Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM

by Breanne Fahs

  As Valerie approached the Grove Press offices, she was promptly arrested. A court date was set for March 22, 1973. While she was being held, Valerie’s paranoia about the Mob worsened. Absolutely convinced that Barney and Fred wanted to manipulate and control her, she sent them a series of letters and postcards. In one card to Barney she attempted to assure him that she meant him no harm but had to prove to the Mob that she was aware of their intentions: “I wrote that letter to prove to the Mob (I knew you’d show it to the rest of the gang) I’m convinced they and not the doctors are responsible for my being held in the hospital.”104 (To a degree, she was right, as Barney and Fred had petitioned to have her held even when the psychiatric evaluators suggested this was unnecessary.) Two days later, she wrote to Barney and Fred saying she was onto their antics: “The detective (Fallon?) knew where I was, because you told him. You knew because of the transmitter in my uterus. . . . It was also because of the uterine transmitter you knew where I was when I was in front with the icepick.” She denied wanting to kidnap anyone and said she could not accomplish that even if she did want to, but that they wanted her in jail so they could photograph her papers without her consent.105

  She sent another letter, on March 27, from Dunlop, rambling about discrepancies in her trials, conversations with the lawyers, and other occurrences: “To that same end in Sept. ’71 Girodias made a point of telling me on the phone my mother had power of attorney.” She outlined a list of twenty-five demands for the Mob, including a good edition of the manifesto and assistance with “getting other people’s papers.”106 In a letter to the Mob, she reiterated her series of twenty-five demands (on that same day, she was released from Dunlop, an event that likely intensified her paranoia that the Mob had control of her confinement). Prior to listing her demands, she outlined various concerns with the inconsistency of her trial, what Barney knew, his motives for trying to get her locked up, inconsistencies in the arresting officers’ testimony, and the problems of “Bernstein” knowing too much (the identity of this person is unknown). She also mentioned that her mother, Dorothy, had obtained power of attorney over her and had received “a few hundred dollars” from Maurice as payment for SCUM Manifesto. With regard to Barney’s case, she asked, “How can I be prosecuted for a letter I wrote while a mental patient?” Her demands—what she wanted “before I’ll do any acting or writing or making appearances or composing or inventing” were:

  1. All mail sent to me c/o Olympia Press or c/o the papers.

  2. An official discharge from the hospital.

  3. All criminal charges dropped.

  4. Copies of all notes and papers stolen from me.

  5. Photos of the note cards you photographed in Cal.

  6. The return of my trunks and all their contents.

  7. Copies of all reports done on me since Jun. ’68.

  8. Certain back issues of newspapers and magazines.

  9. A copy of every WLM [women’s liberation movement] book published since ’68.

  10. Opportunity to see or hear privately certain t.v. and radio casts.

  11. Copies of all the bugging tapes.

  12. The correct edition of the SCUM Manifesto printed on the front page of the 10 largest Sun. papers in the English-speaking world.

  13. Your assistance in rounding up certain people I want to interview.

  14. Your assistance in acquiring certain people’s papers and notes.

  15. A good edition of the Manifesto, that is, the correct edition proof-read by me and not accompanied by any preface or introduction unless approved by me printed up and distributed.

  16. A public confession, written jointly by me and one of you. The confession’s to be published as a book and possibly in the newspaper. I’m very doubtful of the latter. The book’s to contain the correct manifesto with a detailed description written by me of the botch job done in the incorrect editions.

  17. My royalties from past editions of the manifesto and I want 10% of the gross.

  18. Several million in damages (exactly how much I haven’t decided yet).

  19. Certain things, which I’ll tell you when the time comes, put in the paper.

  20. Public (on T.V.) cancellation of contract.

  21. Public elimination of Segal’s power of attorney.

  22. Public statement that you have no claim on any of my works, past or future.

  23. Public (on T.V.) reading and signing of new contact for future works.

  24. Advance on future works.

  25. New contracts to include full artistic control by me of all my works.107

  Valerie’s obsession with artistic integrity and ownership of her works, along with her perfectionism toward how it was presented, appeared consistently in these letters. The letters also suggest greater evidence of schizophrenia, particularly in an April 17, 1973, letter in which Valerie detailed, perhaps satirically, her demand to receive money for sex: “Mob: You can fuck me for $5 million per mob member per fuck. That’s only for the first fuck of each mob member. The 2nd time a given member fucks me I’ll only charge him $4 million, and only $3 million for the 3rd and only $2 million for the 4th, and $1 million for each fuck thereafter. In other words, if mob member A is fucking me for the first time, but he’s the 2nd member to do so, he pays $5 million. The 2nd time he fucks me he pays $4 million. Valerie.”

