Valerie Solanas by Breanne Fahs

Author:Breanne Fahs [Fahs, Breanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2014-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

The “Lowly Toad”

Valerie spent most of the following month directing her hostilities toward Maurice Girodias, whom she continued to portray as manipulative, cruel, self-serving, and the epitome of why SCUM should exist. In the midst of vitriolic letters she sent to him, Maurice put up money for Valerie to retain a lawyer—something he did for many of his writers who found themselves in legal trouble. This lawyer, Don Engel, who Valerie wanted nothing to do with, who had represented Terry Southern in his Candy dispute, recalled in a later interview that he would have happily represented Valerie if she had been declared competent to stand trial. Instead, she was ruled insane and Engel never got the chance to defend her in court. Valerie was, by then, “off the rails.”14

In an interview following the publication of SCUM Manifesto in summer 1968, Maurice told the Village Voice that he both supported the manifesto and felt rage toward women: “I’m happy to be alive and I’m a publisher. I still feel she has a very good point. I have no argument with it. But I feel a similar case can be made about females, only women are worse. I will write one about women someday. Then I’ll shoot one and get published myself.”

Maurice visited Valerie in prison; he stated that she looked “very happy to be there” and was “extremely confused.” He added, “I’m sure that her manifesto will convince the judges that she’s not legally responsible—unless there’s a woman judge.” During his visit, Maurice asked, “Why didn’t you shoot me? Why Warhol and not me?” She replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you.”15 Maurice felt that Valerie was “not entirely in her normal mind” and “not in very good shape” and “still doesn’t realize what she’s done.” Angry that Flo, “that woman,” wanted to represent Valerie, he said the hospital “doesn’t want any more freaks. . . . It would be disastrous if she represented Valerie at the trial. . . . Paranoid authors are no great authority.”16

During her incarceration at the hospital, Valerie grew increasingly angry and paranoid about Maurice, believing that he had self-serving intentions and compulsively lied to her. She told Wilda Holt, “If I trusted G, I’d have something like inverse paranoia.”17 Calling him “The Great Operator, The Great Manipulator” but inviting him for a visit shortly after she arrived at Elmhurst, she accused him of failing to follow through on his commitments to her.18 For example, after he claimed to send her $5.00 that she never received, she wrote, “Why don’t you fuck the authorities and the system for a while instead of your authors?”(June 28, 1968).

She sent letters demanding stamps (July 9, 1968) and many other letters accusing Maurice of sabotaging the goals of SCUM: “I formulated SCUM & wrote the ‘SCUM Manifesto’ to create a better world. It’s ironic & pathetic that it’s fallen into such hands as yours & Warhol’s. If you want to be aligned with me, cultivate goals beyond being able to say, ‘I have more money than J.

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