As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy

by Alice Sedgewick Wohl

The story of the model, actress, and American icon Edie Sedgwick is told by her sister with empathy, insight, and firsthand observations of her meteoric life.



As It Turns Out is a family story. Alice Sedgwick Wohl is writing to her brother Bobby, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1965, just before their sister Edie Sedgwick met Andy Warhol. After unexpectedly coming across Edie's image in a clip from Warhol's extraordinary film Outer and Inner Space, Wohl was moved to put her inner dialogue with Bobby on the page in an attempt to reconstruct Edie's life and figure out what made Edie and Andy such iconic figures in American culture. What was it about Andy that enabled him to anticipate so much of contemporary culture? Why did Edie draw attention wherever she went? Who exactly was she, who fascinated Warhol and captured the imagination of a generation?

Wohl tells the story as only a sister could, from their childhood on a California ranch and the beginnings of Edie's lifelong troubles in the world of their parents to her life and relationship with Warhol within the silver walls of the Factory, in the fashionable arenas of New York, and as projected in the various critically acclaimed films he made with her. As Wohl seeks to understand the conjunction of Edie and Andy, she writes with a keen critical eye and careful reflection about their enduring impact. As It Turns Out is a meditation addressed to her brother about their sister, about the girl behind the magnetic image, and about the culture she and Warhol introduced.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Art, History, Family, Womens

272 pages, Hardcover

Published August 16, 2022

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imagine that you died, and the only person they could find to write your posthumous biography was a person who only barely knew you, didn't really understand you, and obviously didn't like you very much.

That's what this book feels like to me. Like we're kind of witnessing from afar one sibling just subtly snarking about the other. Parts of it were interesting just on Alice's part (she also has a fascinating biography, albeit one that's polar opposite from that of her sister), but there's so much, especially in the latter section that sort of examines Sedgwick's life with Warhol and "what it all means" to the culture at large, where it's very, very clear that Wohl has opinions about her sister, but very much liked Warhol, and it just feels....uncomfortable.

Moreover, I read an interview with Wohl after I read _As it Turns Out_, and my suspicions were pretty much proven with the content of it. (On Air Mail, for the interested.). Wohl is bitter about the attention her sister received from her parents that she didn't get herself, even while she's outlining some of the horrific abuses their parents visited on the girl. I wanted to tell Wohl to stop writing autobiographies and get some therapy instead.

If you're interested in Warhol, Sedgwick, or any of the work they inspired/produced, you may get something out of this, but it may not be what you think you're getting. Fair warning. The narrator is less than reliable, however, and you'll want to take it all with a hefty grain of wow this is a toxic sibling salt.

(I got a copy of this from NetGalley to review. All opinions are my own, obviously, and I wasn't paid.)

(also note, I'm kind of an Edie fangirl. My first dog was named Edie -- a waify little gamine pupper with blonde hair and big eyes -- after Sedgwick. So I may also be a little biased.)

[Kinga Syrek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am the Polish artist mentioned in the Alice Sedgwick Wohl’s book. I would like to explain what wasn’t explained in ”As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie & Andy”.

According to Peter Walsh’s (a staff member or consultant to such museums as the Harvard Art Museums) review of Mrs. Alice’s book, she ”comments on the idea of self-invention and tries to correct a few media mischaracterizations (Edie was not a debutante or a Boston Brahman and she wasn’t really all that rich), but she leaves them largely undeveloped.” I can say that  these are not only subjects which Alice didn’t develop, and one of them is my case. She called me ”a Polish artist who is obsessed with Edie”, owing to the fact that I had traveled ”all the way to California to get close to her”, I even ”visited the ranch, graveyard and had gone to the hospital where Edie was born”. Calling me ”obsessed” was hasty and inelegant based only on her uninformed perspective inasmuch she didn’t present my actions in context. Why did I travel all the way to California to places related to Edie Sedgwick? The answer is that I was doing research for my animated film about Edie Sedgwick, which I was making for the 50th anniversary of her death. I worked on it with Robert Margouleff, a Grammy Award-winning music producer, who knew Edie and who is a co-producer of the film ”Ciao! Manhattan”, in which Edie played the main role. 

