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Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory
Swimming Underground is Mary Woronov's blazing memoir about her near lethal experiences in Andy Warhol's Factory in the late '60s. Woronov takes us on a surreal trip through this infamous circle -- including Ondine, Lou Reed, Gerard Malanga, International Velvet, Rotten Rita, and Billy Name -- shooting up speed, starring in Chelsea Girls, living with the Mole people, spinning out of control.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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1667 people want to read
About the author
Mary Woronov
15 books33 followersMary Woronov is an American actress, well known for her roles in Cult films; she has appeared in over 80 movies. She first made headlines as one of Andy Warhol's Factory superstars, and danced with The Velvet Underground in Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. She is a published author of such books as Blind Love and Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
March 5, 2022
CRITIQUE:
"Who Did What to Whom?"
This memoir is an imaginative record of Mary Woronov's interaction with other members of the Warhol scene surrounding the Factory in the late 1960's.
Few emerge in a positive light. She speaks of most (except Andy Warhol, Ondine and Lou Reed) with a caustic tongue. Warhol was surrounded by so much deceit, fakery and self-obsession (from which Mary thought he needed to be protected).
The (heterosexual) men were just trying to get into the women's pants (Mary refused to have sex with Gerard Malanga, her "one-time protector" and dance partner in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable - "he was very attractive, but it was more like we were brother and sister"), while the women were either egotistical or weak-minded.
Mary reserves the most disdain for Ingrid Superstar, who had purportedly replaced Edie Sedgwick:
If Mary didn't like you, she didn't pull any punches.
Nico
Nico was extraordinarily vain:
Gerard and Andy
Mary acknowledges that it was Gerard Malanga who introduced her to Andy:
A Trip Through the Underground With Amphetamine Wings
When Mary was a small girl, she almost drowned in a rip. Her mother rescued her from going underwater, by helping her to swim to safety. It's a recurring theme throughout the memoir, as well as the source of its title. Mary equates the drug-obsessed lifestyle of the counter-cultural underground with the underwater of the ocean which almost took her life.
By the end of the book, Mary has to get over her addiction to speed, to survive and re-discover reality:
Ondine
Mary makes it clear that she and Ondine had a mutual adoration society going on. Many years later, she watches him introduce a retrospective of Warhol films:
Lou
Apart from Ondine, Mary was most sentimental about Lou Reed:
When Lou died in October, 2013, Mary wrote in an obituary:
Not only did the underground almost take their lives, but few of them got to truly know each other.
[Mary Woronov and Lou Reed, circa 1967, photographer unknown, courtesy Mary Woronov]
SOUNDTRACK:
"Who Did What to Whom?"
"Did you hear who did what to whom?
Who has touched, and who has dabbled?
...Here in the city of shows..."
[Lou Reed - "New York Telephone Conversation"]
This memoir is an imaginative record of Mary Woronov's interaction with other members of the Warhol scene surrounding the Factory in the late 1960's.
Few emerge in a positive light. She speaks of most (except Andy Warhol, Ondine and Lou Reed) with a caustic tongue. Warhol was surrounded by so much deceit, fakery and self-obsession (from which Mary thought he needed to be protected).
The (heterosexual) men were just trying to get into the women's pants (Mary refused to have sex with Gerard Malanga, her "one-time protector" and dance partner in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable - "he was very attractive, but it was more like we were brother and sister"), while the women were either egotistical or weak-minded.
Mary reserves the most disdain for Ingrid Superstar, who had purportedly replaced Edie Sedgwick:
"Ingrid was Edie's opposite: ugly, low class, and stupid. It was as if Edie was Dorian Gray, and Ingrid was her portrait."
If Mary didn't like you, she didn't pull any punches.
Nico
Nico was extraordinarily vain:
"[Nico] was so beautiful she expected everyone to want to fuck her, even the furniture, which groaned out loud when she walked into the room."
Gerard and Andy
Mary acknowledges that it was Gerard Malanga who introduced her to Andy:
"Gerard [Malanga] was the silver hook of a very different fisherman...I was mesmerised by this underground, and grateful to [Andy] its silver messenger for choosing me...
