SCUM!!!!

 

SCUM AND VALERIE FOR PRESIDENT ....

One of the most prestigious Prizes of Scandinavia is The Nordic Counsel's Literature Prize. One might say that it's some sort of kid sister of The Noble Prize as it's very highly thought of and actually equals a seal of approval. Some years ago the prize was awarded the young Swedish author Sara Stridsberg (b. 1972) for her novel "The Dream Factory" (2006) about the American Valerie Solanas (1936-88) who wrote the radical feminist manifesto SCUM in the late 1960'ies. In 1968 she shot the artist Andy Warhol who survived, but as a changed man. The reason for this may be that he, who had used her for two of his movies, didn't read her script and even lost it. She never forgave him and even after having served a sentence of three years she kept harassing him over the phone.
As a young girl she was raped by either her father or her stepfather and subsequently fled her home, surviving as a prostitute. When she at some point went to college to study psychology it became evident that she was a very, very intelligent woman. Perhaps because of her troubled past she left college for New York and dreams of artistic fulfillment. However, her major work, SCUM, didn't bring her what she wanted: a society without men! In 1988 - one year after the death of Andy Warhol - she was found dead in the room she had rented in a scruffy hotel in San Francisco. Her life had been exceedingly difficult as she also did drugs and thus had to prostitute herself in between being hospitalized in mental hospitals.
Sara Stridsberg has also written a play on the life of this troubled woman, "Valerie Solanas for President of USA". She even translated her manifesto, SCUM, into Swedish so she has become an expert on Valerie Solanas.