Talk:Valerie Solanas/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Copy?

This entire article is copied from http://www.world-of-celebrities.com/valerie_solanas/. Copyright issues? Shall we re-word?

Actually, they're grabbing the content from us. Mindspillage | spill your mind? 20:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, then I'm glad it's a faily well-written, informative article. ;-) Somercet 02:32, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Link to SCUM Manifesto

I would like to request that unless the link goes down irevokably, that editors (especially IP guests) please just leave the link to the SCUM Manifesto AS IT IS. Why?

1. There is NO original online source for the SCUM Manifesto. The original source is a paper BOOK and all online sources are republications of that book.
2. The Womynkind source has been around for years, and is quite stable.
3. It is also the only one I have seen with a graphic, which is nice to offer people
4. It doesn't attempt to clothe the writing in its own politics - readers can read the piece and surf out. Whereas other sites (Church of Euthanasia, reactor-core etc) attempt to use the SCUM Manifesto to give credence to an alterior political position (which may or may not be tennable, but is certainly not in line with Solanas' writings).
5. This is a high-controvery topic, and we owe it to our readers (and the topic itself) to treat it with dignity and fairness. This means balanced writing, factual writing, and rising above petty point-scoring attempts to get hits on a controversial website.

If you're not interested in Solanas, then please just surf away to another wikipedia page (they are many and varied), but please don't resort to vandalism! An An 06:54, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Somercet July 6, 2005 19:03 (UTC)

Allow me to further elaborate on my remark above. I was not aware that reactor-core.com is a Christian site (nothing wrong with that) that prefaces the Manifesto with Bible quotes. (If Wikipedia is to link to ANY PD authorial works, we should prefer the links that come without extra content.) I am all too aware of the Church of Euthanasia and their positions.

Aside from strident anti-rape rhetoric (understandable), womynkind.org looks pretty harmless (especially compared to Ch.ofEuth.). If you follow the link to Solanas' bio on womynkind, however, you get this at the end of a long, and, may I say, very blunt bio:

Compiled by Freddie Baer

(with a great deal of thanks to Donny Smith)

P.S. Valerie you will always be my personal hero!!!!!!

Uh.... Unless the bio compiler suffers from mental illness as Solanas did, or admires her marksmanship or her panhandling, this comment is hard to accept. Frankly, I have always thought the reported comments from Robin Morgan et al. were perfectly subtle putdowns of the militant feminists. Solanas may have been crazy, may have been a funny writer, but shooting Warhol was beyond the pale. So what if she's an insightful commentator? David Horowitz would have a field day with that entire paragraph and rightly so.

But that is neither here nor there.

I am DELETING the link to the SCUM Manifesto. I will leave a comment in the External links to this effect: the work is under copyright, as you can see here on Wikisource. I am also emailing womynkind.org and informing them about the copyright issue. If they know how to reach the holder, I will write and ask her permission to reprint the Manifesto on Wikisource, which will also bring this dreary link war to an end.

Thank you for reading this far. Somercet 08:15, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Any news? It's pretty important to link to it. Even though linking to copyrighted material is against the rules, this is a fairly exceptional case. Perhaps fair use applies? — Omegatron 21:55, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

"American feminist criminal" is NPOV

To people who keep deleting the "criminal" from the lead: Solanas is known today solely because she shot Andy Warhol. In slightly different words, her only claim to fame is attempted homicide. Not stating that she was a criminal is, I think, way more biased than doing so. "Raving nutcase" would clearly not be NPOV, but "criminal" is just a fact. Mstroeck

You could make it "attempted murderer" or something more specific. — Omegatron 14:11, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot to sign last message. The article has said for a long time: "... was an American feminist criminal who gained notoriety for her attempted murder of artist Andy Warhol." I think that's NPOV. Mstroeck 14:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Close, but the word "criminal" wouldn't usually appear in the first paragraph, even for a notorious murderer. It would just say "notorious murderer". It is a tiny bit POV. Just explicitly saying what she was convicted for would be better. — Omegatron 21:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to have reopened this debate but describing her as an American feminist criminal is really odd. You wouldn't describe Lee Harvey Oswald as an American criminal. In the article it says she went to Europe so why not decribe her as an American feminist tourist? Charlie

Actually, I think describing her as something other than "the woman who shot Andy Warhol" is odd. As an "American", no one knows her. As a "feminist" she's completely forgettable (and would be an unknown feminist if not for the attempted murders). Even as a "criminal", she's small potatos. Her renoun, such as it is, is simply that she almost killed Andy Warhol. - Nunh-huh 01:15, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that you are not entirely correct in this regard. Solanas's manifesto is actually quite popular in some circles (cult classic-esque) and is still in print. The popularity of this manifesto relates to her role as a feminist writer (satirist?), not a criminal. - N1h1l 02:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Its true. She was actually published before she attempted to kill Warhol. He writing is still notable today independant of her crime. AnAn 02:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