After reading ”As It Turns Out: Thinking about Edie & Andy”, I must say:

The real Edie was known only to Edie herself, and most probably not completely, because a human also remains a mystery to herself/himself.
The meaning of the tragedy of her life and the suffering present in it remains for us also covered with a veil of mystery. Humans struggle with the cause and the meaning of suffering present in the lives of each of us.  It has been so from the beginning of human history and most probably will never be satisfactory solved.

Furthermore, the book doesn’t contain new facts on Edie. Almost every story was taken straight out from the classic work by Jean Stein - ”Edie: American Girl”. This is very disappointing as Edie’s admirers expected way more from the book written by her sibiling.

My rating? 2 stars only for showing a few never-published photos from the ranch.

[Lex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love consuming stories from the 60s and I’m always intrigued by Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. Written by Edie’s sister, Alice, and promised a “firsthand observation” of Edie’s life. What we get is not that. Alice is much older and was estranged from her sister her entire life, which leaves this book lacking the personal connection this should have had and what I expected.

Sent to me by the publisher.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really bad. This woman clearly didn't know her sister and didn't like her....she describes seeing Edie in a magazine in like 2016 and being shocked that people still cared about her. Not who you would want opining about your life.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting memoir of a sister trying to understand and explain the short but spectacular popular run of her sister, Edie Sedgwick. Wohl spends a good deal of time on the dynamics of the unusual Sedgwick family, wealthy and isolated, but seriously troubled, on a large ranch in California. Wohl emphasizes that Edie was raised largely secluded from society and stumbled into meteoric notoriety in New York in the company of Andy Warhol, based on her unusual beauty and charismatic personality. The book is absorbing, especially to anyone who remembers Edie's image and the cultural products of Warhol's Factory. The family emphasis of Wohl's meditation, including the tragic fate of several of the eight siblings, make it more than a simple memoir. I enjoyed it.

[Laura-Michelle Horgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disjointed. The first half is about the crazy Sedgewick family (who can get enough of them?! that dad is the root of all evil) and the second half is about Andy Warhol. I’m not sure where Edie fits in the sister’s narrative about these two different worlds. Seems like she didn’t really know her little sister at all. Adds nothing to Edie’s mystique except unnecessary vitriol from a jealous, self-righteous older sister. As Edie would have said “DRAG”. Skip.

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never understood the fascination with Andy Warhol. Wohl’s younger sister, Edie, was the muse of Warhol for a few fleeting months.
I found the first part of the book interesting because the author is revealing her dysfunctional upbringing.
It’s after that she lost me. She tries to dissect and Analyze Edie’s life, but she does this from a distance and it’s mostly supposition.
Is the author paying a late homage to her sister? I guess I don’t understand the reason for writing the book aside from sharing family history and losses.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the early read.

[Lauren Hakimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is disjointed, and some parts of it are poorly written. The author uses generalizations and cliches. 'By now, everyone knows...' no, of course not everyone knows that. She says somewhere that Edie was only capable of being herself -- what does that even mean? It means absolutely nothing, and at the very least I would imagine that someone who was herself would let herself have the body that she has if she eats healthy. I obviously don't know whether or not Edie was really sexually abused, but the author is totally dismissive and nonchalant about that possibility. She is also nonchalant about Edie's eating disorder, and no where in this book does she bother to use the lens of gender to try to understand anything about her sister's life. She deals with the deaths of her siblings in a very cursory way. The worthwhile parts of the book were the parts where the author wrote about her own life, so much so that I think the writing and publishing of this book as is were opportunistic.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, this book is very well written and provides more understanding of Alice’s upbringing and the history of the Sedgwick family. However, I do think it’s strange that she wrote this book in the first place considering that she did not know her sister at all.
Alice was around 12 years old when Edie was born and spent most of Edie’s childhood away at boarding school or having no contact with her family. The two, according to Alice, literally met each other twice. Both of these occasions happened while the two women were both living in New York City, one being an awkward run in at their grandmother’s apartment where Edie was living and the second when Edie brought her gift for her little boy. After that they NEVER saw each other again.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s weird to write a reflection on someone’s life who you literally did not know. I think this book would have been more interesting if it was written by her other siblings like Jonathan, Suki, Kate, or even Pam who actually grew up with Edie on that ranch and seemed to be more constant throughout her life. I would honestly recommend Jean Stein’s book on Edie over this for it includes reflections from different people who knew Edie through different stages in her life.
Also, did not like the bashing of the Polish artist who is “obsessed” with Edie. The artist, Kinga, went to Santa Barbara in order to research for her short film on Edie. She also takes style inspiration from Edie, which is fine and something I believe all humans do when we admire someone. i think that was very much in poor taste. Very badly done, Alice, very bad.

