The first biography I'd ever read completely constructed of reported memories of the subject from people who'd been in his or her circle or encountered him or her in some way. Edie Sedgwick was the Sixties' version of poor little rich girl, descended on both sides from men who founded the Colonies, families which remained prominent throughout American history. (A gander at http://www.geni.com/people/Edie-Sedgw... will give you some idea.) Her father was a Western artist of the heroic mold, a black sheep who raised his own family isolated on a vast ranch near Santa Barbara. (Edie, seventh of eight, was schooled on the property with her siblings and some of the ranch hands.) It was Olympus, and just as dysfunctional. Mental illness, suicide, etc. were just the beginning. Edie went East as a teenager for hospitalization at Silver Hill, an iconic Massachusetts mental hospital, and after that, to cut a streak through East Coast coolness--first making a splash on Brattle Street in Cambridge,, then heading down to new YOrk. She was beautiful, fragile, unworldly/outrageous in a very Zelda Fitzgerald kind of way, she became a Vogue/Vreeland-designated 'Youthquaker'--symbolizing the zaniness and freedom and beauty of the Sixties. She was the girl everyone wanted to be. She was crazier than you, cooler than you, more beautiful than you could dream of being, a style setter backed up by this legendary family, and everybody wanted to know her, to be seen with her. But she was also tremendously self-destructive, and when she became Andy Warhol's Superstar, the fat was in the fire. A disastrous affair with Dylan was the capper--she was fragile and egoless and drug addicted, and to be treated like shit by that famous a--hole broke this unicorn's back. Gaitskill's Veronica I think is a speculation, 'What if Edie Sedgwick lived?'I came to Edie in the '80s, when she was once again a symbol of a certain kind of edgy beauty, charm, Haute Cool bohemianism that had us all entranced. As much a portrait of a time and a place, as well as a girl--I've read this book every four or five years.
I was sixteen when I first read this, stumbling across it in a box of paperbacks my grandfather brought back from the flea market. I was sixteen and the singer of an all-girl punk band in Detroit. I had been writing since I was nine years old and at that moment, focused on song lyrics. It was a lazy vacation summer day and I picked up the book and started reading.Edith Minturn Sedgwick was born in California in 1943, the heiress to an old Massachusetts railroad fortune. Her ancestors include Senators, writers, actors and artists. She went on to become a part of Andy Warhol's epic New York Factory scene before crashing and burning in a number of state-run mental hospitals and finally, succombing to a fatal drug overdose at the age of 28.This book is a biography of Edie, but it's so much more. It may be the only real book about the 60s that you'll ever need to read. It's a snapshot of the inner thoughts of some of the most important artists of the 20th Century. It's about legacies and fortunes and madness and drugs. It's a tale of California, of Manhattan, of underground cinema and old world society. It's about car crashes and magazine shoots and one delightful but doomed young lady.This book had a haunting effect upon me. One read of Patti Smith's poem "Edie Sedgwick: 1943-1971" did it. The perfect, staccato cadence of it. "...oh it isn't fairoh it isn't fairhow her ermine hairturned men aroundshe was white on whiteso blonde on blonde..."That's when I knew. It wouldn't be enough for me to write pop lyrics. I had to be a poet, with my poems set to music. "Edie" also, at moments in my young adulthood, entranced me with the idea of burning out instead of fading away. I saw enough of my friends do that. I'm glad I changed my mind and decided to stick around for the long haul. I wish Edie would have had that chance but when you're the zeitgeist, the Girl of the Moment, sometimes that moment is all you have.
What do You think about Edie: American Girl (1994)?
This biography of Edie Sedgwick is by all accounts interesting. Edie Sedgwick led a life that a very small percentage of the population can empathize with - she was the in-crowd of the 60s, hanging out with Andy Warhol and just being a tragically fabulous young girl. The beginning of the book brings you through the many limbs of the Sedgwick family tree - stopping to explain who everyone is and how they came to be where they are. After that, you meet Edie and are taken on the downward spiral that her life was. The biggest bonus of the book is that it includes pictures, so you can flip back and forth between a person you're reading about and find their picture to match a face with the story. I thought it was pretty fascinating - the only reason for the 3 stars is that I felt bogged down at times with all the historical family facts, etc. It really is worth picking up though.
—Nikki
Place HolderThis is the type of book that, when I see a copy on the shelf of a second-hand book store, I buy it, so that I can give it to someone.I don't even have to have someone in mind at the time. I can work that out later. The point is that a book this good has to find a home on the shelf of someone who loves life, people and writing (well, interviewing) at its best.This was my first experience of a biography assembled from direct quotes from hundreds of interviews, without any bridging text to get in the way of the story.I have never seen this technique used better than here.
—Ian Agadada-Davida
http://wineandabook.com/2013/01/21/re...After reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids, I was inspired to pick up Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick. I tend to let one reading choice inspire another. For example, once I read the biography of the Mitford sisters, I immediately picked up Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, whose relationship with the sisters had been discussed. Smith, in her memoir, mentioned her teenage interest in Sedgwick, which prompted me to remember I had her biography sitting on the bookshelf unread. (n.b. I also tend to buy books at a pace that exceeds my ability to read them, so quite a bit of my personal library remains unread…and I imagine, the way I buy books, this will continue to be the case). Edie Sedgwick’s story is, at the same time, glamorous and tragic. Born into a family as eccentric as it is dysfunctional, Edie was sent to several psychiatric institutions throughout her teen years before defecting from college to New York, where she met Andy Warhol and was deemed a “super star.”Stein’s decision for the biography to be composed of incredibly well-edited interviews was genius, in my opinion. Edie herself was a bit of an enigma; even people who were the closest to her didn’t seem to ever know her completely, so to it seemed fitting to piece the story of her life together via the people who knew all the different parts of her.Edie had an amazing sense of personal style. She was absolutely a trendsetter and an individual, and who knows what sort of impact she could have had on the fashion and art worlds if drugs hadn’t been the issue that they were. Through Stein’s interviews and Plimpton’s expert editing, Edie is a riveting read that is fascinating on multiple levels: as the story of a family, as the story of a troubled girl, as a unique glimpse into the art world, and as the story of an era.Rubric rating: 9.
—Jaclyn Michelle
