Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas is a recurring offstage presence in the diaries, defined by the lasting consequences of her 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol and by later reports of threats against people associated with her work. The entries do not describe a reunion or establish what she intends beyond the reported threats; instead, they convey how her apparent return to public view makes the possibility of another encounter feel immediate and uncertain.

Identity and Background

The diary identifies Solanas as the woman who shot and nearly killed Andy Warhol in 1968. Years later, news that she had been seen around Greenwich Village, Manhattan, brings that violence back into the narrator’s attention. The account supplies little biographical information beyond this history and her authorship of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, but those details shape how her later appearances and actions are understood.

Reports and Reactions

In July 1977, the narrator writes that Solanas had been seen around the Village. While there with Victor, the narrator worried about running into her and wondered whether she might try to shoot again or instead behave in a friendly way. The entry records apprehension rather than an actual encounter: Solanas remains unseen, but the possibility of meeting her changes how the narrator experiences being in the neighborhood.

Later, Howard Smith tells the narrator that he has been writing letters to Solanas and expresses regret about having begun. He says he does not understand how someone he regards as so disturbed can be out on the streets. The narrator speculates that her freedom might be connected to the CIA, but presents this as a suggestion, not established information. The exchange shows that accounts of Solanas circulate through conversation and conjecture as much as through direct contact.

Threats and Narrative Role

In November, David Bourdon calls to report that Solanas has called him. According to his account, she wanted the address of someone who had included her S.C.U.M. Manifesto in a book about the women’s liberation movement, and she was considering either shooting that person or suing them. The reported threat gives the earlier anxiety a renewed, specific context, while the alternative of legal action leaves the intended course unresolved.

Solanas’s role in these entries is therefore both personal and indirect. Her past attack makes the narrator’s fear of encountering her intelligible; the calls and letters reported by others suggest that she remains active in the lives of people around the narrator. The diary preserves the distinction between what is known firsthand and what arrives as rumor or secondhand report, leaving Solanas present as a source of apprehension without inventing a meeting or resolution.