[martha Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edie Sedgwick and her family fascinated me when I read Jean Stein’s, Edie: American Girl all those years ago. This memoir by Edie’s older sister is beautifully written and is a lovely companion book to the first bio. Wohl was much older than Edie and one gets the feeling that she felt much more for her brothers Bobby and Minty in their lifetimes, yet she tries here to understand the phenomenon of her troubled yet charismatic younger sister-something she failed to do when Edie was alive.

[George Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

gentle reminder that this book is both about and by a branson alumna.

[Faith Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay I read this book really fast, I read it in 9 days - which is very fast for me - and I think for the most part it was because I was intrigued to keep reading to see when it would reach the point I was convinced it was going towards but it never did.

The book is called ‘As It Turns Out. Thinking About Edie And Andy’ and the front cover shows the iconic image of Edie and Andy on the roof in New York in 1965 by David McCabe. From these elements as well as the blurb description - saying that the author ‘tells Edie’s story’ - I believed that this book would be predominantly about Edie Sedgwick, this is not what I received. The majority of the book is about the Sedgwick family, and the author (Edie’s older sister) Alice Sedgwick discusses her childhood and upbringing, whilst this is still extremely interesting, as a family with eight children and a parent so mentally unstable they were told never to bear any children would be, it isn’t about Edie. The age difference between Alice and Edie meant that Alice hardly knew her, Alice wasn’t living at home or nearby during Edie’s childhood and only visited on rare occasions so how could she.

It feels as though the author wanted to write a biography about her childhood and family, with a large heaping of sibling jealousy and resentment towards Edie, but wanted it to sell therefore displayed it as an under the curtain book about Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick from a siblings perspective. Whilst I did find the book extremely interesting, I also found the author insufferable for the most part, as as someone with an older sister I can understand sibling rivalry or the need to downplay a siblings achievements, longing for it to have happened to you, but this was on another level.

Just to give you an idea of what the author was working with here, in the closing chapter she states ‘It’s strange, but for the limited period of their association I feel I know Andy better than I ever knew Edie. I know about her, but I don’t know her.’ Baring in mind based on the contents of this book Alice never met or spoke to Andy Warhol, but in the last chapter it feels as though all she is doing is praising him, praising his work, his style, is ethics, his perspective, all while questioning in a demeaning manner why he chose Edie as his subject and muse and calling Edie a narcissist.

Another thing I hated about this book was the way in which the author was continually dismissing Edie’s own experiences and claims about her childhood, even though Alice wasn’t present for it. After the author acknowledges that their father made sexual advances towards herself in the past, she proceeds to dismiss Edie’s own sexual assault claims around her father, arguing most of it couldn’t have been true because Edie got a date wrong in her claim.

I would like to conclude by saying my hatred for Andy Warhol is separate from this book but the way in which Alice Sedgwick is kissing his ass for the whole final chapter was the nail in the coffin for me, Edie Sedgwick and Jean-Michel Basquiat deserved better and may they rest in peace. This book was engaging and a unique point of view, but i feel as though it would’ve enjoyed it throughly more if it was honest about what it was, and that the author focused on writing about what she knew rather than speculating about a sister she didn’t know and calling it perspective, as if she could offer more of that than those who knew Edie.

[Jennifer Huberdeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOOK REVIEW: Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol were America's 'it couple' for 15 minutes. What caused their relationship to fizzle?
Alice Sedgwick Wohl examines her sister's fame and more in her memoir, 'As It Turns Out'

Edie Sedgwick was many things: actress, model, muse of Andy Warhol and Bob
Dylan.

In 1965, she would inspire Warhol and capture the attention of a nation as the
pair became an overnight sensation. The “it couple” of the year, the two were
inseparable — Warhol with his pallid skin and silver wig; Sedgwick, thin and
beautiful, hair styled in a silver pixie cut — often in matching outfits, at every
event.

Their relationship was platonic, yet symbiotic. Sedgwick was able to get
Warhol into the right society parties; introduce him to people in high places.
Warhol in return, brought fame and notoriety, the promise of a film career. But
their fairytale courtship fizzled out sooner than history remembers, after a
short 10 months, a relationship complicated by Sedgwick’s drug use and a
growing distrust in Warhol’s ability to help her career. She would soon storm
out on him, moving on to Dylan and his entourage, signing with his agent and
forged ahead with a film career that was interrupted by drug addiction and
declining mental health issues. She died in 1971, at 28, from an accidental
overdose.


Alice Sedgwick Wohl, a West Stockbridge resident and Edie’s eldest sister, has
been trying to figure her out since she was born. Edie was an enigma that
puzzled Alice, not only when she was alive, but for decades after her death.
The eldest of eight, Alice sensed there was something different about the
golden-haired Edie, but couldn’t quite grasp what it was that made their
parents indulge her every whim; and others give her exactly what she wanted.
Alice was already 13 and away at boarding school when Edie was born. She
caught the first glimpse of her younger sibling that summer, when she arrived
home from school. It would be decades later, in April 2015, that Alice would
finally learn from a Vogue magazine cover that: No. 1, Edie’s actual birth date
was April 20 and No. 2, that some 40 years after her death, Edie was famous.
But it would take several more years, the summer of 2019, for Alice to begin
seeking what she had missed; a journey started by accident, prompted by visit
to the Addison Gallery in Andover, where, on an upper floor, she encountered
a clip from Warhol’s film, “Outer and Inner Space.” There, two large projections
of Edie, closeups of her face and a profile shot, played in unison. On one side,
is the “real” Edie, responding to images, of herself, on the other screen.
“At first I was startled just to see Edie so alive and vital, when she’d been dead
for nearly half a century, but what astonished me was the presence she had on
camera. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. At the same time, I thought I was
seeing a very complex play upon the figure Narcissus, the beautiful Greek boy
who fell fatally in love with his own image. But what I was really seeing, and
seeing for the first time, was what Andy Warhol made of Edie Sedgwick,” Alice,
soon to be 91, writes in the beginning of “As It Turns Out,” her newly released
memoir, which began as a series of letters written to their brother, Bobby, who
died in an motorcycle accident just months before Edie met Andy.
Prior to this point, Alice’s view of Edie had been that of an older sister, who,
because of their age difference had little if any interaction with Edie besides
family events and holidays. The distance between the younger and older
Sedgwick siblings is clear in Alice’s memory; she recalls returning home, at 30,
to the family’s ranch in California for Christmas. As she arrives, Edie, then 17,
and their younger sister, Susanna, enter the room and stop, unsure how to
react to her presence. She is a stranger amongst her own siblings.
STARTING AT THE BEGINNING
While its not unusual for siblings, especially those separated by large time
intervals, to be raised differently by their parents, Alice’s quest to understand
her sister begins at the beginning, with their parents — Alice Delano de Forest
and and Francis “Duke” Minturn Sedgwick. Born into a family of classic East
Coast WASPs, Alice grew up in the shadow of wealth.
Her father, a descendent of the Stockbridge Sedgwicks, had followed the
family’s formula for success, attending the right schools, including graduating
from Groton School and Harvard University, before attending Trinity College
in England and later Harvard Business School. He would try his hand at
finance, twice, both times failing due to a “mental breakdown.” He became a
sculptor and settled with his wife, in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Alice, Robert,
Pamela, Francis Jr. (Minty) and Katherine would be born between 1931 and 1941.
Edith (Edie) and Susanna would follow in 1943 and 1945, after the family had
moved to California, to a ranch purchased “to aid in the war effort.” (Alice
would later learn that her father was not able to enlist in the war effort; his
prior mental health issues playing a part in his rejection. It is also here, she
notes, that prior to being married, her parents were advised never to have
children because of his condition.)
Alice describes Fuzzy, the name they called their father, as a gentleman
rancher, who had an overseer that took care of the day-to-day work. Her
mother, she remembers ran a household without lifting a finger; she made lists
for others — menus for the family and ranch hands, detailed lists for the
nannies. The year they moved to California, she remembers being told they
were now poor; a fact that didn’t sit well with her mother, whose family money
sent the children off to boarding schools. Later, oil would be discovered on the
ranch and the family would move to a larger ranch in Laguna, Calif. There, her
father would find the notoriety he craved, as an artist and as a civic leader.
Growing up, Alice was taught, like other children of WASPs of her era, that
there were certain things you didn’t talk about — money and sex among them.
(She’d learn about her family history when reading her grandfather’s
autobiography at a borrowed house in Europe. He didn’t talk about growing up
in Stockbridge with his grandchildren during the time he lived with them, in
his own wing of the ranch.) Alice, too, followed the family formula, boarding
school and later, Radcliffe, all the while, the younger Edie was tossed out of
boarding schools and remained at home, a free spirit indulged by their parents
it seemed. But then, Alice recalls, beyond the estranged relationship with their
parents (the older children lived in bunks outside the main house), there was
Edie’s eating disorder, an outrightly ignored full-blown case of bulimia, and a
nine-month period that Edie was ill. Alice writes that someone told her it was
leukemia, but later, she learned, that Edie had walked in on her father having
sex with a woman who wasn’t their mother. Edie said when she threatened to
tell people, Fuzzy slapped her and called the family doctor, saying she was
having a breakdown. Edie was given tranquilizers and kept that way for close
to a year.
ANDY AND EDIE
“Edie arrived in New York in the summer of ‘64 and she was already exploding
like a firework in the sky,” Alice writes. “Bobby had seen her in Cambridge in
the spring, and it was as if he’d never known her before, he was so taken
with her. I’m not sure if he was an active communist at that point, but if so he
certainly forgot about it when with Edie. He was ten years older and so
intensely political and as far as I could see, she was just a silly, spoiled child full
of problems.”

