Edie (64 page)

When I began working on this book, in 197a, a close friend of Edie Sedgwick pointed out that Edie kept us all in different compartments. He warned me that learning about hex other friends would take ten years. He was right.

I started by interviewing members of Edie’s family whom I had known over the years. Some of her relatives did not wish to be interviewed, but those who did, tried, often painfully, to tell what they felt was true. Some of the people interviewed had never met Edie, but knew about the times in which she lived. Before the book was completed, I had interviewed about two hundred fifty people. In 1977, George Plimpton started the herculean task of editing thousands of pages of transcripts. Then we worked together to give the book its present form. After the initial editing process, I found that there were stI’ll many unanswered questions, so I continued to edit and to interview people. I am particularly grateful to those individuals who spoke with me again and again.

Every effort has been made to retain each individual’s unique conversational style, excerpting entire passages verbatim from the interviews whenever possible, although sometimes it was necessary to combine segments from several conversations to form a single passage. In some cases, names and places have been changed to preserve the anonymity of certain individuals. Naturally, any similarity between their fictitious names and those of persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

JEAN STEIN

The following notes are about the people who speak in the book. Not everybody is mentioned here; the people not included being those who wished to remain anonymous (their interviews are published under pseudonyms) and those we could not locate.

WILLIAM ALFEED
 was born in New York City on August 16, 1922, received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Since 1954 he has been a member Of the faculty at Harvard University, where he is a professor of English. William Alfred’s published plays include
Agamemnon, Hogan’s Goat, Cry for Us All, To Your Hearts Desire
, and
Nothing Doing.

MARIO AMAYA
 was born in New York City in 1933. He received his B.A. in Art and English literature from Brooklyn College and did his postgraduate studies at London University. Mr. Amaya is an art critic who founded Art and
Artists
magazine in London and contributes to Connoisseur magazine and
Architectural Digest
. His Books Include Pop
As Art, Art Nouveau
, and
Tiffany Glass
As Well As Numerous Exhibition Catalogs. He Has Organized A Number of exhibits and has held the following positions: chief curator of the Art Gallery of Toronto; director of the New York Cultural Center, Farleigh Dickinson University; and director of the Chrysler Museum. He is currently the director of Development at the National Academy of Design in New York City.

BOBBY ANDXRSXN:
 1 was hired to be Edie’s nurse but quickly became her friend and companion. During the Sixties I was as a rule overdressed, over-drugged, and always on the hustle for a new way to Keep a roof over my head without holding a job. Since then I’ve spent my time trying to recover some
semblance of a normal life-style—lots of wasted time looking for a stable relationship and definitely too much time spent getting laid by swines with hoses.”

EMILE DE ANTONIO:
 “I was an acquaintance of Edie’s during the Warhol days. In the Sixties I directed several films—Point
of Order; Rush to Judgment; In the Year of
the Pig, etc. I am now working on more films, writing for journals and writing a screenplay.”

JACK BAKER:
 I knew edie’s father well but did not meet Edie until the last night of her life. I was forty in the mid-Sixties, not part of the revolution but very aware of it through teaching art in Santa Barbara and through my children. I am a painter and have traveled with exhibitions in Europe, Africa, and India. Now I travel less professionally and live a quiet, laid-back existence on the beach south of Santa Barbara and spend part of the year in Hawaii.”

GOKDON BALDWIN:
 I was Edie’s friend and a very early accomplice—willing or not. In the Sixties I attended Harvard, then moved to California, where I ran a community center, edited friends’ books, and drew pictures. Since then I’ve received a Rome Prize fellowship and run an out-of-print book business. I draw, edit, and befriend poets.”

G. J. BARKER-BENPIELD:
 “After growing up in England and taking a B.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, I came to America in 1963 to do graduate work in history at UCLA, where I completed a Ph.D. in 1968. I was appalled at the war and protested it throughout. I have been unceasingly opposed to prejudice. I am now writing and am an associate professor of American Social History at SUNY, Albany.”

EILEEN BENSON:
 “I met Edie in Santa Barbara at the Cottage Hospital whilst working as a drug abuse counselor. I was born and raised In England and received my R.N. at a hospital In Bolton, Lancashire, before moving to America in 1956 at the age of twenty-three. In the Sixties I was essentially a homemaker raising three delightful children—Susan, Shawn, and Mark. I was remarried in 1972 to a man who also befriended Edie, and moved to Westlake Village in 1979. My husband is regional manager for an optical company.”

RICHIE BERLIN:
 “Edie was my friend—in the Sixties I was a friend of many, going from house to house . . . a relentless pursuit of drugs and thinness. I was an original. A retarded genius. Now I have been sober and drug free for almost two years. A day at a time—I’m making it. I run—I ski—I go to the woods—I have a few friends and from time to time I have some fun. I haven’t been back to New York and try not to go back into the past—know what I mean?”

DAVID BOURDON:
 “I hardly knew Edie, whom I saw only a few times and always in the company of our mutual friend, Andy Warhol. I began my career as an art critic by writing a weekly column for the Village
Voice
from 1964 to 1966, when I became art editor of
Life.
I wore a tie and jacket and kept my hair short
throughout the Sixties. I guess the look could be called Early Ordinary. I’ve been a freelance writer since 1974 and produce a monthly art column for
Vogue
and contribute frequently to
Architectural Digest.
I’ve written books on Christo, Carl Andre, and Alexander Calder.”

HELEN BEANS VORD:
 “As a child I knew edie from visiting Santa Barbara (our families were friends) and rather idolized her as she was several years older than me. After College, I spent several years in England studying silversmithing. I am currently living in Soho designing and selling jewelry privately.”

JBFFKEY BRIGGS
 was one of the principals in the film
Ciao!Manhattan.

ANDREAS BROWN:
 “I was born and raised in california and am the owner of New York City’s Gotham Book Mart. I organized and wrote the catalog for the landmark 1971 exhibit, “Andy Warhol: His Early Works, 1947-1959-”

BARTLE BULL:
 I was a friend of Edie’s in Cambridge. During the Sixties I was extremely busy trying to combine professional careers in law and publishing with involvement in civil rights issues and politics. I attended Harvard Law School, worked as a Wall Street lawyer with Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, and was a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi. In 1969 I purchased the
Village Voice
with Carter Burden and was its president/publisher from 1970 to 1976. In 1980 I became the director of
World Business Weekly
magazine.”

SUSAN WBIGHT BURDIN:
 “Edie and I were pals. In the early Sixties I organized and managed the Paraphernalia boutique. I then went into photography and worked in the light show at the Electric Circus in St. Mark’s Place. Throughout the Sixties I studied nutrition and have since been doing nutrition consulting, and in 1978 specialized in widology. I took two to three hours to dress in the Sixties and was always one and a half hours late. Now I have a Casio watch and am punctual to the second.”

JOHN CAGE
 was born in 1912 in Los Angeles and is the composer of numerous works for piano and harpsichord, voice, percussion and electronic devices, audiovisual effects, and orchestra. One of the most influential and innovative artists of the twentieth century (he invented the prepared piano), John Cage is also the author of Silence; A
Year from Monday; M,
and
Empty Words.
He is a member of the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

TRUMAN CAPOTE
 was born in New Orleans and educated in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. After leaving school at seventeen, he worked briefly as a fortune-teller’s assistant before landing a job at
The New Yorker.
He is the author of numerous books, among them
The Grass Harp; The Muses Are Heard; Breakfast at Tiffany’s; In Cold Blood; A Christmas Memory; The Thanksgiving Visitor; Other Voices, Other Rooms; The Dogs Bark,
and
Music for Chameleons.
Many of his works have been adapted to television and the theater. He himself has written screenplays—Beat
the Devil
and The Innocents.

L. M. KIT CARSON:
 “like a lot of North Americans coming of age in the Sixties, I thought of myself as an outlaw. The fact that Edie pushed the edge was part of what attracted me to her. I worked as a freelance journalist; my first article was published in
Esquire
in 1966. At the end of the Sixties, I made a mock documentary feature, David
Holzman’s Diary
(which Jim McBride directed) that won awards at Cannes, Venice, New York, Mannheim, etc. In the Seventies I founded and ran a film festival and became a kind of wandering film-speaker. In 1975 I married an actress, Karen Black, and we have a son, Hunter. Now I write film scripts (Short
People; The Last Work”)
and am starting to produce films.”

LEO CASTELLI
 is recognized internationally as a major art dealer. Born in Trieste, he speaks five languages and holds a law degree from the University of Milan. In 193a he worked for an insurance company in Bucharest, then moved to Paris, where he became a partner in the Gallerie Rene Drouin. In 1942 he moved to New York, where he continued to be involved in the avant-garde art world, but it wasn’t until 1957 that he opened a gallery in their home on Seventy-seventh Street. He has since opened two new galleries in S0H0 and continues to represent major American artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, Robert Morris, and Donald Judd.

GKEGOKY CORSO,
 one of the major figures of the Beat Generation, is the author of many volumes of poetry, including The Vestal
Lady
on Brattle; The
Happy Birthday of Death; The Mutation of the Spirit,
and
Elegiac feelings American.

DIANA DAVIS:
 “The person called Diana Davis is living in the East and never refers to California as ‘the Coast.’”

LAINE DICKERMAN:
 “I was Edie’s roommate at St. Timothy’s boarding School in 1958-59. In 1964 I married John Gifiord, a fellow student at Rhode Island School of Design. In the Sixties I lived mostly in buildings under construction . . . consciously rejecting stuff we’d grown up with: traditional trappings of comfort, financial security, etc.—pseudohip. After living on a farm commune in Pennsylvania with RISD friends, we moved back to Cambridge in 1972 and I worked as an artist. In 1976 I started Straight Wharf Restaurant in Nantucket with my husband and friends, which has become successful. I am currently working on banners, taking courses at Harvard Divinity School, working at the restaurant in the summer and am a part-time tennis pro.”

PETER DWORKIN:
 “In the Sixties I was an overweight precocious hippie, always rather younger than my friends and associates (having been born in 1949). I talked a better game than I played. I worked jobs and bummed it tI’ll 1971, when I spent a year at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., with Walter Hopps, and subsequently five years at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 1977, I have owned and operated a small gallery and shop, Equator, down in S0H0, specializing in American folk art.”

ISABEL EBERSTADT:
 I live in New York City and have two children.

PREACHER EWING:
 “My name is David Sawyer Ewing and for a brief time I was the Princess’s consort. Together we exhausted the scenery from quixoticism to bathos. I opened the Seventies in a motorcycle repair shop and closed them in a film editing room, where I stI’ll spend an inordinate amount of time.”

JUDT FEIPFER:
 “I was a close friend of Edie’s and spent the Sixties going crazy. I was a wife, a mother, and finally pulled the act together and went out and got a job. Since then, I’ve spent my time keeping sane.”

DANNY FIELDS
 is the editor of
Country Rhythms,
a magazine about country music and its personalities. He is writing the book and songs for a musical. He is also the publicity director of The Ritz, a nightclub in New York City.

SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG
 is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard.