"The Robespierre of feminism"
Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto. The CORRECT Valerie Solanas edition. New York: n.p., May 1977.
Folio; two bifoliate leaves; age-toned; light edgewear; rectos and versos.
Valerie Solanas wrote this radical feminist text between 1965 and 1967, originally self-publishing mimeographed copies to distribute in New York (selling them for one dollar to women, two dollars to men), the text of which differs slightly to this edition and lacks the introductions by Maurice Girodias and Vivian Gornick added elsewhere. The manifesto opens: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”
In 1968, Solanas was sentenced to a three-year prison term for shooting Andy Warhol, whom she had come to believe was conspiring against her, and the art critic Mario Amaya. After she was released from the New York State Prison for Women in 1971, she stalked Warhol and others over the telephone and was arrested again that November. Subsequently she spent her time between institutions and the streets of lower Manhattan. In 1977, Solanas discovered that rights for the SCUM Manifesto had reverted to her and she self-published this “CORRECT” version of the manifesto, which she actively promoted for the rest of her life. On the final page, she enjoins her readers to pick up copies to sell from her place on E. 3rd St. She also reached out to Howard Smith of The Village Voice, who had covered the shooting and interviewed her back in 1968. She told him that if he publicized the manifesto, she would do an interview for the Voice and would recount the “fascinating things in the last few years” she had done. The story ran July 25, 1977 in the popular Scenes column. In early August, the paper printed a (much-reduced) list of her objections; they were the last words she ever published.
Ultimately, Valerie’s correct edition of SCUM Manifesto received some attention, but generally it did not sell well, or really at all. Valerie was devastated. Joanne Steele, a friend at the feminist Majority Report, remembered, “I don’t know whether male customers covered the copies with other things when in the store, or whether men or women buried it. In feminist bookstores it sold very well.” By mail order, Valerie had sold a few copies to some Japanese businessmen. “She expected it to be a big seller, but it had, like, no sales at all,” her companion Louis Zwiren recalled. “She was impressed with the Japanese because they bought some of them. When the manifesto did not sell well, Valerie refused to speak of it.” Facing this ultimate, soul-crushing disappointment, Valerie lost interest, for the first time in her life, with the SCUM Manifesto. She told Joanne to destroy the remaining copies, “Valerie said to chuck them,” Joanne recalled. “I asked her whether she meant it, because I was going to throw every copy away to keep Valerie from coming back and asking me about them, wanting them. Valerie said yes, and so I deep-sixed them.”
After some years on the streets and in the welfare hotels of New York, Phoenix, and San Francisco, Solanas died of pneumonia at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco in 1988, at the age of 52. The SCUM Manifesto has gained wide notoriety since then, and has been interpreted both straightforwardly and as a parody on patriarchal philosophical tracts. It is nevertheless now seen as a key piece of the 1960s feminist canon. Solanas's life was the basis for the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.
This collection features various items related to Valerie Solanas, including her 1977 edition of SCUM Manifesto, a recording of Smith’s 1969 interview with Andy Warhol shortly after his recuperation from the shooting, and a recording of Solanas’s 1977 interview with the Voice, along with two highly contentious follow-up phone calls. The Warhol interview is on two ABC Radio station master tapes labeled “Andy Warhol I and II,” and four reels of audiotape labeled “Andy Warhol I–IV,” all from circa April 1969. Solanas’s interview with Smith is on a Memorex audio cassette dated June 29, 1977, labeled “Valerie Solanas,” which comes with a contact sheet and four photographs from the concurrent photoshoot. Additionally, there are two more Memorex audio cassettes dated July 6, 1977, and July 21, 1977; these are the recordings of her follow-up calls with Smith. All of the interviews have been transferred onto four compact discs, probably dating to the 2000s.