Andy Warhol [The Andy Warhol Diaries]

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THE ANDY WARHOL DIARIES

The 90s bestseller that no one admitted having read, Andy Warhol's diaries have long been the definition of a guilty pleasure, famed for their celebrity anecdotes, their triviality, their lack of engagement with world events. From 1976 to 1987, Andy tells us of parties attended, champagne drunk, cabs taken – and dollars spent. He hangs out with "everybody": Bianca Jagger ("God, she's dumb"), Jackie O ("thinks she's so grand she doesn't even owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big"), Yoko ("We dialed F-U-C-K-Y-O-U and L-O-V-E-Y-O-U to see what happened, we had so much fun") and "Princess Marina of I guess Greece".

True, there are times when Andy stays home – to dye his eyebrows, hang out with his two pugs, Archie and Amos, envy Lou Reed his fabulous life filled with every conceivable electronic gadget, watch bad TV and see his own truisms subverted: "Watched 20/20 and it was so funny to hear Hugh Downs say, 'As Andy Warhol once said, in 15 minutes everybody will be famous.'" But for the most part, Andy goes out – and then worries about the effect on his creativity: "I'm going to start going to strange movies again. I'm missing so much going to parties."

He talks rarely about art, and when he does it's mainly the commercial side ("I really only have two collectors. Saatchi and Newhouse. I guess I'm just not… a good painter"). He seldom mentions artistic ambition, though is desperate to paint an Oreo cookie: "When the cameras were on I ate the cookies and said, 'Miss Oreo needs her portrait done.' So I hope the bigwigs get the hint. Oh, it would be so good to do."

Has the passing of two decades lent the diaries era-defining cultural gravitas? Well, maybe. As they move from the 70s to the 80s, the shift in mood is obvious, with advertising, drug addiction and Aids asserting their grip.