsessed with anything to do with Warhol or the New York art world. I wanted to be Edie. Her few years of sizzling notoriety seemed worth dying young, and dying pointlessly.
I had forgotten how much of the book is taken up with Edie's family's history. It's not boring, and establishes a foundation for all that comes after. Wealth, madness, death, misery. After some time hanging around Cambridge in the early 60s, Edie goes to New York and meets Andy. People describe her as beautiful and childlike. Andy puts her in films where she's charismatic more than anything. She gets into drugs. Bob Dylan's people convince her she could be a real Hollywood actress (she could not), which creates a rift between her and Andy. She fritters away her inheritance and does buckets of drugs. After a point, she's just circling the drain.
Reading this as an adult, Edie seems tragic and even pathetic. I'm glad I didn't find my way into a version of her life when I was young. I've always liked this book for the stories of the Factory.
pigeonpleader's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
nguyenlibrary's review against another edition
4.0
Let's talk about the format of the biography. I liked the interview sectioning-style.
theverbalthing's review against another edition
5.0
Edie Sedgwick will always fascinate me, for so many reasons, and this biography represents her quite fairly: it doesn't shy away from the gritty details but it also doesn't condemn her outright for the choices she made and the downfalls she had. She was a beautiful girl in a fucked-up situation and I think that all of the elements that combined to make her the way she was -- including her independence -- make her an icon worth knowing about, especially for those of us who are pop-culture obsessed.
veelaughtland's review against another edition
3.0
Reading this book is like running a marathon in a way: sometimes you have to take a breather to slow down so you don't run yourself into the ground. This book is slow and dreamlike in parts, whilst fast-paced and relentless in others. Reading is an experience in itself - I found myself getting to the point where I felt like I was actually there in that era, in the Factory and all the other places mentioned in the book with them. And not just that, it's horribly sad.
Most people probably have some kind of idea about what Edie Sedgwick's life was like before even picking up this book; I know I did. Warhol and Factory superstar socialite whose light fizzled out far too quickly. What most of us don't know however is the story of her family and her upbringing, something extremely interesting but also extremely shocking to read. I felt disgusted reading about her father's actions towards Edie and the rest of his children, and saddened by the loss and the troubles that Edie experienced at such an early age.
This is by no means a happy book, though it was never meant to be. The way the book has been put together is admirable, compiled of interviews from around 250 people who knew or knew of Edie. In this way, the portrayal we get of Sedgwick is flawed - where some adored her, others couldn't stand her. I think this is effective in portraying Edie as a person however, as her personality seemed to be made up of so many different facets that it's hard to get to the core and discover the girl who she really was, sans the drugs and psychological problems.
I've given this 3 stars not because I thought it wasn't a very good book, but specifically because although it is extremely insightful, vivid and a great read, I couldn't pick it up again for quite a while. Very harrowing.
Most people probably have some kind of idea about what Edie Sedgwick's life was like before even picking up this book; I know I did. Warhol and Factory superstar socialite whose light fizzled out far too quickly. What most of us don't know however is the story of her family and her upbringing, something extremely interesting but also extremely shocking to read. I felt disgusted reading about her father's actions towards Edie and the rest of his children, and saddened by the loss and the troubles that Edie experienced at such an early age.
This is by no means a happy book, though it was never meant to be. The way the book has been put together is admirable, compiled of interviews from around 250 people who knew or knew of Edie. In this way, the portrayal we get of Sedgwick is flawed - where some adored her, others couldn't stand her. I think this is effective in portraying Edie as a person however, as her personality seemed to be made up of so many different facets that it's hard to get to the core and discover the girl who she really was, sans the drugs and psychological problems.
I've given this 3 stars not because I thought it wasn't a very good book, but specifically because although it is extremely insightful, vivid and a great read, I couldn't pick it up again for quite a while. Very harrowing.
jackiebranz's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5
bigboobs's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
jaded___'s review against another edition
3.0
Giving this book a 3 out of 5 stars solely because i felt like out of all of the biographies i have read in the past, i felt like this was reading a giant conversation and didn’t feel like a really structured biography. I do think though, that It’s a good book to start off with for someone who is not used to reading Biographies. It was great to learn about things about Edie that i already didn’t know about her already. Edie thought people were out to “get” her in a sense, but i think what really happened is that she had a lot of relationship issues stemming from her family dynamic and her frequent drug use. People didn’t know how to deal with that. Especially during the time, mental health wasn’t taken seriously as much as is it today. Also loved the fact that i got to learn about key people associated with her and Andy Warhol.
debumere's review against another edition
1.0
This book was pretty long winded. The first half was mostly about her background and her family before we got more into the focus of the book.
I did get insight on Edie but also the crowd at the time - Warhol, all the hanger ons....
Did not feel the book centred enough on the protagonist but it did give an overview of the Art World in the 60s. That was fine but it wasn’t what I was wanting to read.
I did get insight on Edie but also the crowd at the time - Warhol, all the hanger ons....
Did not feel the book centred enough on the protagonist but it did give an overview of the Art World in the 60s. That was fine but it wasn’t what I was wanting to read.