  Valerie’s psychotic tendencies reached a new peak during this time, especially as her fears about the Mob linked up with her anxieties about losing control of SCUM Manifesto. Related to her perception that Barney and Fred had not afforded her proper publicity, she became convinced in the summer of 1973 that the uterine implant she received at Matteawan would give her cancer. (Whether she ever had signs of cancer remains unclear.) She wrote to Barney and Fred describing the unresolved contradictions of their contacts with her and said they must “confess to all the shit they’ve pulled on me since 5½–6 years ago” (March 3, 1973). She accused them of framing her as “crazy” and hiring a therapist named Smitty to misdiagnose her as insane based on “an inappropriate smile,” just like the last time she was examined by a court doctor (March 6, 1973). She made bizarre overtures of marriage to Fred, leading him to plea with her that he was not interested, which he later regretted: “It was such a mistake, because psychiatrists always say that one should not make oneself a focus of someone’s insanity. I had done so by trying to reason with her.”

  To secure Valerie’s hospitalization, Barney and Fred hired a smart lawyer, Harry Wachtel (someone with excellent contacts in Mayor John Lindsay’s administration), who convinced Valerie that they could get her out as long as she agreed not to contact them again or bother them in any way. “We struck a deal with her,” Fred explained. “We told her that if she did not want to be in the hospital all of her life, she would have to make that deal with us.”108 Barney, Fred, and their lawyer did indeed arrange things with the hospital so that Valerie would remain at Dunlop for several more months; only if she agreed not to harass the two men would she be allowed to leave. Valerie’s paranoia, however extreme at times, had a basis in reality in this case, in that she suspected Fred and Barney of manipulating her situation. She never wrote to or otherwise contacted Fred or Barney again, sensing that it could land her back in prison. Finally, Valerie had her freedom.

  In July 1973, Valerie read an article titled “302 Women Who Are Cute When They’re Mad,” in that month’s issue of Esquire (which announced on its front cover, “This Issue Is About Women”). The article identified her place in the genealogy of the feminist movement (“Ms. Solanas claimed she did it [shot Andy Warhol] because Warhol was a disgusting male chauvinist pig who used and abused women and failed to recognize their talents.”). Furious about this characterization, she wrote a letter to the magazine that they rejected on the basis that it was too self-promoting, though they eventually published sections of it, adding their own commentary. In this letter, Valerie “contradicted anonymously-written false statements made about me in the July, 1973 Esquire,
the false statements being that I shot Warhol because he had rejected a movie script and that I had referred to him as a male chauvinist pig (a phrase not in my vocabulary and which had yet to be coined at the time I was supposed to have said it) who used and abused women and failed to recognize their talents. . . . It’ll take a wee bit more than Valerie Monroe and the anonymous Esquire writers (who won’t be anonymous when my book comes out) to obliterate SCUM.”109

  HOW IT CHANGED THEM

  That shooting was wonderful in a way because of the great myth. In order to become a myth you must be shot. And survive of course.

  —Ultra Violet, quoted in Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties

  Reflecting on the impact of Valerie’s actions both on her own life and on those in the Factory, many have noted that the June 3, 1968, shootings (and, subsequently, Valerie’s stints in various psychiatric hospitals) altered the course of their lives. Jeremiah believed that, in some spiritual sense, Valerie and Andy both died in the moment she shot him. For Mary Harron, “Warhol never recovered the sense of invulnerability that had fueled him as an artist. As for Valerie, she was now ‘the crazy woman who shot Andy Warhol.’ She would never have what she most wanted: to be taken seriously as a writer.”110 Louis Zwiren, Valerie’s boyfriend from 1975 to 1979, remarked that Valerie felt like a failure for not actually killing Andy: “The fact that she wasn’t able to pull it off and murder Andy Warhol showed that—it made her feel ineffectual and was a blemish on her reputation.”111

