As It Turns Out Thinking About Edie and Andy

The story of the model, actress, and American icon Edie Sedgwick is told by her sister with empathy, insight, and firsthand observations of her meteoric life. As It Turns Out is a family story. Alice Wohl is writing to her brother Bobby, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1965, just before their sister Edie Sedgwick met Andy Warhol. After suddenly seeing Edie’s image in a clip from Andy's extraordinary film Outer and Inner Space, Wohl was moved to put her inner dialogue with Bobby on the page in an attempt to reconstruct Edie’s life and figure out what made Edie and Andy such iconic figures in American culture and in our collective imagination. What was it about him that enabled him to anticipate so much of contemporary culture? What was it about her that drew attention wherever she went? Who exactly was she, that she fascinated Warhol and captured the imagination of a generation? Wohl tells the story as only a sister could, from their childhood on a California ranch and the beginnings of Edie’s lifelong troubles in the world of their parents to her life and relationship with Andy within the silver walls of the Factory, in the fashionable arenas of New York, and as projected in the various critically acclaimed films he made with her. As Wohl seeks to understand the conjunction of Edie and Andy, she writes with a keen critical eye and careful reflection about their enduring impact. As It Turns Out is a meditation addressed to her brother about their sister, about the girl behind the magnetic image, and about the culture that she and Warhol introduced. The question Wohl tries throughout to answer is: What was it about Edie? "As It Turns Out is a revelation. Alice Wohl reveals herself to be a remarkably talented writer who, with finely turned sentences and lyric passages, paints an unforgettable picture of the strange and singular childhood that produced both herself and her sister Edie Sedgwick . . . Wohl shrewdly analyses the unlikely but perfect partnership between Edie and Andy. Edie and Alice’s vast Santa Barbara ranch, in which appearances were everything, corresponded perfectly with Warhol’s vision of an art in which under the surface of everything there was only more surface." —Alexander Stille, author of The Force of Things