The Robert F. Kennedy assassination appears in the diary not as a reconstructed account of the shooting but as a memory prompted by its tenth-anniversary coverage. On June 2, 1978, seeing Robert Kennedy Jr. on television led Andy Warhol to link his father’s shooting with his own experience: Warhol noted that he had been shot ten years earlier, the day after Robert F. Kennedy. The entry’s significance lies in this compact juxtaposition of public remembrance and private memory; it supplies no further account of the assassination itself.

The Anniversary as a Prompt for Memory

The television appearance brings the assassination into the entry indirectly, through the anniversary and the presence of Robert Kennedy Jr. Warhol’s attention turns from the public commemoration to the timing of his own shooting. The connection is specific: Robert Kennedy Jr.’s father was shot, and Warhol says his own shooting followed the next day. The diary records the association as it arises, rather than pausing to explain either event.

The same entry places that recollection beside details of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s recent circumstances: he had been staying at Fred Hughes’s house for two weeks with Rebecca Fraser, and Warhol described the two as deeply in love. These details do not explain the assassination; instead, they show the personal and contemporary material through which its anniversary enters the diary. A historical event is recalled within an account attentive both to television and to the relationships around Warhol.

From Log to Personal Narrative

The diary’s form grew out of an earlier, more general Factory log. Before 1976, Pat Hackett recorded business visitors and the previous night’s events, sometimes collecting separate accounts from people who had attended the same dinner or opening. The aim was to establish what had happened, who was present, and what Andy’s cash expenses had been—not to preserve his personal interpretation.

That arrangement changed after the filming of Bad. In 1976, when Hackett said she no longer wanted to work at the office but would continue writing Popism with Warhol, he asked her to keep the log and itemize his personal expenses. They agreed that the daily account would come from Warhol himself. By the fall, their weekday morning phone calls had turned the record of activities and costs into a personal narrative, while its practical purpose of satisfying tax auditors remained in view. The assassination anniversary is therefore preserved within a record that combines ordinary accounting with Warhol’s own associations.

Recording, Editing, and What Reaches the Reader

The weekday entries were produced through conversation: Hackett called in the morning, took extensive notes, and typed them soon after the call. The routine did not stop when either was away; Warhol could call, read from notes made on hotel stationery, or provide a tape. The diary’s coverage was persistent, even though its publication was not exhaustive.

For the published volume, Hackett reduced an original 20,000 pages, cutting whole days or weeks as well as portions of individual days, and omitted many names to avoid turning the text into social columns. She also removed much of the interpersonal exchange between herself and Warhol, recasting the occasional retained personal reference in the third person so that readers could occupy the position of the person listening on the other end of the phone. The anniversary recollection thus reaches readers as part of an edited diary: brief, personal, and surrounded by the everyday particulars through which Warhol recorded his life.