In The Heat of the Night

By MARGARET CARLSON

HOLY TERROR: ANDY WARHOL CLOSE UP by Bob Colacello

HarperCollins; 514 pages; $22.95

Andy would be having a fit, just beside himself. Who does Bob Colacello think he is, writing about Bianca and Liz and Truman and Yoko, as if they would have given him the time of day if he weren't working at the Factory? Sure, Jackie O. was polite that time Andy took Colacello along as his date to a Christmas party, even shared her glass of Perrier. But she didn't mean it, calling Andy the next day to complain about his bringing a gossip columnist to real people's parties. Really. At least this time he didn't throw up in the sink, the way he did when Andy was with him at Halston's.

That's how Warhol remembers Colacello in The Andy Warhol Diaries (807 pages), published in 1989, which is not exactly how Colacello remembers Colacello in this 514-page nag. Dueling diaries may be the perfect '80s moment, in which two shallow people recount in mind-numbing detail the comings and goings (a lot of time is spent in cabs) of long-forgotten and always boring celebrities like Viva, Baby Jane Holzer and Jerry Hall. Warholian scholars, if there is such a category, might want to read this book to decide once and for all whether Truman Capote liked Bob better than Andy. Others should be warned: the only thing worse than reading about the Velvet Underground's evenings at clubs is to have been there. Drugs and drink were in large supply; wit and conversation were not.

Holy Terror is something of a get-even book. Colacello spends an obligatory few words professing initial affection for his benefactor, but he is soon disillusioned by Warhol's "bad skin, bad teeth, bad hair" and all the work Colacello has to do, ghostwriting Warhol's books, selling ads, even doing Warhol's social climbing for him when he is too tired to go out at night. Editing is too kind a word for Colacello's job at Interview, which included cozying up to advertisers and selling expensive Warhol celebrity portraits, for which Colacello would earn a fee (about $100,000 a year). The advertising agency for Lillet demanded and got mentions in articles (subjects sipping the aperitif as they answered questions) and an endorsement from Warhol himself, according to Colacello.

Celebrity is not new. Leo Braudy in The Frenzy of Renown traced its origins to Alexander the Great and other leaders who used fame to consolidate their power. But as a lucrative career in itself, celebrity is a recent creation. A herd of columnists like Colacello moos after the newly famous, chronicling tectonic shifts in the species and its habitats imperceptible to anyone but the most tireless observers. The columnists then become famous for their mooing.

It is not easy work. Hours must be spent reading the gossips, days whiled away worrying about seating plans. The phone is a tactical weapon. A night at home alone induces existential dread, and success for someone like Colacello is measured not simply in invitations secured but also in invitations to events from which Warhol is excluded. Friendship seems to be beside the point; in a moment of accidental insight, Colacello remarks of the clot of people around Warhol that they wanted to go out with Andy, not home with him.

Colacello can be funny when he notes that the drawback to linking up with high-visibility people like Imelda Marcos is "their tendency to attract assassins." But mostly, he is petty and meanspirited. He fittingly closes with a bit of celebrity mugging that serves as a pathetic epitaph for his putative patron. In a group invited to Warhol's house after his death, Colacello takes the opportunity to steal into Warhol's private bathroom so that he can catalog the anti-aging cosmetics and acne ointments for inclusion on the last page of this book. These two creatures of hype and commerce masquerading as art may have deserved each other. But this book does not deserve even a Warholian 15 minutes.