"I think the only reason he liked me was because I was Catholic, like everyone around him, and I was Slavic. In other words I was familiar, and therefore to be trusted.
"But we all liked him, and felt oddly protective towards him, even if it meant protecting him from ourselves."
A Trip Through the Underground With Amphetamine Wings
When Mary was a small girl, she almost drowned in a rip. Her mother rescued her from going underwater, by helping her to swim to safety. It's a recurring theme throughout the memoir, as well as the source of its title. Mary equates the drug-obsessed lifestyle of the counter-cultural underground with the underwater of the ocean which almost took her life.
By the end of the book, Mary has to get over her addiction to speed, to survive and re-discover reality:
"After they peeled me off the sidewalk in Brooklyn, even I had to admit I could no longer take speed, and, taking off my amphetamine wings, I had to learn to walk like everyone else."
Ondine
Mary makes it clear that she and Ondine had a mutual adoration society going on. Many years later, she watches him introduce a retrospective of Warhol films:
"As I listened to Ondine answer the [student] audience's questions, I knew he was the same, only his audience had changed.
"No longer surrounded by the fabulous chaotic speed freaks, he was adrift on a desolate sea of uncomprehending faces...
"I can't tell them the simplified version and they can't imagine the real one - what am I supposed to say?
"Darling...why bother preparing the truth for them when lies are so much more appetising? Which would you rather eat, reality or cheeseburgers?
"There is no reality in history, just versions of manufactured hamburgers."
Lou
Apart from Ondine, Mary was most sentimental about Lou Reed:
"I got along with Lou Reed best; maybe because he never made a pass at me. Actually, none of the Velvets had a lot to do with girls, and on tour Nico was the one I had to avoid...
"[I bunked] with Maureen, the drummer, who was so frightened of me she wore her entire wardrobe to bed every night...
"I knew Lou liked me; at the hard-core gay bars he would refuse to go in with Andy unless they got me in too, but I couldn't depend on Lou, he already had two iron mistresses, music and heroin."
When Lou died in October, 2013, Mary wrote in an obituary:
"It took me a whole book to say that—I wish I knew both Andy and Lou better, I wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to race through the best time of my life."
Not only did the underground almost take their lives, but few of them got to truly know each other.
[Mary Woronov and Lou Reed, circa 1967, photographer unknown, courtesy Mary Woronov]
SOUNDTRACK:
September 2, 2011
If I had any romantic ideas of what life in the Warhol Factory was like in the mid 60s, they are gone now. Mary Woronov paints a dismal picture of no-talented drag queens, drug addicts and losers who gravitated toward a talented artist who was just as talented in the art of using people. For that matter, she does not portray herself very well either, Woronov comes across as a violent speed addict who hated men and people in general unless they were further down in the gutter than she was. What makes this book interesting is that the author is a survivor outlasting most of the Warhol coterie and, if you've seen any of her post-Warhol work, turned into an actress of more talent than those who bit the dust before her. What I missed in this often depressing book is learning how she managed to regain her life after years of abuse. Instead we get the tunnel without seeing the light at the end. Woronov does show an amazing ability to place emotions in print and I give her credit for not idealizing herself or her factory colleagues. Yet this book was just too depressing for me and gave me little insight on what made the Warhol scene in the 60s so magnetic to some and so influential to others.
February 29, 2012
I discussed this book on my site, I Read Odd Books. You can read the entire thing here.
Review snippet:
Perhaps lives were saved but the scene ends thusly:
By the third day we were so exhausted that Ondine ended up in the bathtub trying to suck his own dick and I lay on my back with my neck on the bathroom threshold using the door frame as my imaginary guillotine (there comes a time when everyone needs their own guillotine). When I asked Ondine why he didn’t just get someone else to blow him, he practically had a fit. “You think this is about getting off? Getting off what? The planet? It’s impossible, I’ve tried! I am the last Oboroborus left in captivity. Perhaps I should introduce myself, the snake that swallows its own tail. This, my dear, is about resurrection, not sex. And if this were about sex, I don’t think I would be asking you. Everyone has forgotten the origin of the bathtub – baptism. I’m being born, you fool, now close the door.”
