I love this book with a passion - ironically, I guess. I was personally a late conversion to pop art and the wry nonsense of the post-sixties media-driven labels fetish. Now, well, if you can't best 'em ...! This deceptively relaxed book is a wondrous construct owing much to Warhol's brilliant assistant Pat Hackett (and maybe editor-nemesis Colacello?) - but it's pure war-and-love torn Andy. It's essentially a glamorous book, a book that dwells on the peacock finery of our weary world, without teasing the darker undercurrents. It's a memoir on the side of the Embattled Gods. Warhol, it has recently been said (Sunday Times, June 2000), displayed an autistic focus on things, and the evidence gushes here, like Sale Day at Macys. Commodities loom large (understatement) in his enjoyment of living. But! But! But! There is also a wider, functional and provocative philosophy that is too fudged by high living bonism. In one unsurpassable poetic passage Warhol (and Hackett) takes us through the sensual circus of an ambling sunny morning in Manhattan. The fragrance of pretzels, the light on Fifth, Chinatown babble, etc. This is an unparalleled, transcendent embracing of the temporal world that helps explain the fugacious intensity of Warhol's pictorial art - and, more universally important, urges us all to take stock of our brief mortal moments, and think again. Warhol in France, in Italy is fabulous. Warhol watching TV is a hoot. Warhol on valium is humbling. Warhol reflecting is who we all should be. Put this on your nightstand and wait till your ego goes Pop. Under the media barrage, uncowed by the soul of this soulless age, there is a shining light.