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260th out of 1,852 books
—
1,787 voters
Edie: American Girl
When Edie was first published, it quickly became an international best-seller and then took its place among the classic books about the 1960s. Edie Sedgwick exploded into the public eye like a comet. She seemed to have it all: she was aristocratic and glamorous, vivacious and young, Andy Warhol’s superstar. But within a few years she flared out as quickly as she had appear...more
Paperback, 564 pages
Published
October 14th 1994
by Grove Press
(first published 1982)
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Dec 08, 2008
Ryan Chapman
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Pop art fans
Shelves:
nonfiction,
biography
Edited by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, this massive oral biography does well the formidable job of presenting a tragic life, the Warhol scene, and even the old families of New England. Edie Sedgwick died at age 28 after becoming famous as the first Factory girl, an Oscar Wilde/Paris Hilton fame of being oneself first, and then pursuing projects afterward. The interview subjects range from Truman Capote to Andy Warhol to Gregory Corso to various family members, and are presented without backgr...more
Poor, poor Edie. if you only know the sleep i lost because i couldn't quit reading your life story told by people who envied, despised, laid, loved and destroyed you. This book, discovered from a footnote of a footnote, says a lot about desire and protection. Her end story is a story that is now well known and rather ridiculous in the way it plays out, but her beginnings, like many tragic figures, is what kickstarts this oral history with an almost storybook like cast of characters, from her eas...more
Just pulled this off of the book shelf from the past because I needed a beach read over the long weekend. First half is like Jane Goodall watching mountain gorillas - except that instead of mountain gorillas it's a detailed look into a certain segment of the New England upper class (and, the sub-section of that group that is truly nuts), and the New York very social scene in the 60's especially around Andy Warhol (and, the sub-section of that group that was truly nuts). Second part of the book i...more
They recently put out the movie "Factory Girl," which was based on this biography of Edie Sedgwick. That was another movie that doesn't quite live up to the book. The book is written in what I think George Plimpton called an "oral history" style. Basically Jean Stein interviewed a ton of people who knew Edie, and then Plimpton edited those interviews into a narrative. I've never read a biography quite like this, where it's all direct quotes from people woven into a narrative. It makes the events...more
Nov 24, 2007
Muffy Kroha
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Fans of tragic iconic beauties
This book was a huge stylistic influence on me in college- I even made over my roomate to look like her ( I would have done so for myself, but I made a much better Funny Girl era Streisand) Such a good look she had!
Around that same time my friends and I stood in line for hours to meet Andy Warhol and get his autograph- I didn't think about it as a faux pas at the time, I was still a teenager after all, but I took this book and a few xeroxes of him and Edie that I had colored in crayon!!!! Horror...more
Around that same time my friends and I stood in line for hours to meet Andy Warhol and get his autograph- I didn't think about it as a faux pas at the time, I was still a teenager after all, but I took this book and a few xeroxes of him and Edie that I had colored in crayon!!!! Horror...more
3 likes · like · see review
Place Holder
This is the type of book that, when I see a copy on the shelf of a second-hand book store, I buy it, so that I can give it to someone.
I don't even have to have someone in mind at the time.
I can work that out later. The point is that a book this good has to find a home on the shelf of someone who loves life, people and writing (well, interviewing) at its best.
This was my first experience of a biography assembled from direct quotes from hundreds of interviews, without any bridging text...more
This is the type of book that, when I see a copy on the shelf of a second-hand book store, I buy it, so that I can give it to someone.
I don't even have to have someone in mind at the time.
I can work that out later. The point is that a book this good has to find a home on the shelf of someone who loves life, people and writing (well, interviewing) at its best.
This was my first experience of a biography assembled from direct quotes from hundreds of interviews, without any bridging text...more
7 likes · like · see review
Edie Sedgwick è un personaggio tanto tragico quanto irresistibilmente affascinante.
Giovane ereditiera, con una famiglia aristocratica alle spalle e soprattutto una figura paterna oppressiva e soffocante che la tormenterà fino all'ultimo dei suoi giorni.
Approda a New York e diviene una delle più note muse e superstar di Andy Warhol, incarnazione vivente del suo nuovo concetto di pop art.
Andy ed Edie sono inseparabili, vengono costantemente fotografati insieme, arrivano persino a vestirsi e petti...more
Giovane ereditiera, con una famiglia aristocratica alle spalle e soprattutto una figura paterna oppressiva e soffocante che la tormenterà fino all'ultimo dei suoi giorni.
Approda a New York e diviene una delle più note muse e superstar di Andy Warhol, incarnazione vivente del suo nuovo concetto di pop art.
Andy ed Edie sono inseparabili, vengono costantemente fotografati insieme, arrivano persino a vestirsi e petti...more
I love this book a lot. This is my third time reading it. I think it's my first time reading it all the way through. I used to skip the first few chapters (about Sedgwick family members) because I thought they were boring or something. Now I'm obsessed with them. I like drawing a complete portrait of these people and the time period. I have no personal connection to all-American Ivy League/prep school, so reading a snapshot of it is really interesting.
