a: A novel by Andy Warhol.

WARHOL, Andy.

$6,000.00

Item Number: 147206

New York: Grove Press, Inc, 1968.

First edition of Warhol’s first novel, an experimental collection of four word-for-word transcriptions of tapes recorded by Warhol and Ondine between 1965 and 1967. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the artist in purple ink on the front endpapers, “To Tony Janak Andy Warhol 70,” with a drawing of a lowercase ‘a’. Additionally initialed by Warhol at the bottom of page 247 and signed again on the front panel of the dust jacket. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Exceptionally rare and desirable signed.

a, A Novel, Warhol's knowing response to James Joyce's Ulysses, follows an uninterrupted twenty-four hours in the life of Ondine, an actor who was famous mostly as a Factory fixture, Warhol film superstar and devoted amphetamine user. Warhol hired four typists (including Maureen Tucker, the drummer for the Velvet Underground and two high school girls) to transcribe audio tapes of conversations between him and Ondine between 1965 and 1967 and the book is a verbatim printing of the typed manuscripts, containing every typo, abbreviation and inconsistency that the typists produced from the twenty-four tapes (each chapter is named for its respective tape and side, from '1/ 1' to '24/ 2'). In his glossary for the 1998 edition of a, A Novel, Victor Bockris cites Billy Name, the book's editor, as the source for the title; "a" refers to both amphetamine use and as an homage to e.e. cummings.