SCUM Buster

Meant to mention A.S. Hamrah's excellent, couple-of-weeks-old Boston Globe Ideas section bit about the Verso reissue of Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. Writes Hamrah of the woman who insanely shot Andy Warhol:

Solanas is one of American literature's great hard-boiled mockers. Yet even the cultural theorist Avital Ronell, who has provided the Verso edition of the "Manifesto" with a convincing introduction, describes the "SCUM Manifesto" as "indefensible."

Ronell is right, and she knows it makes Solanas compelling. Like Nietzsche, to whom Ronell compares her, Solanas is a reverser of all values. She is neither left-wing nor reactionary in any known sense. The "Manifesto," for instance, contains the best excoriation of hippies ever written: "He's way out, Man! . . . all the way out to the cow pasture where he can. . . breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute." Her ideas on community, freedom, philosophy, immortality, "Daddy's girls," and "unwork" (her version of sabotage through serial employment) are startling and clear.

Hamrah, who wrote memorably for Suck.com as Slotcar Hatebath, puts Solanas in an interesting cultural context. She was a raving nutcase (who died in 1988) who really picked the wrong target for a feminist statement. Why, besides her mental illness (and personal grudge against Warhol), did she not try to plug Norman Mailer, then at the zenith of his manly manliness? (And while we're asking questions, what's next for Verso, the Commie-Pinko publishing house which a few years back released a "sybaritic" edition of The Communist Manifesto? A coffee table book of John Wayne Gacy paintings? A deluxe edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?)

The Hamrah piece is here.