All about "a"
Created from audiotapes recorded in and around the Factory,"a" is an account of a day in the life of the famous group of artists, superstars, and addicts who made up Warhol's milieu. It begins with the fabulous Ondine popping several amphetamines and then follows its characters [who include, among others, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and Dorothy Dean] as they converse with inspired, speed-driven wit and cut swaths through the clubs, coffeeshops, hospitals and whorehouses of 1960s Manhattan.

"Hellish hymns from Amphetamine Heaven, the vox populi of the Velvet Underground. . . . The characters of 'a' represent the bizarre new class, untermenschen prefigurations of the technological millenium." -- "The New York Review of Books"

"'a' documents glamour going down on the mores of the day. . . . [E]choes works of Gertrude Stein. . . . At the start of the book and to get things going, Ondine pops six blue Obetrols. He and Drella [aka Warhol] walk and taxi around town, are snubbed by Robert Rauschenberg, talk on the phone, cruise boys or talk about cruising boys. . . Important and very funny."