“He’s pregnant,” Jane whispered, “Ondine, can I get you some pickles and ice cream?”
“At last, someone who understands. Thank you Jane, that would be wonderful. Now, close the door, darling, I want to see Mary’s head roll.”
Actually, the scene really doesn’t end because scenes with speed freaks never really end. Jane, Mary’s roommate, thinks she catches pregnancy from Ondine and it goes on from there. Jane eventually cracks, as you do when you have a speeded up Mary for a roommate and her favorite person spends hours in your tub trying to blow himself. Mary vows to make sure her life does not harm Jane much in the future.
December 27, 2008
So vivid. Even if you have never been on a five day methamphetamine bender, you'll "get it". If you have been on said bender, this book will make a LOT of sense.
The one and only Warhol factory "tell-all" that has an author who takes responsibility for her own involvement rather than painting ugly pictures of all the other superstars. (Hence the "MY Years in the Warhol Factory")
Mary is just as hard on herself in this book as she is on Viva and Ultra Violet. And Mary was there, man. This is not a sycophantic jack off session. We learn alot about Ondine, Billy and the early Superstars, instead of a bland tale of the "later years" of the factory.
Thank you, Mary.
The one and only Warhol factory "tell-all" that has an author who takes responsibility for her own involvement rather than painting ugly pictures of all the other superstars. (Hence the "MY Years in the Warhol Factory")
Mary is just as hard on herself in this book as she is on Viva and Ultra Violet. And Mary was there, man. This is not a sycophantic jack off session. We learn alot about Ondine, Billy and the early Superstars, instead of a bland tale of the "later years" of the factory.
Thank you, Mary.
February 15, 2013
This is one of my most favorite Warhol scene biographies. It seemed more real than all the others I've read. It was scary and ugly and just how I expected life in the Factory to be.
One thing I don't understand: Why is it I can't remember the things I did 2 months ago, but Mary can remember so many conversations that happened 25 years ago when she was out of her mind on drugs?
One thing I don't understand: Why is it I can't remember the things I did 2 months ago, but Mary can remember so many conversations that happened 25 years ago when she was out of her mind on drugs?
February 18, 2015
Loved this book. Ok, straight up, I know Mary. We met in the dog park and I immediately realized she was the most interesting, bright and genuine person I had met in LA in fifteen years. Then I discovered that she was an artist and writer and old time drug muse and knew Warhol. And that's when I picked up her book. This is not a book about Warhol but about herself, (or any other girl with too much creativity, a love of life and a penchant for drugs) and the Factory lurks in the background, with all the hangers on given equal space. And what happens is a spiral into madness, art, pretension and speed. What makes it a page turner is Mary's voice. An outsider commenting on how every one else is also outside even though they think they are in. A wry look at a fascinating time in the history of sex, drugs, art and rock and roll. Lou Reed wanders through, Andy holds court, people appear and disappear, bricked up in walls. And every now and then as a reader you get a genuine contact high. There are no apologies for the rat that gnaws away at her and we flip, sometimes into her head trip as she does something cruel…or does she? By the time she dragged herself home ready for rehab I was exhausted. Not sure if I am giving this the review it deserves…it's hard. I just picked it up and read it straight through and came away emboldened. Write what is in you and do it with aplomb. No apologies. That kinda makes her my muse.
August 11, 2017
A totally entertaining read if you like memoirs by historically relevant, drug addled, youth. I have a fascination with the Warhol scene so I like adding to my perspective. If you are looking for one book about the Warhol era, this is probably not the one. But it's a really quick read, so if you want to sit on the beach and pretend you were a speed freak in the sixties, maybe it's what you're looking for.
April 22, 2008
Any thoughts I had about living an artistic-bohemian lifestyle doing lots of speed are now squelched. Interesting read about people whose drug-induced reality is attractive in its possibilities for imagined metamorphisis and living mythology. Equally a disturbing read, making me feel slightly sick to the stomach.
March 13, 2011
Mary is not, in this book, a very pleasant person to spend time with. She's spiteful, vindictive, petty, seething, sneering, introverted, judgmental, occasionally violent, she lacks empathy and feels uncomfortable in her skin. While this may seem off-putting (and is, actually) I was still compelled enough to finish this quickly. Although she would probably spit at me for saying so, I felt sorry for her and wished I could help her out in some way, she seemed so lost and desperate. Her prose is effective and I did enjoy reading her story, even though it was unpleasant. The more I know (read, hear) about those in the Warhol Factory scene, the more fucked up they all seem. All those people were broken in some way and were grasping for something to keep them afloat. The drugs fed the paranoia and the amorality, death was flirted with and scoffed at, sexuality was either blase or tossed about, but rarely seems consequential. There is distance between even the closest allies, it seems and people are petty and bitchy. These are just my perceptions, and I'm sure there's another side to the whole thing, or many sides, as the case may be. I didn't understand the attraction of Ondine for Mary either, but he must have had charisma. Many of these folks also come across as naive high school witches, flirting and messing with mystical things, trying to lend some theoretical meaning to their lives, while avoiding the reality of it. People throw themselves from windows, spend time "living" in closets, and men live their lives transforming into women, all the while being sucked into the melodrama of each others jockeying for positions in the Warhol milieu. It seems like a strange twist on the high school popularity scene, where the more damaged and desperate you are, the more likely you might be to be deemed "interesting" and then be chosen Queen, and propped in front of a camera for your 15 minutes of fame, to be called Superstar in a subversive appropriation of the real meaning of the word. All in all, this book is worth reading, but I would have a difficult time recommending it. Much like the whole Warhol Factory scene, the means to an end has all to do with what you project upon it.
At the end of the book, Mary seems to have anesthetized many of her demons, to the point of having relatively stable relationships and a rewarding working life. This is sobering, because many of the people Mary came in contact with in the Factory scene didn't seem to escape intact. The fact that she lived to write this is a triumph.
By the way, the prose in this book, the actual writing, is well done. It sucks you in and drags you along in an affecting way and reflects the speed-induced paranoia and misanthropy in a dreamlike way that confuses reality. Maybe that's why I have a difficult time recommending it.
At the end of the book, Mary seems to have anesthetized many of her demons, to the point of having relatively stable relationships and a rewarding working life. This is sobering, because many of the people Mary came in contact with in the Factory scene didn't seem to escape intact. The fact that she lived to write this is a triumph.
By the way, the prose in this book, the actual writing, is well done. It sucks you in and drags you along in an affecting way and reflects the speed-induced paranoia and misanthropy in a dreamlike way that confuses reality. Maybe that's why I have a difficult time recommending it.
March 19, 2012
Swimming in The Underground By Mary Woronov
Well in the time between my finishing reading the
book reviewed above and writing the review of it
I read this book from cover to cover. To be
honest I could have read it in a single sitting
it is that rivetting a read.
This is basically Mary's memories and
hallucinations of her time as a Warhol Superstar.
It revels in telling the seemy truth of her life
in the Factory and New York, there are good
memories of first how she got hooked into the
Factory crowd by Gerard Malanga, and then her
dancing with him in the Exploding Plastic
Inevitable with the Velvets, and just how absurd
the Californian leg of that was.
Mary then concentrates on what for her was
obviously why she was there, the drugs and who
took them and how hard it was to become
considered one of the Mole People, who were
Warhol's inner circle, and how obssessed she was
with Ondine. We also get her explanation of who
Sweet Jane was and what happened to her. As well
as the harrowing depths of addiction to
Amphetamines that was so prevalent in the scene.
With Billy Name bricking himself up behind a wall
in the factory with only a slit for drugs and
books to be passed through!!
Then of course there are a few rather Bizarre
sexual happenings the funniest of which concerns
Mary's sworn enemy Vera Cruz and John Cale and
some imaginitive use of Toothpaste!!!
For anyone who wants a good look at one side of
the Warhol Factory scene this is a must read and
it even includes a disclaimer at the front that
says Victor Bockris had nothing to do with
writing it!!
Well in the time between my finishing reading the
book reviewed above and writing the review of it
I read this book from cover to cover. To be
honest I could have read it in a single sitting
it is that rivetting a read.