A few months later, around Christmas, Edie and Bobby were both in accidents.
Edie survived, Bobby did not. When Edie returned to New York, she was
mourning a second brother (Minty had committed suicide about 18 months
earlier). Edie, who was already using drugs (despite claims that Warhol
introduced her), would soon meet Andy and begin making movies. She would
make 10 films with Warhol, before parting ways.
In examining Warhol’s films, their joint television appearances and more, Alice
realizes that Warhol was not just filming her sister, he was doing what others
could not, capturing the real Edie on film. And that, she concludes is what Edie
wanted in the end. “... Edie had no interest whatsoever in make-believe. It was
herself she wanted to display, herself she was desperate to communicate, and
the truth is, she simply was a narcissist ... She didn’t just didn’t want people to
see her, she want them to listen and to listen up. She wasn’t trying to create an
image — quite the opposite, she never pretended to be anything but herself.”
WHAT WAS IT?
In her search for answers, Alice comes upon the realization that Edie, in her
efforts to just be herself, was a symbol for others. When she was with Warhol,
the pair, were more than an “it couple,” they were a “fantasy of upper-class
glamour.” Edie was described as a debutante, an heiress and a Boston
blueblood. She was none of those things.
But in the minds of others, she was. Case in point, Patti Smith remembers,
according to Alice, Edie arriving at a Philadelphia art opening draped in
ermine, wearing a little black dress and led by two white afghan hounds on
black leashes with diamond collars. “It could be a fantasy,” Smith says, and it
was. Edie, photographed at the opening, arrived in a floor-length pink jersey
Rudi Gernreich dress. But it was what she symbolized that mattered to the
public.

For others, Alice writes, Edie was a symbol of freedom; she gave some young
women the license to do what they wanted, as she appeared to do. Although,
in reality, Edie, she says, lived in constant fear that at any moment her parents
would whisk her away to California and lock her away.
Alice still has questions that she acknowledges will go unanswered, but she has
learned about the sister she barely knew, a distance caused by age and family,
tumultuous circumstances and physical distance. But it is with empathy that
she now views her sister, and in researching the book, she has forgiven
Warhol, whom she naively blamed for her sister’s troubles in the past.
In the end, she is left with the memory of her sister and the image of Edie, an
an image that has transcended the woman she was and has come to represent
something different for everyone who encounters it.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

There have been many books written about the lives of both Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol. This one is written by Edie's sister Alice, 12 years her senior. It seems as if it is written by an observer, from an outsider's perspective. I read many of the same stories that have been written before by others not in the Sedgwick family. It never seems as though Alice and Edie had much of a relationship. There are descriptions of the Sedgwick history, with a lineage of mental illness and abuse. Alice's exploration of Edie's adult life seem perplexing to her, and much of the book is based on her writings of her experience watching films Warhol made of her sister. It is inferred that she was not present in Edie's life, or vice- versa, during the Warhol years.

I had hoped that a book written by Edie's sister would seem more personal and provide new insight into what made her tick. To me, the fact that the author does not include intimate family information from a first person perspective is the most revealing.

For me, this book doesn't provide additional enlightenment into the lives of Edie Sedgwick or Andy Warhol.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a good bit too much at the beginning of this book about the Sedgwick family. Once Edie leaves home the story really picks up and becomes much more interesting. Wohl's evocation of mid-60s Manhattan and the Factory scene excited me as such evocations always do. (Oh, to have been there!) I especially enjoyed her analysis of the Edie-Andy relationship and - as a die-hard Warhol fan - appreciate that she lays waste to the claim Andy was responsible for Edie's addiction and/or death. She sort rushes through Edie's post Warhol years, which is a shame. What on Earth did Edie and Bob Dylan talk about? There's a pretty good analysis of how Warhol's art foreshadows current celebrity-commodity-spectacle-social media culture (of which she disapproves, as any sane person would). Throughout the book Wohl tries to come to terms with her sister and wonders why she beguiled so many people. It's a question she never quite answers. Since Edie didn't actually do anything, let alone create anything, I rather suspect it was because she was extremely pretty, a good dancer, and liked to party. That might make her sound vacuous and narcissistic, but we must remember she was young and might well have developed later on in life.

[Becky Loader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Told from the viewpoint ofEdie's sister, there is a lot of family history here. Of course, the stars are still Edie and Andy.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems that Edie’s sister didn’t know her very well but she definitely did her research for this book. I never get tired of reading about Edie so I enjoyed it.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, but uneven book. Wohl vividly describes growing up as a member of the wealthy and eccentric Sedgwick family, who had homes on both the East and West coasts. Most of Alice's formative years were spent living on a ranch in California. The 8 Sedgwick children were raised in a peculiar household where the children had their own quarters and nannies, and had separate lives from their parents. "Fuzzy" Sedgwick was a charismatic patriarch who dominated family life and left an indelible mark on his children - in later years, two brothers committed suicide, and Edie died of a barbituate overdose at 28. Alice eventually found her own way and escaped the family pressures, but Edie, her little sister, was shaped by her isolated life on the family ranch, where, as Alice observes, she rode horses but learned no practical skills whatsoever. Because of the large age gap between the sisters, Alice was gone and on her own during the years when her youngest sisters were raised, and was helpless to influence them in any significant ways. Edie first underwent several psychiatric hospitalizations during her teen years, and was given tranquillizers and prescription drugs to address her "issues" (including alleged abuse by Fuzzy).
After this intensive memoir section of the book, Wohl changes gears abruptly to focus on Andy Warhol and his Factory, and Edie's entree into this world as a young woman. Andy and Edie were a perfect match for the times (mid-sixties) and for a few years were pop culture stars; Warhol began making art movies which Edie starred in for a time, but her actress ambitions quickly disintegrated due to drug use and bulimia. Wohl shows off her historian chops in this section with dense coverage of Warhol's rise to fame and the entourage that surrounded him. In watching his films, she is entranced by her sister's luminous presence. Like everyone else, she seeks to analyze Edie's pop culture appeal, but she doesn't provide any new insights.
Edie's death is almost an anticlimactic moment in the book, though it was indeed horrible as she was an emaciated, drugged out waif by her later 20s. How did her family react? How did it affect Alice
personally? She doesn't say. It's almost as if she can't summon the emotional energy to finish her story. She leaves it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about the lifelong impact of family trauma on an individual. Much has been written about Edie (I particularly liked George Plimpton's book), and Wohl helps to dispel some of the myths about her as a pop culture icon by offering a valuable family perspective.

[Craig Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forty years ago I read Edie: An American Biography which introduced me to the life of Edie Sedgwick. As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy was written by Edie’s older sister Alice Sedgwick Wohl. I found it odd that there was no text at all on the front cover, however as this was a library book, I can imagine that perhaps the book was packaged with a wrapper or obi of some kind that indicated as much, which was later removed during processing. However, the more I look into this, I believe the hardcover edition was intended to be like this.

