NP Andy Warhol chick lit book

[Raphael Saltwood]

_If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend_ , by Alison Pace, came out in like 2005, got it out of the library back then because I thought it might be a “learning experience lite.”

Like as with _The 7th Function of Language_ (murder/conspiracy mystery about all those Continental theorists) there’s some (not that much, iirc) educational content amid a superstructure of rollick — & like as with that book, I really enjoyed it.

The Warhol quotes at the beginning of each chapter were intriguing. He really did say a lot of interesting stuff, imho.

(I’ve always had ambivalence toward Andy Warhol due to the unsavory aspects of the Factory, the whole Drella thing, and - although I have a big knee-high Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup can that I got for Christmas forever ago & which has been a handy and attractive receptacle for various treasures - when it comes to art, prefer a more “pretty” style such as Arshile Gorky or Kandinsky or Modigliani.

(In the pop-health book _Sugar Blues_ there was a long anecdote about how AW was a sugar freak and how as a child his mother rewarded him with sweets for drawing which I think the author blamed for his (Warhol’s) prematurely white hair. And possibly his hyper-commercialization which the author found unseemly & I tended to agree for a long time, though maybe not as vehemently.

(Seemed reasonable at the time.)

After reading _If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend_, I re-evaluated him: he seemed more likeable, his commercial bent more admirable or at least neutral, his development of a personal “brand” an extreme instance of something all artists strive for, rather than an ugly aberration, and - well, kind of a mensch.