Rating: 
Summary: Bad, Bad, Bad Book
Review: Andy Warhol always stated about people having "15 minutes of fame" but this book, with its fierce, hard-hitting, sexually explicit, brilliant short take on the man's gay life, passions, and art goes much deeper into Warhol's life than we have ever seen. .
This book is part of the Penguin Lives biographies. The Author, Wayne Koestenbaum, shows how Andy Warhol managed to take classic American images such as Campbell Soup cans, Brillo boxes, and the faces of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Onassis and made us look at them in radically different ways. The Author offers very interesting and intriguing background into Warhol's childhood (e.g., when his mom caught him playing with himself while looking at Popeye), his boyfriends and gay love affairs, his nights among the disco demimonde of Studio 54, the scene at the Factory, and his obsessions with body image, pornography, and AIDS. Andy Warhol is a `secret' gay icon of the time. This is a very interesting book that I would highly recommend to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: How gay was Warhol? About as gay as you can get...
Review: Andy Warhol always stated about people having "15 minutes of fame" but this book, with its fierce, hard-hitting, sexually explicit, brilliant short take on the man's gay life, passions, and art goes much deeper into Warhol's life than we have ever seen. .
This book is part of the Penguin Lives biographies. The Author, Wayne Koestenbaum, shows how Andy Warhol managed to take classic American images such as Campbell Soup cans, Brillo boxes, and the faces of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Onassis and made us look at them in radically different ways. The Author offers very interesting and intriguing background into Warhol's childhood (e.g., when his mom caught him playing with himself while looking at Popeye), his boyfriends and gay love affairs, his nights among the disco demimonde of Studio 54, the scene at the Factory, and his obsessions with body image, pornography, and AIDS. Andy Warhol is a 'secret' gay icon of the time. This is a very interesting book that I would highly recommend to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: How gay was Warhol? About as gay as you can get...
Review: Andy Warhol always stated about people having "15 minutes of fame" but this book, with its fierce, hard-hitting, sexually explicit, brilliant short take on the man's gay life, passions, and art goes much deeper into Warhol's life than we have ever seen. .
This book is part of the Penguin Lives biographies. The Author, Wayne Koestenbaum, shows how Andy Warhol managed to take classic American images such as Campbell Soup cans, Brillo boxes, and the faces of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Onassis and made us look at them in radically different ways. The Author offers very interesting and intriguing background into Warhol's childhood (e.g., when his mom caught him playing with himself while looking at Popeye), his boyfriends and gay love affairs, his nights among the disco demimonde of Studio 54, the scene at the Factory, and his obsessions with body image, pornography, and AIDS. Andy Warhol is a 'secret' gay icon of the time. This is a very interesting book that I would highly recommend to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: A gorgeous, innovative work
Review: As a Warhol scholar, and someone who has read dozens of books and essays about him, I would heartily recommend this as an _addition_ to the other works. It's not really a biography in the traditional sense at all, and it certainly shouldn't be the first or only thing you read. If you prefer a clinical, detached, "just the facts, ma'am" approach - skip this. If you are terrified by 20th century philosophy and psychoanalysis - skip this. If you find it easier to disparage strawman concepts like "postmodernism" rather than actually reading and thinking about continental philosophy (yes, I know it's difficult) - skip this. And judging from the reviews, if you're terribly uncomfortable with sexual themes or "swishiness" in art or writing - forget it. The book is excellent. The prose is often rich and compelling - my copy is dogeared from all the passages I've marked - and the philosophical and psychoanalytic themes, while not developed, can be very suggestive. Koestenbaum has an excellent reading of many of the films - perhaps the most important and underexamined aspect of his work. Warhol's art is certainly not reduced to postmodernist cliches (as it has been so often elsewhere) nor is it reduced to being "about" his sexual identity. In a striking change, Warhol is not considered as a celebrity or a monster, but like the frail yet determined individual he was, the complex and multifaceted life he led, and the gorgeous, troubling, powerful art he produced. If you don't know anything about Warhol, if you've haven't seen much of his work or any of his films, don't start with this book - you'll be confused and dissappointed. But if you already think you know all about Warhol, and you read this book -slowly - while looking at his work, I think you've find it an incredibly helpful guide. For real reviews, ...read Hal Foster's review in the London Review of Books