In this short book of 259 pages Wohl dives into her family’s past and provides a background for the tragic dysfunction that permeated Edie’s young life as her upper-class family criss-crossed the country between California and New York. I imagine that Edie wouldn’t necessarily know much about her own family history since she was twelve years younger than Alice and, as a wayward waif, was sent to boarding schools or, in her teen years, institutionalized. According to Alice, she and her six other brothers and sisters were brought up under a strict code of high society manners, yet Edie was given free rein to act however she wanted. That the family lived on an isolated ranch in southern California only contributed to Edie’s carefree way of living. Without a system of discipline and a landscape as far as the eye could see, Edie was fearless, yet throughout her short adult life was worried that people might be making fun of her.

For the first half of the book Wohl writes about innocuous family and personal details and the reader is left impatiently waiting for the section to end, since she doesn’t start writing about the year Edie and Andy met, in 1965, until page 121. I gather that writing this book was a revelation to Wohl, since she claimed several times that she never really knew who her younger sister was. Written fifty years after Edie’s death, what would a distant older sister be able to say? Their age disparity precluded them from establishing any kind of intimate relationship and Wohl didn’t dote on Edie as a big sister might, nor did Edie look up to Wohl as a big sister figure. By the time Edie became a Warhol superstar and darling of the party circuit, Wohl was long gone from her life.

Half a century later, Wohl was struck by the impact her sister still has on pop culture. In analyzing Edie’s appeal, Wohl wrote:

“Right from the start, Edie was conspicuous. She appeared on the scene as if from nowhere, beautiful, unattached, and eager for life. She was also unimaginably innocent, because literally everything was new to her. She had no experience, no frame of reference, no sense of scale, and no standards by which to calibrate her behavior or evaluate what she encountered. She was open and alive to absolutely everything, and that, together with her beauty and her enchanting presence, made her irresistible.”

Edie’s path from California out east led her to Cambridge, Massachusetts and then to New York City where she fell into the party and social scene where Andy Warhol was its grande dame. Wohl is an arts academic and a stickler for details; she tried to pinpoint the actual date and circumstances when her sister first met the King of Pop Art and disputed some claims that have been made.

The evening reporter for the Journal American, Mel Juffe, told Warhol:

“When I was seeing you and Edie, you two were at your absolute pinnacle as a media couple. You were the sensation from about August through December of ’65. Nobody could figure you out, nobody could even tell you apart–and yet no event of any importance could go on in this town unless both of you were there.”

Wohl critiqued all the Warhol films Edie starred in and looked at them seriously, which is quite the opposite of how Warhol likely intended his films to be regarded. One theme that came up in film after film is how Edie projected her figure and her shapely legs as the centre of attention. For a young woman who worried that people would be making fun of her after seeing her in these films, she definitely was in control (although she may have been strung out on barbiturates) by knowing how to show her best assets to the camera. Since Warhol never edited or stopped filming and left the camera in a stationary position throughout the entire duration of his films–at least the early ones here–Edie knew that once her best features (legs, face, eyes, earrings) were in the middle of the shot, she kept them there. Warhol’s films were tableaux to show off her beauty. I do agree that Edie was a gorgeous young woman. Men were drawn to her, however:

“She was never altogether comfortable with straight men and would complain of their attention while at the same time doing everything possible to attract it.”

Edie died in November 1971 after overdosing on barbiturates. She was never able to free herself from her drug addictions, and repeated attempts at rehab failed her.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came into this book knowing very little about Edie Sedgwick except for her fame and her friendship with Andy Warhol. Found it curious that I had to read about 90 pages before Edie really makes an appearance but because of the elegant writing, I truly enjoyed learning about the family history. The book picks up with the ascendancy of Edie and I found her fame fascinating and I was moved by the author’s struggle to understand her.

[Stefanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everyone knows that the enemies-to-lovers girls just want to be loved even after someone has seen them at their very worst, and I think that's the fascination with Edie as well. She didn't actually do anything; she doesn't seem to be particularly smart or creative or kind or even vaguely functional. But she's still somehow fascinating, all these years later, despite or because of her messiness.

Unfortunately, this book is not fascinating in the slightest. It's just a sad attempt by her sister (whom she doesn't appear to have ever been close with) to capitalize on her name and tell her own autobiography. There's nothing new here that isn't in every other biography.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Sedgwick Wohl’s book is a kind of revelation for those of us who don’t know anyone who was alive during the 1960s and stayed Artsy Enuff to be here in the 2020s and confused by Instagram. Wohl doesn’t think Edie Sedgwick would have one?! This is why it’s important to listen to yr elders! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC - we will purchase this title at my library and it will have a good time on its ILL journey from all the burnt-out glamour grrl geniuses it gets to visit.

