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Superstar: A Novel
A bold and uncensored fictional account of the wild life at Andy Warhol’s world-famous Factory by a real-life superstar who witnessed it all
Author, video artist, underground film actor, and superstar, the incomparable Viva is arguably the most famous of Andy Warhol’s protégés, a mainstay at the enigmatic artist’s Factory. In her riveting, revelatory, totally uncensored, and scandalously entertaining novel, the Factory doors are blown wide open, exposing a world of sex, drugs, and genius.
Based on Viva’s own life, Superstar is the story of Gloria, a repressed, convent-educated aspiring artist who escapes the strictures of her stifling existence and flees to New York City. Falling in with an iconic artist referred to as A. and his coterie of outrageous, beautiful avant-garde acolytes, transvestites, boy toys, and hangers-on, Gloria is reborn, undergoing a remarkable transformation from sheltered young innocent to sexual athlete, film star, and media darling. Over the course of her reawakening, she sheds her every inhibition as she experiences what ordinary people only dream about in their most secret fantasies . . . or worst nightmares.
Though the names have all been changed, the real stars of Warhol’s factory are scandalously recognizable. Viva injects her own unique style and personality into a story at once outrageous and brutally the unforgettable making of a superstar.
Author, video artist, underground film actor, and superstar, the incomparable Viva is arguably the most famous of Andy Warhol’s protégés, a mainstay at the enigmatic artist’s Factory. In her riveting, revelatory, totally uncensored, and scandalously entertaining novel, the Factory doors are blown wide open, exposing a world of sex, drugs, and genius.
Based on Viva’s own life, Superstar is the story of Gloria, a repressed, convent-educated aspiring artist who escapes the strictures of her stifling existence and flees to New York City. Falling in with an iconic artist referred to as A. and his coterie of outrageous, beautiful avant-garde acolytes, transvestites, boy toys, and hangers-on, Gloria is reborn, undergoing a remarkable transformation from sheltered young innocent to sexual athlete, film star, and media darling. Over the course of her reawakening, she sheds her every inhibition as she experiences what ordinary people only dream about in their most secret fantasies . . . or worst nightmares.
Though the names have all been changed, the real stars of Warhol’s factory are scandalously recognizable. Viva injects her own unique style and personality into a story at once outrageous and brutally the unforgettable making of a superstar.
- GenresFiction
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 6, 2022
CRITIQUE:
Fictionalised Memoir (as Novel)
This a lightly fictionalised memoir of the childhood and mid- and post-Factory life of Warhol actress and superstar, Viva (fictional family name, Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann, and fictional stage name, Gloria), professing to be a novel.
The novel is well constructed - it contains both first person and third person perspectives (in different fonts) on Viva's peer group in the late sixties underground, as well as transcriptions of ostensibly taped conversations with friends like Willow (Edie Sedgwick). She says she makes the tapes "just in case there's anything worth remembering."
Their worth is questionable - without the tapes (and the novel itself), they are forgettable and probably would have been forgotten. The conversations are mainly about violence (drug-fuelled intimacy frequently leads to abuse), sex and drugs (no rock 'n' roll or Velvet Underground, unfortunately). It's like sitting next to a table full of hippies (or hipsters) talking about themselves in a cafe. Part of you wants to keep listening, entranced, while the other part wants to turn up the music or walk out.
"It's All About Sex"
Gloria comes from the family of a hypocritical Catholic doctor and his wife (Viva's father was an attorney).
When asked by a friend what her book will be about, she replies, "It's all about sex, of course."
Her fictional father is extremely critical of her lifestyle, films and novel, as is her sister:
Her sister:
Her father:
There are about thirty characters in the novel, all of them pseudonymous versions of real life actors, models, film-makers, artists and chantreuses. Some characters are easier to identify than others (Olga = Nico, Dylan Zimmerman = Bob Dylan, Jerrod Ibiza = Joe Dallesandro, Fred seems to be Paul Morrissey, Fred Morris perhaps Gerard Malanga).
While the novel has dated since I first read it sometime in the eighties, it is still interesting, and a must-read for Warhol completists.
Viva Superstar in “San Diego Surf” Source: The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
See here, for Diane Arbus' photograph of Viva at Home (warning: explicit, topless).
SOUNDTRACK:
Fictionalised Memoir (as Novel)
This a lightly fictionalised memoir of the childhood and mid- and post-Factory life of Warhol actress and superstar, Viva (fictional family name, Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann, and fictional stage name, Gloria), professing to be a novel.
The novel is well constructed - it contains both first person and third person perspectives (in different fonts) on Viva's peer group in the late sixties underground, as well as transcriptions of ostensibly taped conversations with friends like Willow (Edie Sedgwick). She says she makes the tapes "just in case there's anything worth remembering."
Their worth is questionable - without the tapes (and the novel itself), they are forgettable and probably would have been forgotten. The conversations are mainly about violence (drug-fuelled intimacy frequently leads to abuse), sex and drugs (no rock 'n' roll or Velvet Underground, unfortunately). It's like sitting next to a table full of hippies (or hipsters) talking about themselves in a cafe. Part of you wants to keep listening, entranced, while the other part wants to turn up the music or walk out.
"It's All About Sex"
Gloria comes from the family of a hypocritical Catholic doctor and his wife (Viva's father was an attorney).
When asked by a friend what her book will be about, she replies, "It's all about sex, of course."
Her fictional father is extremely critical of her lifestyle, films and novel, as is her sister:
Her sister:
"Janet's movies are just dirt, shit, disgusting. A is filthy and so is Janet."
Her father:
"We brought you up in a wholesome atmosphere. I can't understand this shift in values that seems to have taken place in your mind...
If it is not a book that will enable you to hold up your head with pride as you walk among your fellow Americans, to make you an object of admiration rather than an object of derision and mockery, then it should not be written.
I plead with you, do not join the fetid cesspool of sex literature that is demoralising the country."
There are about thirty characters in the novel, all of them pseudonymous versions of real life actors, models, film-makers, artists and chantreuses. Some characters are easier to identify than others (Olga = Nico, Dylan Zimmerman = Bob Dylan, Jerrod Ibiza = Joe Dallesandro, Fred seems to be Paul Morrissey, Fred Morris perhaps Gerard Malanga).
While the novel has dated since I first read it sometime in the eighties, it is still interesting, and a must-read for Warhol completists.
Viva Superstar in “San Diego Surf” Source: The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
See here, for Diane Arbus' photograph of Viva at Home (warning: explicit, topless).
SOUNDTRACK:
July 7, 2014
kind of interesting in the first half; transcribed conversations become as enervating as one might fear, however.
October 24, 2021
3.5? This book starts out strong and just seems to be falling apart but the end, but I feel like maybe thats the point? First its a regular story and Gloria moves around and by the end shes talking about drugs and speed and cumming and its all very non nonsensical. The writing attempting to reflect her life? or what was important to her at the time?
May 18, 2022
Very interesting read, if not only to understand how artsy people lived on the edge back in that era. Andy Warhol fans will like some details - especially IMO the aftermath of the Valerie Solonas shooting and how Gloria was involved in dealing with this. Unfortunately, the later part of the book looks like filler material - transcripts of random recorded conversations.
August 27, 2017
Just re-read this for the first time in 45 years. It's a more interesting book than I remembered, part gossipy and thinly-veiled account of Viva's life during Warhol and beyond, part an appropriation of Warhol's own techniques.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews