No comments about Andy Warhol in China: The Photographs of Christopher Makos.

5 comments about Warhol-o-rama.

1. Peter Oresick, Warhol-o-rama (Carnegie Mellon, 2008)
   
   It's a credit to Peter Oresick that I feel exactly the way about Andy Warhol's art as I do about this book; in that sense, Warhol-o-rama does its job exceptionally well, and thus I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to it fans of Warhol's art. For those like me, though, who have always been stuck on that line of considering Warhol's work art and considering it crass opportunism, well, that makes for a much more difficult recommendation. Oresick uses many of the same techniques Warhol did (and makes no bones about pieces that are readymade, or heavily influenced by, say, Allen Ginsberg ["Andy Warhol for the Taj Warhol"]). Which makes it quite clever, to be sure, but does it make this poetry? I've gone off on this discussion long enough that the horse is now just skin and bones, so I'm not going to whip it any more here. I'll just say that you should be looking at it for content and subject matter, not for craft or artistry. But then, again, I'd say the same thing about Andy Warhol's stuff (and have). So you be the judge. ***



2. This is a unique and creative volumn of poetry---words, works that capture the life of Andy Warhol written in a variety of forms--and some with no form at all. Oresick, at times, writes the way Warhol himself would create. To understand exactly what he is doing you are at an advantage if you have some understanding of Warhol. If you don't understand Warhol, this book gives you background and knowledge of the man and his life. Andy himself would have loved this collection.
   
   Nah-sayers may be on alert, the same way they were when Pop Art became popular but remember Art is and always will be subjective to the viewer.
   My only criticism is when Oresick "reports" some of the poems in a newsclip form. I understood what he was doing but it fell kind of flat to me. The rest of it flies in originality and creativity.
   
   Point to note: While toting around this book, people took unusual notice and interest in it. The ones that flipped through were both amused and fascinated by the work. Conclusively, this is a book worth a read for many, many reasons.



3. Peter Oserick's Warhol-O-Rama was published in tribute to what would have been the highly influential pop artist's 80th birthday. The poetic cycle explores the connections (and influences, both ways) between Warhol and American pop culture--its tabloids, its urban legends, its media, its tourism, etc.). Even the table of contents is a tribute to Warhol--"Andy Warhol" starts the title of nearly every poem to create a verbal reminiscence on the repeating images of Mao or Monroe or Campbell's Soup in Warhol's work.
   
   And some of these poems are rather inventive and witty and spiritually connected to the thoughtful kitsch of Warhol. Poems like "Andy Warhol for Bollywood on Dueling Screens above the Bar at India Garden Café, Durham, England, July 2006" interlace two different texts in inconvenient ways for pleasurable effect, and some poems present themselves as Village Voice classifieds or fictional letters. Other poems, probably the strongest poems in here, like "Andy Warhol for Beginners" or "Andy Warhol for the FBI" or "Andy Warhol for the Andy Warhol in the Vanity Mirror," offer humor and high energy and Warholic sensibilities that all come together quite exquisitely to make them not just tributes to Warhol, or flights through pop culture, or experiments in form, but all three concurrently, letting the work rise to something higher as well.
   
   But other poems simply don't do much more than poke at a single dimension of the three mentioned above, and they come across as experiments more interesting to the poet than to me, or streams of information that are the typical mistake of research (Oresick includes an explanation at the end [a bad move, to include explanations on poetry] of the kind of research he did, but even before I came across this, I had the feeling of reading someone who was `too into' Warhol, who can rifle off all kinds of information but has little capacity to filter it in a way that proves most interesting--Oresick reads this sycophantically at times). Some poems also lapse into treatises of praise, which are less interesting than seeing Warhol's philosophy in action.
   
   Perhaps many of my above criticisms could be couched as reaction to a philosophical ideal in the book, and I don't dispute that Oserick has thought through the implications of this series and the rationales behind this cycle, but rationales do not poetry make, and sometimes it's the resistance to rationale that creates poetry. By the final section of this book, "Warholastalgia," Oserick's method has become a little tiresome--the fault of many themed collections is that the theme does not change, but instead runs itself into attrition. I waited for the theme to step up to the next level, to work against its initial intentions and create something that I had not previously expected, but this did not prove so by the end.



4. A book of poetry about one man is unusual approach, but Peter Oresick makes it work in "Warhol-O-Rama". Andy Warhol was a pop artist who was known for associating with wide variety of people from all walks of life and using the ideas such diverse encounters engendered in his art, be it painting, film making, or writing. Oresick uses an artist's inspiration to write about the artist who inspired him, and the poetry is as original and entertaining as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking. "Warhol-O-Rama" is highly recommended as a book of deftly written poetry and a fascinating read for the legendary Warhol's legions of fans.



5. Peter Oresick's smartly designed new book of poems, Warhol-O-Rama, delights first with its inspired thematics. 54 poems, each containing the name Warhol in the title, are smartly divided into six sections; each section is appropriately named Warholevision, Warholanomics, Warholocaust, Warholastalgia...well, you get the picture!
   
   In a protracted political season in which we're all enduring and trying to survive the personality-driven focus of the media, it's also entertaining and instructive to immerse oneself in the joint consciousness of poet Oresick and Warhol, the late Pop Culture and media icon.
   
   Perhaps more than any other figure, Andy Warhol personified the brashness, excesses, and joyous genius of the Sixties. We're rapidly becoming a forgetful nation, so it's with a grateful heart that I read and re-read this book, recalling as I do so that poetry truly does, as Frost suggested, remind us of important things we knew once but forgot.
   
   Peter Oresick's sheer delight in his task, and his line-by-line inventiveness, will charm you. In fact, you'll derive much of the guilty pleasure one enjoys while reading celebrity biographies. I have had so much fun with this book of poetry! And, oh yes, that's right! Poetry should be fun, too! I'm grateful to the author for reminding me!
   
   
   
   --Robert McDowell (www.robertmcdowell.net), The Poetry Mentor, is the author of the bestselling Poetry As Spiritual Practice, published July 15th, 2008 by Free Press/Simon & Schuster

No comments about So Meow, Andy Warhol Cats Note Cards.

No comments about Andy Warhol So Many Stars Address Book.

5 comments about a: A Novel.

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.




2. You can't read every book and expect it to be the same form or formula. If you want your will imposed on every book you read, if you want Tom Clancy, don't read this. This is a "novel" transcribed from tapes. Andy loved tapes, tape- recorders, televsion. The tape, film, personal media explosion was only taking off at the time of this piece (book , novel, whatever). You have to come to it differently. Andy loved to fiddle with people and he loved to be fiddled. He's fiddling with alot in this book. Don't expect Tom Clancy when your reading something coming from the Warhol factory.



3. 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..



4. 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...'"



5. 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.

2 comments about I Shot Andy Warhol: Includes Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto.

1. "I Shot Andy Warhol" was an amazing movie with a great screenplay that swept the characters of the film through the surrealism and strangeness of the sixties, and this is the screenplay. It's great how the mental degeneration of the main character is depicted so subtly.



2. 'I Shot Andy Warhol' was the debut film of Mary Harron ('American Psycho'), co-authored with Daniel Minahan ('Series 7: the Contenders').
   
   The screenpay chronicles the life of Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist, author of the 'SCUM Manifesto', and shows her attempts at getting a play produced by Pop Artist Andy Warhol.
   
   This book includes the screenplay for the film, an introduction by Mary Harron, eight pages of pictures, and Valerie Solanas's 'SCUM Manifesto'.
   
   It will definitely be enjoyed by fans of the film who have an interest in Valerie Solanas, with more information of her in the introduction, and one of her works.
   
   For fans of the movie, I reccomend the book 'POPism' about the Warhol Sixties, for more information about the Factory Scene. I also reccomend 'Factory Girl', a film about Edie Sedgwick. It's not as good as 'I Shot Andy Warhol', and has factual inaccuracies, but is all-around an enjoyable film.

2 comments about Andy Warhol: Photography.

1. Very comprehensive retrospective of Andy Warhol's photography. I especially liked the fact that the book presents the orginal photographs used as the source material for so many of his silkscreens. Wonderful section on photos of Andy Warhol taken by others. A must for any Warhol fan. I have many books about Warhol. There is material in this book that I've never seen anywhere else. You'll love it!



2. This book is incredibly detailed and is a must for any Warhol fan. It was worth the money,

No comments about Greetings from Andy: Christmas at Tiffany's.

2 comments about Pop Out: Queer Warhol (Series Q).