This is basically Mary's memories and
hallucinations of her time as a Warhol Superstar.
It revels in telling the seemy truth of her life
in the Factory and New York, there are good
memories of first how she got hooked into the
Factory crowd by Gerard Malanga, and then her
dancing with him in the Exploding Plastic
Inevitable with the Velvets, and just how absurd
the Californian leg of that was.
Mary then concentrates on what for her was
obviously why she was there, the drugs and who
took them and how hard it was to become
considered one of the Mole People, who were
Warhol's inner circle, and how obssessed she was
with Ondine. We also get her explanation of who
Sweet Jane was and what happened to her. As well
as the harrowing depths of addiction to
Amphetamines that was so prevalent in the scene.
With Billy Name bricking himself up behind a wall
in the factory with only a slit for drugs and
books to be passed through!!
Then of course there are a few rather Bizarre
sexual happenings the funniest of which concerns
Mary's sworn enemy Vera Cruz and John Cale and
some imaginitive use of Toothpaste!!!
For anyone who wants a good look at one side of
the Warhol Factory scene this is a must read and
it even includes a disclaimer at the front that
says Victor Bockris had nothing to do with
writing it!!
December 1, 2007
I read this a year ago (for the second time).
I just love it, a window into the old NY art scene and all of its insanity.
I just love it, a window into the old NY art scene and all of its insanity.
March 21, 2013
very dark and trippy like the movie Trainspotting. Andy Warhol was only a very peripheral character.
April 10, 2022
Táto výpoveď z časti života, keď bola Mary Woronov "Faktory girl" bola miestami ozaj len pre silné žalúdky. Že až tak intenzívne členov okolo Andyho Warhola ovplyvňovali drogy, som si nemyslela . Bolo mi jasné, že v tej dobe boli tieto experimenty na mieste, no že vás Mary zoberie do Trainspottingu, ešte pred tým, než bol IN ma celkom odpálilo a patrične zaujalo. Feťácko-umelecký lifestyle im prerástol cez realitu. Myslela som si, že sa viac spomienok bude točiť okolo Andyho Warhola,no nie je to tak. Toto je čisto o Mary a jej pôsobení okolo Andyho "krtkov", keď sado maso vystúpenia zažívali svoje najväčšie gro, o Mary a jej komplikovanej povahe, ktorá sa popri fetovaní skomplikovala ešte viac, o temnej subkultúre v New Yorku, a zatuchnutom undergrounde továrne na 47.ulici , následkom čoho si máte chuť pustiť platňu s žltým banánom na obale od Velvet Underground a Nico.
Mary píše veľmi surovo a priamo. Jej pocity v tých momentoch sú intenzívne a prudké. Niečo veľmi temné a nenaplnené sa vrkadlo do života tejto stoosemdesiat centimetrovej herečky. Povedala by som, že tým aká bola výška tejto famme fatale výrazná, tým naopak jej duša pôsobila až zakrslo.
Celkovo, páčilo sa mi to. 🤗✌🏼
Mary píše veľmi surovo a priamo. Jej pocity v tých momentoch sú intenzívne a prudké. Niečo veľmi temné a nenaplnené sa vrkadlo do života tejto stoosemdesiat centimetrovej herečky. Povedala by som, že tým aká bola výška tejto famme fatale výrazná, tým naopak jej duša pôsobila až zakrslo.
Celkovo, páčilo sa mi to. 🤗✌🏼
February 2, 2015
Excellent insight into the personalities that fueled Andy Warhol's scene. Woronov was there when it happened and she writes candidly about the day-to-day vicissitudes that tend to be erased/ignored from traditional attempts to narrativize this scene. NY in the late sixties sounds tough and Woronov was nineteen when she arrived at Warhol's studio, having run away from her upper class painting education at Syracuse University. I had the privilege to hear Woronov speak during a class I took at the San Francisco Art Institute. She spoke at length about Warhol's process as a filmmaker, citing how his main interests lay in the "mistakes" and how a person would try to hide their personality behind a character, and how what interested Warhol was the attempt at hiding. She also underscored Warhol's brutality as an artist: his bleeding edge disdain of normal America. Woronov is an acting legend in her own right, having acted in hundreds of films. Unfortunately she's been type cast as the BDSM mistress. This character genesis no doubt beginning with her role in Warhol's Chelsea Girls. Two days after her talk at SFAI, my teacher arranged for me to give Woronov a ride to the airport. I showed up at the hotel to be informed by the desk clerk that Woronov had already left. The idea that somehow I was unable to communicate and connect with this figure in transit seems fitting. The rebellion of her anti-acting aesthetic exists in another dimension, a space and time I hope younger artists can somehow grasp, recollect and reintegrate into their own disruptions.
November 16, 2015
Il giudizio più che altro negativo è dovuto forse al fatto che mi aspettavo più che altro un’opera saggistica, mentre invece quando ho iniziato a leggerlo mi sono ritrovato davanti un’autobiografica piuttosto acida e altalenante. I capitoli sono ricchi di soprannomi e nomignoli affibbiati a personaggi di secondo impatto della Factory di Warhol e in fondo non risulta strano che gli unici che risultano essere esenti da questi soprannomi siano proprio le figure più famose, ovvero Warhol, Lou Reed, Nico.. Di costoro era impossibile nascondere le gesta, visto che le loro figure sono state sviscerate con molto attenzione prima dell’avvento di questo libro. Sta di fatto che le persone citate poco sopra fanno solo delle fugaci apparizioni nelle pagine del libro. La narrazione qui invece si concentra su altri personaggi di natura secondaria e proprio l’affibbiargli soprannomi vari sembra voler far capire solo a chi era presente ai fatti quanto si sta effettivamente raccontando. Si ha l’impressione di essere di fronte a un diario personale che l’autore vuole rendere pubblico solo in parte, dicendo il peccato ma nascondendo il peccatore. Oltretutto forse è proprio il periodo, l’età in cui ho letto questo libro, a essere sbagliato. Durante l’adolescenza avrebbe avuto molto probabilmente tutto un altro valore e avrebbe sortito tutto un altro effetto. Peccato perché il prologo è accattivante e aveva fatto pensare che, nonostante non si trattasse di un saggio o di opera divulgativa, sarebbe stato ugualmente una buona lettura.
August 13, 2017
This is a really odd book. Not in the sense that it's about an odd person or circumstance, but the writing is interesting. It's a memoir about warhol's factory, and it made me think about how drug memoirs can be tricky--you're relying on a narrator who probably doesn't have a clear memory of what was going on. In this book's case, that resulted in what seems like vignettes strung together that create an image of what the time was like. This isn't a criticism. She writes well in a weird way--like makes cool metaphors--calling her addictions by different animal names and characterizing them that way. The metaphors continue throughout the book, and they are amazing for the most part, and they're on every page: "It was as if Edie was Dorian Gray, and Ingrid was her portrait", "I lay under my sunglasses on a bed as dirty as Jones beach, watching Velvet build her incredible sand castle of powder and mascara that I had every intention of kicking in with my new boots", "Their ocean sloshed around in my skull, my shipwrecked thoughts drowning, trying to clutch onto pieces of brain tissue that swept by." I found this really charming. Unfortunately, the memoir was pretty dull. Not a whole lot happens, and a scene where a girl overdoses and dies is written in a such a superficial way that it made me wonder if the scene were a metaphor, or if Wononov still hadn't processed it, after all these years? I enjoyed this book but it wasn't amazing. I still really like Mary Woronov though!
October 12, 2018
Burroughs-like in madness, Mary exorcises demons past. Some insight into Warhol-land, Andy's high school, where Mary was part of the inner sanctum, "It was so great being part of the in-crowd." ("Vampire Nest", p. 186)--maybe that's all it comes down to for so many involved in the 60s Silver Factory--acceptance.
June 2, 2008
Almost everything I have read about The Factory is interesting although I am not a big fan of Warhol's art. (I've even hung around some art groups that were Factory wannabes). But Warhol is responsible for helping promote one of my all-time favorite bands, The Velvet Underground, (I just listened to the whole "Peel Slowly" box set last month), and some of the movies are fun.
