Coming of age in Warhol’s world of imitations and copies
‘Nothing Special,’ by Nicole Flattery, offers a novelistic meditation on the meanings of girlhood against the background of life in the Andy Warhol Factory

Andy Warhol’s visual art blurred the boundaries of public and private property: His most famous works are prints that reproduce images of celebrities and commodities, one of which recently led the Supreme Court to rule against him more than 36 years after his death. But Warhol’s written work plays with these questions of ownership even more dynamically. His most famous book, “a: A Novel,” is entirely made up of transcribed recordings of the “Warhol superstars” in and around his studio, called the Factory. It begins with one character, Ondine, taking amphetamines and from there follows a speed-induced journey through conversations with a cast of characters both glamorous and nihilistic.