I've seen Cat Marnell, drug-loving writer fo...more
I've seen Cat Marnell, drug-loving writer fo...more
Six different people have recommended this book to me over the last year. Jean Stein's narrative format is borrowed heavily from Studs Terkel, but still effective here. Wikipedia says that she had an affair with Faulkner and then offered an interview with him to the Paris Review as long as they would give her an editor position, which they did. Wikipedia also said that Sinbad, the comedian, was dead for a while, so YMMV but you gotta love anyone that uses a really great moment of intimacy as a b...more
You’ve probably already heard some version of events of the life of this stylish socialite. In late 2006, a film about Edie Sedgwick was released. Entitled
Factory Girl
, it had Sienna Miller playing a wide-eyed Mary Sue of sorts, who could tame horses and make even the surliest of weak Bob Dylan impersonators fall in love with her. Her downfall and drug addiction was sparked by the treatment of the Big Bad Andy Warhol, leading to her eventual death.
The almost cartoonish biopic of the famed sixt...more
The almost cartoonish biopic of the famed sixt...more
I think others have well covered some of things I was going to say. I like the way the book was laid out. I've only read one other book where it was bits and parts of interviews with people who knew the subject - Savage Grace, but that's another review. It does give you different perspectives about her life and times, which I liked because I'm a reporter. I definitely got the feeling that her psyche was cooked well before she met Warhol. The whole scene was fun but tough to take for even the str...more
Edie Sedgewick's life did not begin and end with her two/three years as a Factory It Girl. In addition to the usual descriptions of Factory Life, this book reveals where the socialite came from (West Coast society just as effed-up as the East Coast underground scene)and where she went (after her tumble out of the glittering Factory sky). Organized as a collection of interviews, the chapters book-ending her days in NYC are equally, if not more fascinating.
In its early chapters, Edie's surviving...more
In its early chapters, Edie's surviving...more
This is a laboriously researched and edited oral history. It introduced me to both oral histories (which I LOVE) and an era in American pop culture. I have a vivid memory of seeing this book in the bookstore (one of my favorite places as a kid) when it came out in 1982 and wanting to read it because I liked the cover. 15 years later it became a personal favorite.
The book jacket describes the Pop Art scene of the 60s as "All glitter and flash on the outside, it was hollow and desperate within—lik...more
The book jacket describes the Pop Art scene of the 60s as "All glitter and flash on the outside, it was hollow and desperate within—lik...more
Wow! What an amazing story of a life that ended too soon even though there was a lot of living and dying done in her 28 years.
Coming from the most dysfunctional family ever written about, Edie shot to stardom through her association with Andy Warhol. He made her famous, but she created herself. She lived hard with sex, alcohol and drugs and it makes me wonder what she could have become after she married and found some sense of "normal" in life.
This is a fascinating look at the '60s, Edie's life...more
Coming from the most dysfunctional family ever written about, Edie shot to stardom through her association with Andy Warhol. He made her famous, but she created herself. She lived hard with sex, alcohol and drugs and it makes me wonder what she could have become after she married and found some sense of "normal" in life.
This is a fascinating look at the '60s, Edie's life...more
I didn't really know anything about Edie Sedgewick and thought the format of the book was interesting...a series of short statements and descriptions about Edie from friends, family and others in the vicinity during her short life. I still don't know much about her. I know things she did but closed the book thinking maybe nobody really knew her and that was sad. One complaint...I get that the sixties were All sex drugs and rock and roll...I really didn't need dozens of graphic examples to get th...more
I am reading books assigned to my son in college as part of a Women's History class. This book follows the life of a socialite who becomes immersed in the 1960s changing times and ends up dead at 28 from her wild living. Since I lived through these times (albeit much younger), it was a fascinating read with much detail about her life and the way the times were in the '60s (if you were a WASP). It shows how totally imperfect people were who were being worshipped as trendsetters and or as Edie was...more
Gave it an extra star because it's kind of the seminal book of this kind, I first read this when it came out, re-read it because I had this idea about writing something; the real fascination here is the family and how one man (Edie's father) could essentially destroy an entire robust blue blood american family and he did it largely because of his own insecurities about his masculinity. Unfortunately, the book is only about this early on, once you get into the Warhol days and beyond, it's beyond...more
I'd really give this book a 4.5/5. I found this to be one of the best biographies I've read. Edie: American Girl shed light to Edie Sedgwick's ancestry, childhood, teens and adult life, focusing not solely on herself, but on her family, friends and even people who have merely worked/passed by her at a point in their life. The book doesn't show any clear stance on what we're supposed to feel for Edie, even though they expose her triumphs and mistakes with commentary from her friends/family etc....more
I loved the "oral history" style compilation style of the book, and really enjoyed the different voices of those people telling the story.
I first read this book when I was still in high school, and it was a real eye opener for me to learn that a ruling class WASP family could be just as dysfunctional and messed up as the backwoods white trash families I was more familiar with. Fascinating, but still repulsive in a nicer, cleaner, more educated way.
It is just as much a book about an era as it is...more
I first read this book when I was still in high school, and it was a real eye opener for me to learn that a ruling class WASP family could be just as dysfunctional and messed up as the backwoods white trash families I was more familiar with. Fascinating, but still repulsive in a nicer, cleaner, more educated way.
It is just as much a book about an era as it is...more
Oh I love the subject matter of this book which is the late 1960s and early 1970s from coast to coast. It is painful to read from time to time. I would have liked to known this Edie and been a friend she so desperately needed. The oral history form of writing is amazing to me. This was new to me. I thought I had read and seen every format known. I was wrong and I am utterly enchanted with it. RIP Edie Sedgwick. What a character.....so glad Stein and Plimpton were there to so beautifully craft yo...more
This book is composed of a series of interviews with the people who loved, hated, admired, and envied the fascinating and reckless Edie Sedgwick. Through this format of interviews with family members, friends, professional associates and party people the amazing and tragic story of her life is revealed. Included are photos of Edie through the years. The book conveys her beauty and her spirit- totally captivating. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in art, fashion or the 1960...more
thanks tom for letting me borrow/steal this book.
she's utterly fascinating.
she's utterly fascinating.
http://wineandabook.com/2013/01/21/re...
After reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids, I was inspired to pick up Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick. I tend to let one reading choice inspire another. For example, once I read the biography of the Mitford sisters, I immediately picked up Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, whose relationship with the sisters had been discussed. Smith, in her memoir, mentioned her teenage interest in Sedgwick, which prompted me to remember I had her biography sitting on t...more
After reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids, I was inspired to pick up Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick. I tend to let one reading choice inspire another. For example, once I read the biography of the Mitford sisters, I immediately picked up Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, whose relationship with the sisters had been discussed. Smith, in her memoir, mentioned her teenage interest in Sedgwick, which prompted me to remember I had her biography sitting on t...more
First book that I have read on the pop art era and the Andy Warhol factory. Found Edie a pawn in an ever increasing need to showcase the rich and famous. Edie was the original "It" Girl in Andy's stable. The interviews and background history were telling........a life that had all of the attributes of fame and fortune.....yet swirled dismally into drug addition and chaos. I found her an exciting individual who was to frail for this world. Well documented, a page turner......yet a sad ending to a...more
She was beautiful, she had her own style, she also had some artistic talent that didn't get much use. When she was a "star" and the "girl of the year" her life, though glamorous, was sad, and I don't mean tragically beautiful, I mean falling asleep with your lit cigarette and waking up in an inferno, sad. Either there was a dearth of resources for her personal feelings or she really was kind of empty, superficial. Someone dying because of drugs is sad but someone existing on fashion and snobs fo...more
This book helped me hate Andy Warhol just a little less, because it is clear he was not responsible for the denigration and demise of Edie Sedgwick. Edie was going to end up dead of an overdose or a suicide attempt one way or the other, and while Andy was a parasite, the blame for his death cannot be laid at his doorstep.
Mostly this book was interesting in a voyeuristic manner. I felt a similar sense of looking into the lives of a certain sort of elite when reading about John Cheever's life. Thi...more
Mostly this book was interesting in a voyeuristic manner. I felt a similar sense of looking into the lives of a certain sort of elite when reading about John Cheever's life. Thi...more
Until June 2001, I never had heard of Edie Sedgwick. Right after the school year finished, I took off for a week to Pittsburgh and Cleveland for some baseball games. One day in Pittsburgh I visited the Warhol Museum. What a wonderful place!
While there, there was an exhibit all about Edie. I was mesmerized. Truly. What a fun-loving gal. I purchased this book there. I've yet to read it. :(
****
It was June 2001 when I traveled to Pittsburgh then to Cleveland and back to the steel town. My purpose wa...more
While there, there was an exhibit all about Edie. I was mesmerized. Truly. What a fun-loving gal. I purchased this book there. I've yet to read it. :(
****
It was June 2001 when I traveled to Pittsburgh then to Cleveland and back to the steel town. My purpose wa...more
Jun 01, 2011
Vanessa
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction,
friend-loaned
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...more
Most people probably have some...more
enjoyed how the author and editor wove the various sources into a continual timeline; i read a book about truman capote where the editting wasn't as clean and it was a bit more difficult to follow. i enjoyed the stories about how her behavior changed over the years, but very few of the contributors were particularly insightful.
i do wish that they had incorporated more direct material from sedgwick, more quotes and/or interviews. for example, friends and family often talked about her intelligenc...more
i do wish that they had incorporated more direct material from sedgwick, more quotes and/or interviews. for example, friends and family often talked about her intelligenc...more
This book is a compilation of memories that other people have of Edie Sedgwick, stuck in chronological order, and meant to evoke a sort of nostalgia about how "awesome" Edie was. Being a psychology major, I'm stuck in "tell me about your mother" mode, and I spent most of my time thinking, "Maaaan, that is fucked up" while reading this book.
Good for psychologists, bad for anyone who likes their books to flow and make any kind of damned sense. I gave it 3 stars because it was interesting in that w...more
Good for psychologists, bad for anyone who likes their books to flow and make any kind of damned sense. I gave it 3 stars because it was interesting in that w...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| If Edie Sedgwick was around today do you think she would be as popular? | 8 | 23 | Aug 31, 2012 05:07pm |
Nov 25, 2007 11:01am