Book: Edie: Sedgwick: An American Biography by Jean Stein and edited by George Plimpton
Review:
What can I say about this book, it was very interesting and very sad -- not as in the emotion -- but sad as in heartbreakly tragic. It held my attention until the end. Edie Sedgwick went from being the most sought after girl in NYC to becoming nothing more than a drug addict until her untimely death at a young age.
This biography was not written in the typical style. The format was a compilation of interviews from family and friends of Edie and the Sedgwick family. The first 100+ pages focused on the ancestors of the Sedgwicks such as Judge Theodore Sedgwick as well as other family members until it started to focus on Edie's father Francis Sedgwick. He went from being a sick child whom many thought might not live to transforming into a mean abusive man. He was a negative presence for his children as well as being unfaithful to his wife.
This biography doesn't seem to hold anything back especially when it finally started to focus on Edie. There was information about her various hard times at school to her hard time at home. Her life changed course once she started college and became part of the party scene and from there her name was starting to become legendary around Cambridge. Her life seemed to fast forward once she joined up with Andy Warhol.
I gave this book five stars for it's honesty of Edie's life and of the drug fueled times. Some of the comments were a little sexist, racist and homophobic but I suppose that also went with the times. The people being interviewed were so honest I wondered if they had been still on drugs because nothing felt censored.
I was reading the first published edition which included pictures of the Sedwick family and Edie's friends and entourage throughout. There was a lot going on in this book and it could also be seen as a cautionary tale of sorts. I don't usually read biographies but I'm glad I read this, it was very interesting.
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