Customer Reviews

a: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first read this book when I was 18. Being enormously taken with it, I never returned my copy (an original hardback in paperback size with the big "A" on the front) to the university library. I ended up paying the library $272 in back dues before the university would release my diploma. It was worth every cent.

To create "A," Warhol followed and tape-recorded one Factory personality, Ondine, for 24 hours. Ondine was reportedly high on amphetamines at the time, so it was a full 24 hours involving no sleep. (Ondine was also a homosexual. He speaks graphically about homosexual sex often in "A" - that is why it was branded as pornographic in its day.) "A" is simply the transcription of those 24 hours worth of audio tape. Nothing more, nothing less. The women who were hired to transcribe the tapes reportedly got bored with their jobs and started typing the material in different layouts and formats. This formatting was left in the original book.

"A" is a collaborative work (Warhol, Ondine, Ondine's associates, the typists). It's pre-post-modern, if you will. And it is a splendid artifact from its time. It shouldn't be described or experienced in the context of literature and novels. It is an art piece, like any of Warhol's films. One does not compare the films "Empire State Building" or "Sleep" with "Sleepless in Seattle."

If you like being a fly on the wall, "A" will please you. It's like being there. Watch for references to the introduction of Pop Tarts and the release of the first James Bond flick. If you appreciate pop art and post-modernism, you'll get even more out of the book.

If you're a Warhol/Factory officianado (like me), it's great fun trying to decipher the real identities of the codenamed characters. Watch the film, "I Shot Andy Warhol" after reading "A." Much of the film's dialogue and situations could easily have been culled from the book.

"A" is quintessential Warhol: pop art as historical record / historical record as pop art.

A was written/recorded in 1965 when Andy Warhol first experimented with his new Norelco tape recorder. It wasn't until 1967/68 that the tape was actually transcribed, by Factory-ites working for minimum wage, one of whom was Moe Tucker, the drummer for the Velvet Underground. A was first published by Grove Press shortly after Warhol was shot on June 3, 1968. The original dustjacket is a giant red A -- Warhol turns Hawthorne's scarlet letter on its head. A is 24 hours in the life of the Factory denizens. A is Andy Warhol updating James Joyce' Ulysses. Whereas Joyce took 7 years to write about one 24 hour period, Warhol took just 24 hours. A includes all the gossip, pauses, stutters, and drug babble as one might expect. A just might be the only example of true "new journalism." Tape recorders don't lie. As a document of one typical day in 1965, the peak year of the great sixties decade, A is an unqualified success. Andy Warhol was at the vortex, watching/recording all from his silver throne. Warhol biographer Victor Bockris calls A "part of Warhol's great trilogy," the other two works being CHELSEA GIRLS, Warhol's 1966 3-1/2 hour film (it's actually 7 hours worth of film, since two reels are projected simultaneously) along with lp THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, recorded in May, 1966. Get a copy of A now that it has been reissued. Start anywhere. Skip around. Read it your way. Just like the sixties.

But how far in do you want to be?

If you ever had a fantasy of hanging out at The Factory for a day, reading this may make you wish instead you were trapped watching reruns of Monday Night Football for 24 hours.

Well, maybe it's not that bad. I was able to read attentively for 150 pages before I started browsing which became little more than page-turning for the last 100 pages. Perhaps I'll go back and see if it grows on me.

I guess you had to be there, but I'm glad I wasn't. It seemed like it was horrifically boring. Small talk rarely gets this small. Some mention of sex, some of drugs, some perverse humor hardly covers the emptiness.

"12 hours of Ondine ... a novel?" Not for me. If I had to pick, I've have featured the more coherent Sugar Plum Fairy (SPF, present in the 2nd half of the book) not Ondine. But unless I were doing a doctoral dissertation on Warhol's Factory,l I would have avoided "a". Now that I have it and want to make the best of it, there is, admittedly, something absorbing for a while in the rantings.

The glossary by Victor Bockris provides some help about who was who and what seemed particularly important. You can probably start in on any page without much loss.

Another such experiment by someone of taping with a different cast of characters would be welcome. Based on "a", there does seem to be a value in doing a "novel" in this way: a lot depends of who and when you tape. Like novels, "a"'s conversations seem contrived, just contrived by a lot more people than a single novelist and that could be good. I wouldn't want to read a day's worth of tapes of the Osmond Family or of the board of General Motors, but there's got to be a group whose taping would lead to a better "novel" than "a".

Consider reading "a" if you are curious enough about the Warhol scene or about what a novel by tape recorder would be like or are just feeling whacked out enough.

Sugar Plum Fairy: "Making silkscreens and photographs and, do you consider that work? I mean does he get up in the morning and say, 'Mom, I have to get down to the office...'"

I was determined to read this cover to cover for no other reason than to say I did it. I threw in the towel after 100 pages. Conceptually, it's intriguing. As for an aesthetically pleasing reading experience, I defy anyone to get through it word for word.

Yes, I love the concept of it, but actually reading it is another story. Some of it is interesting, but it gets rather tiresome after a while. It's the type of book you put down and can't pick up again.

Just what I ordered. Since it was labeled as a used item I expected a few tears or bends on the pages. It was still in great condition.

I finished reading a, Andy Warhol's "novel". In fact, Andy never wrote one word of it. The book consisted of transcriptions of recordings made by a hand-help tape recorder. The book was intended to document 24 hours in Ondine's life. This "documentation", however, was murder to actually read. The recordings were made with a primitive (1968) Norelco (Noreco?) tape recorder with a dinky microphone. Ondine is stoned most of the time and there is no continuity to any of his speech. It was indeed a treat to read through a paragraph without having to start over to try and grasp whatever concept he intended to make. Furthermore, the people around Ondine talk openly and freely and their words are included whenever they are spoken, thus sometimes creating two or three separate conversations all intertwined with one another. The typists just typed what they heard, and there was really no need to proofread the manuscripts--I mean who the Hell would read this damn book all the way through--so the many, many typing errors stayed in. This book was, as the inner flap stated, an extension of Andy's films. To me this means an exercise in patience; a depiction of real life and real time on paper as it actually happened. Because the reader was limited to just the oral/aural realms, he had to create his own visuals. Sometimes I found my visuals all wrong and only later, after reading on and realising just what everybody was actually talking about, did I find myself going back and rereading the dialogue but this time in the right context. This book, like "Empire" or "Sleep", was more important (or created more of an impact) for what it was, than for any artistic or technical merits. I'm sure when it came out, nobody really intended anyone would read all 452 pages--it was more of an event for existing and for being what it was, than for being read. This is like the two above films: everyone would talk about a seven-hour film of the Empire State Building but no one would actually go and see it. I tortured myself and read all of a, and I can't help but wonder: did I ruin the artist's intent by reading the book? Or should its effect be strictly of wonder and as a conversation piece? Is a only to be talked about and not read? Another part of the "novel" that made continuity impossible was the frequent distortion, overlapping conversations, blasting Maria Callas records in the background, Ondine's stuttering and rapid change of thoughts and the overall inability of the typists to make any head or tail of what they were hearing. This happened on every page and whenever something couldn't be discerned for whatever reason, the typists left ellipses (...)(...)(...). Sentence fragments, solitary words preceded and proceeded by those annoying dots. It took me long enough but I read the damn thing. Now I can actually tell people I did read it. If I tell any Warhol people this or any of Andy's friends, they'd probably think I was crazy.

"Worst Bet
A is for Abominable
a by Andy Warhol is one of the most
despicable books ever written. The
tape recorder involved in the process
should immediately self-destruct in
penance. Believe it's last line: "Out of
the garbage, into the book. " Re-
deposit. Close lid. Good and tight. "
New York Magazine Nov. 25 1968 edited by Julie Baumgold

ok, Now I want to read it!

My favorite A book, though I am biased when it comes to the Warhola's. (hello mark:) The only book as far (as I am concerned) that truly has A's hand in it. Give all other credit to Bob Collacello(sp), as he is the true writer of most. Love to you both..

This book and Bob Dylan's Tarantula are one in the same, unreadable. Let's face it, you have to be a complete Andy Warhol obsessed freak to make it through this book. If you have finished the book I'd be curious to know what you've gained.

If you took the name Andy Warhol off this book it would never even see the light of day. I'm sure Andy was aware of this and that's the reason why he did it. He was caught up in that type of celebrity status and probably got a kick out of putting one on us. In that sense I tip my hat to him.