Rating: 
Summary: I really, really want to like Wayne Koestenbaum
Review: but he makes it impossible. Some think his prose elegant (he obviously does); I find it precious. Koestenbaum poses as an old-fashioned gay aesthete, but he has really just spiced up postmodernism with queeny affectations...or maybe he's propping up his outmoded queeniness with postmodern affectations. Either way, he has an annoying habit of looking in every puffed-up sentence as though he's saying something profound when he's really saying nothing at all--it's just word-play, without even the justification of cleverness. The book has no original insights, yet pretends to them in every line. But that's postmodernism for you, even when it gets up in the drag of nostalgia for belles lettres. By the way, I was puzzled and amused by the amazon reviewer who expresses his disgust with "this kind of writing," which is "irrelevant" to today's troubled world...I wonder if he meant belles lettres or postmodernist drivel. I suspect he meant the former, but I identify Koestenbaum with the latter and heartily agree with him. Just read Oscar Wilde's critical dialogues instead--open up "The Decay of Lying," you'll be howling with laughter in minutes, and left with insights to reflect on for days.
Rating:
Summary: Bad, Bad, Bad Book
Review: Dear Andy Warhol Fan/Friend/Interested Party, Don't waste your time or money on this sad biography of Andy Warhol. It's boring with a capital b. Wayne Koestenbaum is more interested in impressing you with his fancy vocabulary and trivial facts he has gathered on Andy than giving you a complete biography of Andy Warhol. In the introduction, the author who never met Andy Warhol, discusses imaginary conversations he has had with Warhol beyond the grave. Yes, really - it's that bad.
Rating:
Summary: A gorgeous, innovative work
Review: Frankly, I didn't know very much about Andy Warhol until I read this book. I learned how sexual and abstract (to use one of his favorite words) he really was. The book is a nice overview. It makes me want to learn more about him and see more of his work. There is a wonderful source reference at the end of the book for anyone who may want to continue research and study of WARHOL. He definitely made a mark in the art world for the 20th Century. ....
Rating: 
Summary: A Repetitive Artist
Review: Frankly, I didn't know very much about Andy Warhol until I read this book. I learned how sexual and abstract (to use one of his favorite words) he really was. The book is a nice overview. It makes me want to learn more about him and see more of his work. There is a wonderful source reference at the end of the book for anyone who may want to continue research and study of WARHOL. He definitely made a mark in the art world for the 20th Century. ....
Rating:
Summary: Two Bottoms don't make a Top
Review: In Wayne Koestenbaum's account of Andy Warhol's life and work, everything has been reduced to voyeurism and sex and that is about as redundant as one can get when discussing Warhol's contribution to modern art. The book is a quagmire of self-loathing and narcissism, it's the literary equivalent of being led through a maze by a blind person. Warhol's life story is one of hard work and dreams. This book is way too literal and never get's beyond the authors own personal neurosis to shed any light on one of the 20th centuries most brilliant visual innovators.
Rating:
Summary: Wayne Koestenbaum by Wayne Koestenbaum
Review: So-called poet Koestenbaum has struck down yet another public figure with his teeny-tiny, myopic, totally narcissistic view of the world. His prissy, "NOTICE ME" prose doesn't work in a full-scale biography, and his, er, interpretations of Warhol's art are often painfully embarrassing to read. Typical femmy claptrap from the author of the ridiculous Jackie Under My Skin. Will book publishers ever wake up and learn that no one cares about this kind of "writing" - especially in today's much-changed world. It's completely irrevelant and insulting to other, empathetic, compassionate people. Would that Koestenbaum were such a writer. Sad.
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