1. I didn't think this book was particularly strong. It has writings from academics whom I totally admire. And I understand why people would study gayness as it relates to 1960s popular culture. Still, this book has very little about Warhol and his sexuality in it. A person is better off reading a biography of Warhol, especially those written by the people who knew him personally. This was quite an unimpressive anthology.



2. Art has given certain institutions the power to challenge the individuals within modern society to determine their own personal reactions to various situations. Linear thinking is likely to seem murky trying to sort out all the aspects of this that people who study find interesting.
   
   I lived for years in Minneapolis and was considered crazy enough by people who lived there that certain issues this book raises have also played a part in my own evaluation of how things like undercover sting operations work. It seems rather small compared to war, bombs, the death of journalists, television stations that are bombed for broadcasting propaganda, and the state of politics in 2008, but that merely reflects that I did not escape having a hell opf a context when I left Minneapolis.
   
   There are people who are trying to shape society so that all these things reach an equilibrium in which nobody cares, and reading this book might help you know how they feel.

5 comments about If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend.

1. Forget the fact that this book was laugh-out-loud funny, it was also a smart and engaging whirlwind tour through the art world. I especially loved when Jane went to Rome! The author clearly knew the city and I loved visiting it again through Jane's eyes. I can't wait to read Alison Pace's next book!



2. I had been looking for a book like this for quite some time. I loved it! It is light, funny and smart. I enjoyed traveling the world with Jane Laine and identifying with her character and her mental miniature versions of herself as she searched for true love. I highly recommend it and look forward to her next books.



3. If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend is as close to a perfect example of contemporary romance as it's possible to be: a happily-ever-after fairy tale set in the modern world. Ian Rhys-Fitzsimmons is the Prince Charming, hailed as the most important young sculptor of the day. Jane Laine is the Cinderella or Snow White--working for an unappreciative boss, taking second place to her "stepsisters"--her mother's pampered miniature schnauzers.
   
   
   The Good:
   Jane is someone it's easy to relate to. She can take care of herself, has a decent career, but worries about the security of her job. She has friends and a quirky family--and whose family isn't a bit quirky in a certain light?--and a huge crush on Owen Wilson, for which who can blame her?
   Ian starts out larger-than-life, but as the book progresses and Jane gets to know him better, he becomes more and more real. There's a very sweet moment when he tells Jane that despite all his current fame and success, in school, he too was the one not chosen, and that suddenly brings his character into vivid focus.
   
   The Bad:
   There's not a whole lot of depth to this story. Not that there's supposed to be, mind you, but if you're looking for a book to really sink your teeth into, this is not it.
   
   The Verdict:
   All in all, If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend is a warm, feel-good story that you won't want to put down, and that you'll want to savor on a day when you really need a pick-me-up.



4. I throughly enjoyed this book! I loved the ending, it was really, really well done. :-) The only wish I had was that it would have shared a little more of that first kiss. Actually,I wanted to give it 4 and a half stars. So I am now in the process of buying her others books. Enjoy!



5. "If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend" is a fun, lighthearted story of a young woman finding her own identity with the help of her friends and strength that she finds within herself. "Plane Jane", as she calls herself, is easily identifiable in most every young woman. She is single, has relationship issues, resents her boss, dislikes a co-worker, is bored with her mundane life and is having difficulty finding meaning in her chosen career. These real life issues are so very common among young women that the character of Jane is easy to identify with, even if the reader has moved passed this phase of their life; it can bring back so many individual memories from the readers past.
   
   This novel is centered on the theme of art. However, the reader does not need to know anything about art to enjoy this heartwarming story. This Novel is not a true romance story; it is more in the category of "chick-lit." However, I would imagine many men would also enjoy Jane's quirky nature and her experiences in the art world.
   
   I found that this was a very quickly paced novel as Jane and the famous artist Ian traveled around the globe promoting Ian's artwork. I was eager to read of their adventures together and the mishaps along the way. I was very please by Jane's character development throughout this story. She began as a very week and uncertain individual who needed to rely on others. In the end, she was transformed into a strong woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of life and carrier and was able to vocalize her feelings and solve her own problems.
   
   One major theme presented in this novel is to always think positive of situations that may seem negative or not fit into our plans. You may find unexpected growth in yourself by remaining positive and finding the "good" in all situations.