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"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."—Valerie Solanas
The definitive edition of probably the finest polemic in the world. It contains a new afterword detailing the life and death of Valerie Solanas.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Scummy Dross of the Movement,
By "stenerin1" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: SCUM Manifesto (Paperback)
Enjoyment of Valerie Solanas' infamous SCUM MANIFESTO is completely dependent upon how you approach it. When I first read it, I had no idea of Solanas' other, more lethal activities, and took it to be a modern day social critique in the mode of Swift's brilliant A MODEST PROPOSAL. Taken this way - with a few shovels full of salt - Solanas' work shines as a hilarious work of satire. Unfortunately, when one becomes acquainted with the TRUE Solanas, it becomes sadly obvious that she means every single hateful, spiteful word she fills this tiny little pamphlet with. That knowledge doesn't make the humor any less entertaining, but it does add a harder edge to the proceedings than otherwise. Reading through the SCUM MANIFESTO, it's fairly evident that Solanas was determined to hate Man, at a cost of all common sense. Her ideas are stupefyingly ridiculous - the sort you'd expect from a mind literally curdling in rage - and though I won't ruin any surprises for those who've yet to read, believe me when I say you simply can't help but laugh at her many of her anti-man assertions. Even so, throughout it all, her keen-edged fury is almost palpable and literally wafts off the pages in a pungent rush of angry words and ideas, distinct evidence of her talent as a writer. And yet, the innate foolishness of it all is inescapable. Try as you might to see this as work of high satire, Solanas meant this as God's Own Truth, a call to arms for her fellow feminists. That one fact makes completion of the SCUM MANIFESTO a bittersweet thing indeed, leaving the reader with a distinctly bad taste in his or her mouth, and pity for the poor, furious woman who wrote this angry little pamphlet. How sad.
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Darkly funny, yes. Radical? Hell no.,
By A Customer
This review is from: SCUM Manifesto (Paperback)
The Scum Manifesto divides its readers in a truly amazing way: according to who you read, it's either a classic wind-up lesbian farce (like Hothead Paisan) or it's incomprehensible hate speech. You can get it on the web for free, last time I checked, so you need not shell out cash to AK Press to find out what the commotion is about. What you will find is that it is a conservative's dream: feminism revealed as a man-hating conspiracy of idiotic slogan-shouting lesbians, scenarios lurid and laughable but extremely dangerous... and nothing more.The people running AK Press (the publisher) and Chris Kraus (who glowingly reviews this book on this site) are anarchists whose opinions I generally respect, and it completely baffles me that they see this work as thoughtful or radical in any way. Solanas is just another fundamentalist ready to inflict "collateral damage" for her cause. Don't pay money for it.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
it's a manifesto. not a monograph.,
By Andi Marquette "Tierra de Andi" (Colorado) - See all my reviews
This review is from: SCUM manifesto; (Paperback)
Indeed, Solanas's work is a diatribe. It's a manifesto. Consequently, you will not find citations and more often than not, you probably won't find much to hang your hat on for solid ideas. You will, however, find broad generalizations and "ranting." What's important about Solanas' work is that she wrote it in concert with what she felt and saw around her during the late 1960s, the time of the nascent radical feminist movement. Her manifesto is an extreme expression of some of the frustration and, in some cases, rage that women involved in the movement felt about institutionalized and personalized sexism. The SCUM Manifesto, therefore, is best considered as part of the primary documentation that emerged from that historical period. Even things readers might consider odious or vile are valuable because they provide insights to the more extreme aspects of issues which are always tied to mainstream movements.Solanas herself was a deeply troubled woman who struggled throughout her short life with the remnants of abuse that she suffered during her childhood (I suspect sexual abuse, given her deep-seated rage against men). She was quite prolific, writing short plays during the 60s that she would perform at impromptu venues. She eventually attracted the attention of Andy Warhol, who probably found her intense, bright, and with an acidic sense of humor. He agreed with some of her views about sex, but ended up losing one of her play manuscripts (her only copy) and this may have set her off to commit a more violent act. In 1968, Solanas shot Warhol with a .32 caliber pistol, prompted by her own demons and what she may have perceived as ridicule from Warhol and his associates. Warhol survived; Solanas was sentenced to 3 years in prison; the SCUM Manifesto was eventually published in 1971 as a result of media attention surrounding the shooting. Following her prison term, she seems to have dropped out of the public eye and continued with her life, heading west. She died in 1988 of pneumonia in a welfare hotel in San Francisco. The Manifesto is a reflection, therefore, of Solanas' own past but also offers some insight into what she perceived around her as the power of men over women, institutionalized and expressed sometimes in violence against women. For its reflection of one woman's experience (as deranged as she herself may have been) with the transformations going on in 1960s American culture, it should not be dismissed. But it should absolutely be taken with a pound of salt.
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