While I eagerly await my copy of Blake Gopnik’s new Warhol biography, I went back to Jean Stein’s riveting portrait of Edie Sedgwick and her world (old line WASP wealth and then the Factory), Edie, that appeared in 1982. Stein who was both of the world (a Hollywood daughter) and its excellent observer (via the Paris Review and George Plimpton, who edited this book) captured on-the-record oral histories that are still astounding in their you-are-theredness. Walter Hopps, curator, museum director, art dealer, nurterer of so many West Coast artists is on the record as are Truman Capote, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, denizens of the Factory, and of course, Warhol himself. Edie flamed brightly, erratically and died at the age of 28 of an overdose, joining a few of her other siblings who had not made it out of their twenties. Stein jumped from her window at the age of 83, which now casts an even more somber shade on this tragic tale.

Photo copyright by Nat Finkelstein, Used with permission of Nat Finkelstein Estate; Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick outside Lincoln Center