"Andy Warhol is remembered as the artist who said that he wanted to be a machine and that no one need ever look further than the surface when evaluating him or his art. Arguing against this carefully crafted pop image, Reva Wolf shows that Warhol was in fact deeply emotionally engaged with the people around him and that this was reflected in his art. Wolf investigates the underground culture of poets, artists, and filmmakers who interacted with Warhol during his apotheosis in the turbulent 1960s. She claims that Warhol understood the literary imagination of his generation and that a study of Warhol's literary activities is essential to understanding his art. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, including interviews, personal and public archives, tape recordings, documentary photographs, and artworks, Wolf offers dramatic evidence that Warhol's involvement with writers functioned like an extended conversation and details how this process impacted his work. Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s gives us fresh insight into Warhol's art as practice and reformulates the myth that surrounds this popular American artist." -- publisher's statement.