[Amandatory Reading · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it’s because I listened to the audiobook, but this was boring. It felt like listening to a lecture in school where the teacher talks in monotone the whole time and you keep looking at the clock, willing time to go by faster. I couldn’t wait for it to end. I skipped the last two chapters. Alice didn’t really know her sister Edie nor seemed to like her much. The title is misleading and should say, “Thinking about the entire Sedgewick family and Andy Warhol”.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was interesting up until Edie moved to NYC. I found the family's life in California chaotic but fascinating nonetheless. The author, who is also Edie's sister, described all the movies that Edie was in that Andy Warhol made and I found it boring. I skipped over those paragraphs and read about her life outside the Factory but the last half of the book was simply dull.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 I am not sure why Alice felt like she needed to write this book. If she was not actually a part of Edie's life when she was in New York, it seems strange that she would feel compelled to write about Edie and Andy other than to profit from their fame. I think her own life sounds very interesting and maybe she should have focused on herself.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She could never be anything but herself, and as herself she was absolutely riveting on screen."
•
An intimate look into the icon life of Edie Sedgwick. Enjoyed dipping in and out of this book. Never not facinated by the 60's NYC scene!

[Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly? I couldn't finish this. What I thought was going to be some nuanced insight into two legends turned out to be a bitter sister's memory of a time gone by.

[Kathleen Stack · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just so very cruel. Written by a sister who hated her and defended Andy Warhol. It made me very sad for Edie.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I assumed As It Turns Out would be a close-up, zoomed-in biography of Edie, given that it is written by her older sister. However, near the end of the book, Sedgewick Wohl states explicitly what has been apparent until then: "I know about [Edie], but I don't know her."

Sedgewick Wohl is Edie's older sister, but a much older sister, and from her telling of it, her life did not have much to do with Edie's. This aside, I would still recommend As It Turns Out, with a HUGE caveat that the author can be problematic when talking about LGBTQ+ identities (i.e., uses slurs, retreats into a defense of "well this is just how people used to talk" and it's like.... don't continue to use terms that you now know are pejorative?) and how she treats Edie's confessions of the sexual abuse she suffered.

Split into three parts, the book covers the Sedgewick family's background and the children's upbringing, Edie's brief but dazzling time with Andy Warhol during 1965, and concludes with a set of reflections that the author dedicates to her brother, who died tragically just before Edie's star rose.

The beginning of the story is fascinating, as is Sedgewick Wohl's description of Edie's time with Andy, even if the latter relies mostly on retellings of previously published material. However, the final section is hardly compelling; it feels disorganized, rushed, and repetitive. It is a long-winded way of the author saying that, despite the months of research and reflection she did for this book, she still doesn't "get" Edie's meteoric rise and lasting cultural relevance.

Even though Sedgewick Wohl doesn't have particular insight on Edie as the world met her, the stories about their parents and the microcosm of the family's remote life in rural California are often heartbreaking, and provide context on the experiences that shaped Edie's early life.

[Scroggelow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really brilliant book. The life of Edie Sedgwick is unsurprisingly alluring & by the end of the book I found myself looking to photos of her with admiration, something I hadn’t previously done. There’s this fascination with Andy Warhol, the factory, and all those surrounding it - it feels valuable, and more worldly , to read a book about someone other than Warhol himself - in this sense.

There are elements of this book that are bizarre and unnecessary. The biographer being the sister of its subject definitely makes for a slightly unreliable narrator. Jealousy etc, feels as though it comes into play. I was especially intrigued by the authors reluctance to accept maybe Sedgwick had developed culturally & intelligence wise , as she became more imbedded within Andy’s circle. Instead, Edie becomes ‘good at hiding’ her lack of those traits.

The book alludes to this great downfall throughout, and covers said ‘downfall’ in about 20 or so pages. Essentially Edie just faded away, is all I can gain. To cover it in that length (or lack of) is one omission, but to build it up so much and dismiss it slightly, is another.

There’s also far too much of an introduction, setting the scene is appropriate but not when this is hardly ever returned to. Wohl sets the book up to be a joint biographical & auto biographical effort , in around thirty initial pages - and then simply threads small details in throughout.

This book feels not hugely considered in structure and voice. It is however, deeply fascinating to learn about the life behind Edie Sedgwick.