Popism

Popism was Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett’s memoir of the 1960s, a book born from their first major publishing collaboration and sustained through years of writing, editorial changes, promotion, and discussion of a possible film. Its history reveals that the book was not simply a retrospective account: it grew out of an ongoing working relationship in which interviews, recorded conversations, publishing business, and personal exchanges all fed into the project.

Origins and Collaboration

Before Popism, Warhol and Hackett had worked together on The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. Hackett conducted eight separate interviews with Warhol and wrote chapters one through eight and chapter ten from them. For the introductory chapter and chapters nine and eleven through fourteen, she drew on conversations Warhol had recorded with Bob Colacello and Brigid Berlin. Once that book was published in 1975, Warhol asked Hackett to co-author another book with him, this time a memoir of the sixties. They decided to call it Popism.

The arrangement made Hackett more than a transcriber or assistant. Her account identifies her as the writer of substantial parts of the earlier book and as Warhol’s chosen co-author for the follow-up. The project also belonged to a wider pattern in their work together: Warhol’s recorded conversations and recollections became material that Hackett shaped into chapters, while the book’s subject—the sixties—called for a retrospective narrative rather than a record of their present-day routine.

Writing and Editorial Development

The work continued after the initial decision to write the book. In 1976, after the filming of Bad, Hackett told Warhol that she no longer wanted to work at the office but would still write Popism with him. Their agreement kept the book alive even as her role in the daily office changed. Their discussions could be part of ordinary workdays: in February 1977, after a late day at the office, Warhol spoke with Hackett about the book and heard her report on interviews she had conducted with Jonas Mekas and Kenny Jay Lane.

The publishing arrangements also shifted. In December 1976, Warhol received a letter from their editor, Steve Aronson, saying that he was leaving Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and had asked Mr. Jovanovich to take over on Popism. The letter records a change in editorial stewardship, not an end to the collaboration. The book remained a live project in Warhol’s working life, returning in later conversations as a prospect for publication, promotion, and adaptation.

Publication and Public Reception

By March 1980, Popism had entered a more public phase. Warhol noted that a writer from New York magazine had called about the first part of the book that the magazine was running on its cover, and he hoped the book might become a hit without requiring promotional work. That hope sat alongside practical signs of circulation: on March 10, he sent Brigid Berlin to a bookstore to buy eight copies, for $94.56; two days later, he bought a hundred copies from Harcourt Brace.

Reviews supplied another measure of attention. In Washington, Warhol read a favorable Newsweek review. In May, he recorded that Calvin Tomkins had given Popism a rave review in The New Yorker. His reaction was not uncomplicated enthusiasm: he was angry at Harcourt Brace over its advertising and wondered when an advertisement would appear in The Times. The book’s reception, as reflected in these entries, therefore combined praise and visible demand with Warhol’s impatience about the publisher’s promotion.

A Possible Film and an Uncertain Response

Warhol also imagined Popism as material for a film. In early 1981, he invited Jon Gould to see 42nd Street because Gould was looking for ideas for Paramount. Warhol brought a copy of the book and hoped to suggest it as a movie project, partly because he wanted to work on it with Gould, whom he considered knowledgeable about facts, figures, and surveys.

The possibility remained uncertain. In March, Warhol reported that Gould liked the book but did not think Paramount could make it; Gould had also called it badly edited. Warhol did not treat that judgment as final, allowing that something might happen eventually or that the timing might be too soon. At a birthday party later that month, he overheard Lester Persky say that he wanted to buy Popism, but could not tell whether Persky meant the film rights or simply a copy of the book. In these episodes, the memoir appears at once as a finished work available to readers and as a property whose possible screen life had not been settled.

Place in Warhol’s Working Life

Popism connected Warhol’s account of the sixties to his later creative and commercial activity. The book gave him and Hackett a continuing project after their first collaboration, and it remained present in their conversations even when Hackett had stepped away from office work. Its later appearances in Warhol’s diary are concrete and varied: a phone discussion about interviews, bookstore purchases, a magazine feature, reviews, publisher complaints, and the idea of a film adaptation.

That record also distinguishes Popism from the daily diary itself. The diary was assembled from Warhol’s accounts of the previous day, collected through weekday phone calls and entered by Hackett; Popism, by contrast, was conceived as a memoir of an earlier decade and drew on interviews and taped conversations. Both depended on collaboration and the conversion of speech into writing, but they served different purposes. Popism shaped Warhol’s remembered past into a book, while its continued presence in his later routine shows how that past remained active—as a subject to write, a title to sell, and a possible story to carry into another medium.