In this book Woronov talks about her days as a dancer with the Velvets and acting in some of Warhol's films. "The Chelsea Girls" narrative is particularly fascinating. If you want to read my interview with the author go to http://www.reelmoviecritic.com/rmc/In....
She was a great subject. Now go out and rent "Death Race 2000" and "Rock'n Roll High School."
The book is supposedly out of print but there are a few copies at Harold Washington Library (that's also where I found the Zukofsky and Alvarez books.)
In this book Woronov talks about her days as a dancer with the Velvets and acting in some of Warhol's films. "The Chelsea Girls" narrative is particularly fascinating. If you want to read my interview with the author go to http://www.reelmoviecritic.com/rmc/In....
She was a great subject. Now go out and rent "Death Race 2000" and "Rock'n Roll High School."
The book is supposedly out of print but there are a few copies at Harold Washington Library (that's also where I found the Zukofsky and Alvarez books.)
August 26, 2014
This is another enjoyable memoir from a Factory regular. If it had been published when I was in high school, I almost definitely would have read it then. It's short, generally easy reading. Woronov unapologetically writes about her drug use, sexual ambiguity, cruelties, and family and religous issues. She seems neither proud nor ashamed of the dark areas of her past. In the end, she reserves her most tender sentiment for her late companion Ondine. Reading this in 2012, I was reminded of Patti Smith's Just Kids. That book is a much more revealing, emotionally honest, sensitive, and elegantly written memoir. Woronov's memoir is entertaining, but nowhere near as satisfying.
November 4, 2014
Gird your loins, and your veins. Woronov paints a journey that is simultaneously dark and electric, and I loved every word of it. As compared to Burroughs, et al, her internal dialogue and narrative threads are more approachable, but no less mind-bending depictions of the psychic experiences and observations of the restless youth who experienced the fame, sex, drugs, performance, and culture of Warhol's zeitgeist. Not for everyone - but for those willing to strap themselves in, it's worth the wild ride.
April 25, 2011
Wow, I didn't know too much about Warhol except for the Campbell soup cans. I didn't learn much more form Woronov's book except that she seems to have a lot of anger issues and spent much of of time described in the book drugged up. Woronov fancied herself a cutting edge actress. It looks like she's made a life for herself as a b-grade actress. I don't know if she's happy with her life or not. She didn't seem too happy during her time with Warhol.
July 12, 2016
La storia in flashback vista in prima persona da Mary Woronov dell'entourage di Andy Warhol. Dal mondo delle tappe, al disagio della noia artistica, a personaggi chiave ovviamente passando per le mille droghe che circolavano all'epoca. un mondo stonato rivisto con l'odio e con l'amore della Woronov. Lettura scorrevole e sbarazzina.
August 16, 2007
Mary Woronov's memoir about life in Warhol's factory (post-Edie), life living amongst the Mole People and life after all of that. Its a short read and interesting for anyone interested in the factory.
January 13, 2008
In the weird and wacky world of Warhol and the Factory, there were many partakers to the scene. But you were either in or you were out. This is an interesting tale of excess on all counts, with some insights on what it was like to be in, then out with Warhol!
May 18, 2017
Very interesting and not what I expected. A semi-expressionistic autobiography by Mary Woronov who has her cool and unique talents to many cult films. Gives an insider's views and opinions on the Warhol crowd.
March 7, 2018
Drsné, šílené, ale velmi poutavé asi i autentické vyprávění z prostředí, do kterého bych se asi nikdy osobně ponořit nechtěl. O drogách, mejdanech a sexu v partě kolem proslulé Warholovy Fabriky v NY. Autorem je malířka, herečka a jak je vidět i zdatná spisovatelka. Výborný překlad Matěje Turka.
March 22, 2007
A dark portal into the amphetamine subculture within a subculture surrounding Warhol.
January 12, 2008
Another one read in my Warhol stage, from an insider's perspective. Nothing that I hadn't read/heard of before.
June 17, 2008
If you are looking for a book about the Warhol era, this is probably not the best choice. It is an interesting memoria though. So I probably would pick up anything on the subject
August 17, 2009
Interesting view of the Warhol Underground. Not a pretty picture of Woronov or her friends.
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