  Valerie had missed her chance to kill Andy but had earned a reputation for hating men, even from men themselves. In January 1973, Colorado Springs’s Gazette Telegraph published an announcement saying that the men’s auxiliary of SCUM had written several letters to the paper but the paper had refused to publish them. In May 1973, M.A.S. wrote to Maurice from both Colorado Springs and Sioux City, Iowa, announcing the establishment of a new church dedicated to SCUM—the Church of Solanas: “Just a line telling you about the new church and the continuing transformation of S.C.U.M. into the nucleus of the vanguard party thru such. Please keep publishing the S.C.U.M. Manifesto.” (It is evident that Valerie did not send this letter, as she never referred to SCUM Manifesto using the abbreviation with periods and the signature was not in her handwriting.)

  In 1974, Valerie met up with Jeremiah for an interview related to a book he was writing about Candy Darling. Still sleeping either at the Hotel Earle or on rooftops, Valerie wanted a hot meal. Jeremiah found her “waifish” in the lumpy clothes she wore to hide her scrawny body (he called her “Barnacle Bill the Sailor”).112 The pair tried to dine at the Red Lion (151 Bleecker Street), a literary place that a variety of writers and thinkers often frequented. “They wouldn’t seat us,” Jeremiah remembered. “They wouldn’t look at her. They said, ‘You’re going to have to go somewhere else.’ They didn’t want her there. As we were walking down the block, somebody saw her and spat on the ground across the street.”113 This upset Valerie at the time. She told Jeremiah that things like that happened to her constantly. That afternoon, once they got settled at Juliet’s Supper Club on Tenth Street, Valerie smoked numerous cigarettes and talked to Jeremiah (whom she affectionately called her “baby brother”) about her decisions and the future.

  When he asked about her experiences in the psychiatric hospitals, Valerie said she had met some interesting people and enjoyed being in a place where they fed her every day and she did not have to worry about her next meal. Living on the street, on the other hand, meant she had to constantly negotiate ways to get enough food. Musing about the future, she said that someday soon babies would be born in test tubes and women would have no need to interact with men at all. (She had discussed this publicly the day after the shooting, exclaiming to the New York Post, “We must begin immediately!”) Valerie believed she would live to be a thousand years old and would rule the world. With this statement, Jeremiah realized that Valerie’s mental illness had worsened, as paranoia and grandiosity wove in and out of their conversation. She expressed concern that Jeremiah would use what she said to him for something other than his book on Candy Darling. “If you’re going to do something else with this interview, I’m going to shoot you,” she announced. “I thought, well maybe she has a gun with her right now,” Jeremiah said later. “Maybe she did, you know?”

  Valerie did not want to talk about why she had shot Andy. In that shooting, Jeremiah thought, Valerie may have permanently sacrificed her credibility as a satirist. “She really painted herself into a corner and became known as the woman who shot Andy Warhol—and became the victim of the male establishment.” Valerie was sorry that she had shot him but did not want to say so aloud, Jeremiah assessed. And she was isolated. “She was ostracized by a lot of people. They didn’t want anything to do with her. Nobody did. That was the last time I saw her.”114

  Andy Warhol’s life, too, was permanently altered by Valerie’s action. In a 1980 interview, he said, “Before I was shot, I always thought I was more half-there than all there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life.” After being shot, he says, he knew that he was watching TV: “The channels switch, but it’s all TV.”115 He admitted to not knowing the difference between reality and fantasy: “I’m trying to decide whether I should pretend to be real or fake it. I had always thought everyone was kidding. But now I know they’re not. I’m not sure if I should pretend that things are real or that they’re fake. You see, to pretend something’s real, I’d have to fake it. Then people would think I’m doing it real.” When asked whether he felt he had any complicity in the shooting, he replied, “I guess I really don’t know what people do. I just always think they’re kidding.” In part reflecting his outlook on the world, he reported: “It happened so quickly. . . . It was a surprise, but the bigger surprise was that she had dressed up for the occasion. She wore lipstick, eye makeup, her hair was combed.”

