The Baby

A former superstar of Andy Warhol’s Factory offers an intimate tale of sex, drugs, art, and motherhood, based on video recordings

The Baby is not your average parenthood novel. Viva, a.k.a. Viva Superstar—actor, writer, painter, denizen of Andy Warhol’s world-famous Factory, and early pioneer in video arts—weaves a tale of childbirth and motherhood with often-shocking candor, exploring a new mother’s mixed emotions and her internal and external conflicts. Based on filmed records created by Viva’s husband, Michael Auder, of their daughter’s difficult birth and early development, and interspersed with stills from their life, Viva’s addictive video novel tells the story of a fictional couple, Augustine and Frederick Marat, whose unorthodox parenting takes them from New York to Paris to Casablanca to California.

In her own unique style, Viva explores breast-feeding and breast pumps, infidelity and incest while offering startlingly intimate details of a family’s singular lifestyle. An unabashedly autobiographical literary invention, alternately outrageous and honest, revelatory and touching, The Baby is truly one of a kind.

“Viva is a walking b******t detector, and The Baby is probably the most clear-eyed, witty book about unconventional motherhood ever written, so ahead of its time the world might just about be ready for it now.” —Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia and After Birth

“With droll and delicious wit, Viva lays bare every anxiety, joy, and compulsion of motherhood. Since my first baby was born I have been hooked on baby books, but Viva’s The Baby is my all time favorite. Read it!” —Alix Kates Shulman

“I think The Baby is enchanting, or maybe enchanted, an extraordinary verbal videotape of a life in the process of being lived.” —Joan Didion

“Viva is one of our very rare natural spellcasting storytellers.” —Christopher Isherwood

“Funny, tender, almost a female Rousseau’s Confessions brought up to date. Vive Viva!” —Eve Merriam

“Trooping from New York to Paris to Morrocco . . . trying with equal lack of success to wean her baby and wean herself from her difficult husband Frederick, Viva’s writer/protagonist, Augustine Marat, narrates a contemporary female version of On the Road that is infinitely better written, more intelligent, more honest and funnier than Kerouac’s.” —Rolling Stone

Viva Hoffman is one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. He gave her the name Viva before the release of her first motion picture. An early pioneer of video art, she appeared in and cocreated many of the famous Warhol films, among them The Loves of Ondine, Tub Girls, and Nude Restaurant. She has also acted in movies including Cleopatra, Midnight Cowboy, and Play It Again, Sam, and her acting career has been honored by the Cinémathèque Française. She was a frequent guest at the Factory and a resident of the Chelsea Hotel. It was Viva with whom Warhol was on the phone when Valerie Solanas shot him.

Viva is the author of two books: Superstar, an insider’s look at the Factory, and The Baby, a novel incorporating video art. She also wrote for and edited a variety of publications, including Vanity Fair and the Village Voice. She is the mother of two children and lives in Palm Springs, California, where she paints.