Valerie

The life of Valerie Solanas, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and became famous when she shot Andy Warhol in 1968, is speculatively reconstructed in Stridsbergs’s inventive and stimulating novel, her American debut. Told in nearly a hundred short chapters that span almost 50 years, the book’s major focus is Valerie’s death in 1988 at the Bristol Hotel in San Francisco. Through an unnamed character called Narrator who allows Stridsberg to be in the room for historical events, the narrative returns to the Bristol Hotel again and again. Narrator questions deceased Valerie about her life; she also, in separate chapters, addresses the reader directly and addresses Valerie in the second person. Much of the story is told in dialogue—between Valerie and Warhol superstar Ultra Violet and between Valerie and her mother, Dorothy, who is also prominent in the novel. As each new piece of Stridsberg’s portrait of Valerie is added, it alters the big picture, provocatively. The novel is as much about how little one can understand other people as it is about Valerie’s life. Stridsberg entertainingly casts new light on both Solanas and on how society views pop culture. [em](Aug.) [/em]