Bockris's book is now nearly a decade old, but it remains excellent journalism if less than heavyweight criticism. Warhol's climb was not precisely from rags to riches, since his Philadelphia family were not actually on the breadline, but it was at least from scrubby working-class suburbia to Manhattan fame and affluence. He loved fame, he loved money (though he seems, contrary to some reports, not to have been a very good businessman), he adored glamour and success, and he got all four of them in plenty without, it seems, finding much emotional fulfilment. Warhol was generally distant and distrustful in his relationships with people around him - much of which was justified, since he was surrounded with climbers and careerists elbowing each other aside for a place in the sun. The Factory, that strange outfit of his own creation which was somewhere between a business corporation and an artists' commune, was a nest of intrigues and jealousy, which he himself appears to have manipulated with cool detachment. Warhol to the end of his life remained at heart inhibited and lonely, but his professionalism as an artist was total - for most of his career he painted for a minimum of four hours a day, seven days a week. Bockris has done his homework with great thoroughness, but his many interviews and talks with Warhol's associates, friends and enemies produce a prismatic rather than a composite effect; the man was, and is, an enigma, at once complex and naive.