  Andy claimed that he harbored no negative feelings toward Valerie: “I’ve never really disliked anyone. And I don’t think she was responsible for what she did. It was just one of those things. . . . I can’t feel anything against Valerie Solanas. When you hurt another person, you never know how much it pains.” He admitted he could no longer do the same things he once did, that his body looked like a “Dior dress,” and that he feared taking showers. “It’s sort of awful, looking in the mirror and seeing all the scars. It’s scary. I close my eyes. But it doesn’t look that bad. The scars are really very beautiful; they look pretty in a funny way. It’s just that they are a reminder that I’m still sick and I don’t know if I will ever be well again.”116

  Ultra Violet worried about his deterioration, noting that Andy suffered with perpetual fear: “In this crystalline vision of Andy’s future, I see that from now on his art will be repetitive, automatic, empty, a rerun of what went before. His life will veer off in a different, safer, more conforming direction. The artist, the sorcerer, the conjuror, the diabolist of the 1960s is gone. The man—the businessman, the moneyman—will live on, accumulating more and more money and mountains of possessions to allay his terror.”117 When Mary Harron met with Andy in 1980, she was shocked at his appearance. “I had always thought of Warhol as permanently 30. At first sight he is unearthly. His skin is like nothing I’ve ever seen on a human being. His face, beneath the dyed silver hair, is so pale that it seems to have been modeled out of putty, ridged with little crevices that are, in fact, nothing more sinister than adolescent acne scars. He speaks very softly, and with a shy boyish charm that immediately begins to take effect.”118 John Leonard, who also interviewed Andy, similarly noted that Andy seemed “even more vulnerable: small, thin, goggled, with his talking box in his lap and his bright green socks, diminished under the high ceiling, white walls, and flak-blossoms of sunlight. Like a child playing with his toys.”119

  In the aftermath of his recovery, Andy asked noted celebrity photographer Richard Avedon to photograph some of his scars. In the resulting photos—which would app
ear later in numerous magazines and other publications—Andy stares blankly into the camera with his chest exposed, revealing a labyrinth of scars left by his bullet wounds. He was constantly on edge about Valerie: “Every single time I’d hear the elevator in the shaft just about to stop at our floor, I’d get jumpy. I’d wait for the doors to open so I could check who it was.”120 When Andy heard that Valerie had been spotted in the Village, he became paranoid, always looking out for sudden ambush.121 At the same time, however, he was in something of a dream state: “I don’t know what anything is about. Like I don’t even know whether or not I’m really alive or—whether I died. It’s sad. Like I can’t say hello or good-bye to people. Life is like a dream.”122

  In all likelihood, Valerie’s act against Andy did summon his eventual death. The wounds she inflicted had wreaked havoc on his body and left him afflicted with chronic medical problems (and a constant fear of doctors). He had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life. His demise stemmed from his severe and complicated physical problems and difficulties subsequent to treatment for them: he had gone in for gallbladder surgery; the surgery was successful, but he perhaps received improper follow-up care—family members alleged he had suffered from water intoxication (overhydration) and neglect.

  Although Andy ultimately died from cardiac arrhythmia following his surgery, his severe and rather unpredictable medical issues started on the day Valerie shot him.123 As Ultra Violet noted, “Probably his premature death had to do with Valerie, because when he went to the hospital, he was not monitored properly, and a lot of things happened there. They did not monitor his intake and outtake of liquid, they had him on penicillin when he was allergic to it, so she really was responsible for his death. He could not stand up properly. He was the picture of death from then on.”124

  Andy expressed worry that the shooting had changed his outlook: “The fear of getting shot again made me think that I’d never again enjoy talking to somebody whose eyes looked weird. But when I thought about that, I got confused, because it included almost everybody I really enjoyed!”125 In Jeremiah’s view Andy never behaved the same after the shooting. “Andy and I never discussed the shooting, but I know it changed his life. People said he was totally different afterwards. And it really did kill him, years later, his injuries and all. It really affected his health.”126 As concluded in the documentary Ken Burns made about Andy in 2006, “The event in Andy’s life (apart from his discovery of who he was as an artist, which was very powerful when it hit him), the event was Valerie Solanas’s attempt to murder him. The narrative was: the rise to success; at the peak of that success, the breaking into it of horror, of someone who was crazy enough to wish him dead, and then the rest of his life in some ways facing down what he met that day.”127 Two years prior to his death on February 22, 1987, Andy conducted an interview with the British style magazine Face. When asked what would happen to his art collection once he died, he replied, “I’m dead already.”128