A (thing)

Though billed on its title page as "a novel by Andy Warhol", a was originally conceived as a transcription of a 24-hour period captured on audio tape, during which Warhol (who appears intermittently as "Drella", his nickname that was a combination of "Dracula" and "Cinderella") would hang out with some of the motormouth amphetamine abusers who facinated him with their "creativity" (Lester Bangs once observed, regarding an interview he had conducted with Lou Reed, that speed-freaks have to lie all the time, otherwise they would run out of things to say). Warhol later admitted that his scheme for creating "a consecutive twenty-four-hour tape-recorded 'novel'" had a few flaws--Andy was incapable of staying awake that long himself, and several sessions were needed to fill the tapes. Also, when the taping was done, the cassettes were handed over for transcribing to whoever wandered into The Factory, Warhol's studio. After a year-and-a-half of amateur typing, the resulting text was a mess--full of mis-hearings, spelling mistakes, inconsistent formatting and confusing attributions--nevertheless, it was published without corrections. At 451 pages of fine print, a is as intimidating as any epic could be, but with far less charm than, say, Finnegans Wake.

(silence) (dialtone) (silence) (voices in between static) (dialtone) (Drella's making phone calls) (Phone rings) At the tone the time will be 6:27 exactly. (Beep) At the tone the time will be 6:27 and ten seconds. (Beep.) At the tone (click) (buzz) (silence) (buzy signal) (click) (dialtone) (dialing) (phone rings) B--Is Ondine? Yeah. B--Oh, fifty minutes of tape. Are you on the phone? O--Yeah. Will you talk to me for fifty minutes? B--Oh, of course. Okay, I'll take the, right here. O--What?