"SCUM Manifesto" + "attempted murder of Andy Warhol" = "15 minutes of fame". "SCUM Manifesto" without "attempted murder of Andy Warhol" = forgotten writer. - Nunh-huh 03:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like an unverifiable opinion based on your judgement of the manifesto's quality. - N1h1l 03:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that would be why it's on a talk page, then. Even though it's correct! - Nunh-huh 03:58, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough! :) - N1h1l 04:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Category: Bisexual writers

Does anybody know why this is in the categories? I thought there was a consensus that people are categorized as LGBT (and by extension, subcategories) only when they status as such is mentioned in the article? Or was that tidbit deleted at some point along the way?--Rockero 18:16, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

what bothers me is that almost every source I can find cites her as lesbian, not bisexual. The only citations I can find for bisexuality are Wikipedia mirrors and NNDB, not the most reliable resource around. I'd like to replace the category with "lesbian writers" but I'm not sure if the dispute has been brought up before. LeaHazel : talk : contribs 09:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Feel free. I don't think that there is any disagreement... - N1h1l 14:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yellow smiley

Although the editors on this talk page are unlikely to engage in anything less than polite discussion, this Yellow Smiley will nonetheless serve as a reminder for any future editors who may occasionally be tempted to lapse. Courtesy of the Random Smiley Project.

I'd rather see an Warhol version of that Smiley -- its too bad that he was in such ill health for the last parts of his life. If only... -- CaptainMike 16:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Ultra Violet's last phone call with Solanas

There was a significant phone call Solanas reportedly had with Ultra Violet toward the end of her life. Ultra called her under an assumed name and spoke with her regarding the event. Solanas asked about the well being of the Factory regulars and Ultra Violet responded that they were all dead.

I had posted my own section for this until I saw someone already started something like this.

I found this on warholstars.org - I just copied and pasted:

Ultra got Valerie's phone number from the Social Security office by pretending to be her sister. Solanas was living in northern California at the time. Ultra did not tell Valerie who she is, but asked her if she had written anything else since the SCUM manifesto.

(...)

“She died too.” Othatzsokewl (talk) 01:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Please don't copy-and-paste material from other websites like that; it goes against Wikipedia's policies on copyright. DS (talk) 03:15, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Lou Reed

I thought "Andy's Chest" on Transformer was also about Solanas.--Humphrey20020 (talk) 16:26, 26 April 2008 (UTC) It's about Andy. On Lou's site, AskLou.com, he wrote that it was about Andy's wounds on his chest. I think the whole "come swooping after you" thing isn't a "I'm gonna get you for that" to Valerie but more of a "You'll be remembered" to Andy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Othatzsokewl (talk • contribs) 22:54, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Solanas User Template

Template:User Valerie Solanas is now available.--Old Bella (talk) 18:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The article conflicted itself re what she is best known for

the article conflicted with itself... how can she be best known for the shooting, and best known for the book at the same time? personally i dont know which she is 'best known' for, but it cant be both at the same time. i neutralised the wording, and it was undone here. ive undone the undo until it can be resolved. badmachine (talk) 05:21, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted you again. Read the article carefully, and you will see there is no contradiction. The lede says she is "best known" for shooting Warhol, which is true. Later, the section that talks about her writing says the "work" for which she is best known is her S.C.U.M. Manifesto, which is also true. No contradiction. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

i still think there was a contradiction. it looks like RepublicanJacobite thought so too. badmachine (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

This article needs a photo

See above. Someone familiar with the anal-retentive minutiae of wikipedia rules find one. Wormwoodpoppies (talk) 23:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

"Drifted into obscurity" ?!

Not doing any edits for the moment, but I request discussion: how exactly has Solanas "drifted into obscurity"? The name and the character is known to all feminists and all men's rights activists all over the world. Given the combined numbers of fems and MRAs, being known to so many people is hardly obscurity. Plus, "Up Your Ass" is played in some theaters since at least 2001. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rulatir (talk • contribs) 17:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Lighting trunk?

The article says her script was eventually found at the bottom of a lighting trunk. What is a lighting trunk? 121.73.7.84 (talk) 02:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not in four of my dictionaries, but I assume it's a trunk in which lighting equipment is stored. Trunks would make it relatively easy to move equipment between studio and theater and a lighting trunk would let someone control stage lighting in case a theater didn't have everything that was wanted, e.g., certain color gels. If someone produced theatrically in venues not normally used for theater, there might be much more need for spotlights, reflectors, lamps, stands, wiring, gels, a lighting plot, and whatnot. Because a lighting plot is a written document and because often people throw things into containers because it's easier than not, whatnot can include lunches, music, shirts, makeup, and playscripts, and that might explain what happened here, but I'm just speculating about that. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Feminist?

Why does it say she's a feminist? Has she said or done anything that would fit with the feminist movement? Is there even a single citation of a prominent feminist accepting her as part of the movement? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.96.157.13 (talk) 01:31, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No sane feminist would want to be compared with her (though I've never actually met any sane feminists in my lifetime as the sane ones drifted out because they were happy with the current gender roles), but how else would you describe the SCUM Manifesto? Apart from, you know, sheer garbage. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 09:59, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, this isn't a forum. Anything you want to add about improving the article? freshacconci talktalk 16:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

That was what I was doing, if sarcastically. They asked a question about the article. I answered. --Thejadefalcon (talk) 11:08, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

But she wasn't a feminist. The original poster is right, it really doesn't make sense when people call her a feminist because there is nothing feminist about her. Othatzsokewl (talk) 01:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, unless you have something else to call her (and "male-hating bigoted cretin" is sort of banned by Wikipedia's policies), it stays as-is. --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 09:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, the old terror of calling Val a feminist. Here's some sources: her disassociation from feminism is something branded as reactionary in the Hecate article [Amanda Third 'Shooting from the hip': Valerie Solanas, SCUM and the apocalyptic politics of radical feminism' 01-OCT-06] where, btw, it is written: 'in the late 1960s Solanas was considered a key inspirational figure by the United States radical feminist vanguard.' The disassociation is really strange, and something that is discussed at length in the above work. The more effective apologist method is to pitch her as an avant-garde ironist. Alice Echols [Echols, A. (1989). Daring to Be Bad; Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press]: “Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto which she wrote in 1967, was one of the earliest, wittiest, and most eccentric expressions of second-wave feminism. Solanas’s unabashed misandry–especially her belief in men’s biological inferiority–her endorsement of relationships between ‘independent women,’ and her dismissal of sex as ‘the refuge of the mindless’ contravened the sort of radical feminism which prevailed in most women’s groups across the country” Jgda (talk) 10:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

New revelations for Solanas' motive?

In an interview on Q (July 6, 2009; will be available via the show's online archive within the next day or so), Margo Feiden discussed her meeting with Solanas on the morning of the shooting. Feiden, who has also been interviewed by the New York Times [1] on this subject, says that Warhol did not have Solanas's play - because she, Feiden, still has it. She says that she refused to produce Solanas's play, and that Solanas announced a plan to become famous by shooting Warhol, after which (Solanas hoped) everyone would want to produce the play.

Feiden says she called the police and was told that filing a false police report is an offense; and apparently, a manuscript dealer familiar with Solanas' work has proclaimed the Feiden-held documents as genuine (and as material with which he is not previously acquainted).

Also, here's an interview with Feiden at (appropriately enough) the Warhol-founded Interview.

So... how do we incorporate this into the article? DS (talk) 14:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I added a paragraph on Feiden using the NYT and Interview sources. It sounds like Feiden's revisionist account is regarded by many as suspect, so I avoided giving it undue weight. Interesting twist though! - N1h1l (talk) 15:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

If true, and I do say if, this is of interest, but we do not want to put too much stock in Feiden's word. Other sources are necessary, but this is still interesting. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Citing the SCUM Manifesto

Has anyone noticed that the citations in "after assassination attempt" attribute feminist movement responses to Solanas' act to her own work? This contributes to the skewed view of feminism reported in the article. Feminism has a long and complex history, with many facets, waves, and motives, and to only cite Solanas' choice of support is like quoting the reviews published on the back of an author's book. Could we add some balance, and possibly link to some history/explanation of division within/criticism of the second-wave feminist movement? Jmn519 (talk) 16:58, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Is Up Your Ass available online for link purposes?

Given the importance of Solanas' play to the Warhol assassination attempt, it would probably be a good idea to link to any copy of the manuscript as well. Is it available online? Perhaps it could also be cited in Wikisource? Calibanu (talk) 01:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)User Calibanu

Popular culture/legacy section

Hi there. I'm adding some citations to the music section, and was curious if we should move the references about the S.C.U.M. Manifesto specifically (i.e. the band S.C.U.M. to the Manifesto page, or just let the "facts" reside on both pages. We can keep the material related to Solanas specifically (i.e. the Lou Reed song) on this page. Thoughts? SarahStierch (talk) 05:30, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, perhaps the section can be condensed into paragraphs, to avoid the trivia look? Or maybe it's our best option in regards to the larger sections (i.e. music). See: WP:Trivia. SarahStierch (talk) 05:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I think pop culture/legacy/trivia references that relate to SCUM belong in that article (or in the digital waste basket). I also agree that text is better than bullet lists. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 06:53, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Mike. Kaldari (talk) 07:31, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Great, I've moved some of the content to the SCUM article (and that section still needs help) and expanded on the content. I also found more details about the Coates performance of Up Your Ass so I moved that from the "death" section down the legacy. Article is really fleshing out =) SarahStierch (talk) 16:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

SCUM Manifesto movie

Anyone know anything about the mysterious SCUM Manifesto movie (1976)? IMDB says the movie was written by Solanas.[2] Was this just based on her book, or was it a unique work? Kaldari (talk) 06:49, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Apparently it's on YouTube. I'll add some info to the SCUM Manifesto article. Kaldari (talk) 07:11, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Analysis and critique

I've added a new section for scholarly review of Solanas as a person and an influence. Feel free to tone down any language, I tend to get a little flowery at times when writing about subjects like this. Some of the content I'm using is from subscription only research databases, if any editors have interest in PDF's of these materials (many which touch on the manifesto), just ping me. SarahStierch (talk) 02:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Question about sentencing

I'm a bit confused about a statement regarding Solanas representing herself and going to jail for three years, versus another source (I found, online) that says she was represented and went to a mental ward (yet, still a jail). I don't own the book that is cited first, anyone have any insight about it?

"At her sentencing, she represented herself, without an attorney, and was sentenced to three years in prison, minus time already served." - Jansen, Sharon L., Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing, op. cit., p. 153.

versus

Valerie_Solanas#Trial

I'm hoping I can find some other sources that validate one or the other. But, perhaps others have thoughts. It basically comes down to figuring out the deal with the Jansen citation, and either moving it up to the Trial section or deleting it. SarahStierch (talk) 02:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Here are some sources:

• "Solanas… refused legal counsel, and after a comprehensive phychiatric examination, was committed to Bellevue Hospital in New York on August 16, 1968. She never stood trial for shooting Andy Warhol." -- In the crosshairs: famous assassinations and attempts from Julius Caesar to John Lennon p. 251.
• "On June 28 [1968] Solanas was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. In August, Solanas was declared incompetent and was sent to Ward Island Hospital…. June 1969: After pleading guilty, Valerie Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison for "reckless assault with intent to harm"; the year she spent in a psychiatric ward awaiting trial counted as time served." -- SCUM Manifesto, AK Press edition, pp. 54–55.
• "Solanas was deemed fit to stand trial by June 9, 1969, but before then had been sent to Bellevue and other mental institutions. See the New York Times, June 6, 1968; August 17, 1968; and June 10, 1969." -- Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist by Caroline A. Jones, p. 435.
• "She was found incompetent to stand trial, pleaded guilty of assault, and was sentenced to three years in prison." -- Lesbian histories and cultures: an encyclopedia by Bonnie Zimmerman, p. 720.
• "Solanas was taken to the 13th precinct, brought to Manhatten Criminal Court, and then confined to a Bellevue Hospital. On June 28 [1968]… Solanas was indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. In August she was declared incompetent to stand trial… Finally, in June of 1969, Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison. She was released from the New York State Prison for Women in 1971." -- Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture by Paul D. Buchanan, p. 48.

Hope that helps. Kaldari (talk) 05:26, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, absolutely, thanks for putting this together. I have removed the Jansen citation, I think the content currently in the trial section is okay, and as best as we can do at this point. Thanks for adding the purpose to the photo, btw. SarahStierch (talk) 05:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Contradictions

I've seen so many contradictory sources on Solanas I have no idea what is true and what isn't. A friend of mine is trying to put me in touch with the archivist at the Warhol Museum so I can quiz them with all my inane questions :) Here are some other examples:

• The title of the play Solanas gave to Margo Feiden a few hours before she shot Warhol: The New York Post says it is titled "Up Your Ass". Interview magazine quotes Feiden saying it is titled "Society for Cutting Up Men". And The New York Times says it is untitled.
• How much Solanas charged for the SCUM Manifesto: One source says $1 for women, $2 for men; another source says 10 cents for women and 25 cents for men. I found the original ad in the Village Voice and they were both wrong. She charged $1 to women and $2.50 to men! Kaldari (talk) 03:46, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah..I'm starting to see a trend as well in contradictions (just like the anaylsis section states!). I suppose she's still toying with us in the afterlife, just as she did in life. :) Good idea on the Warhol, I don't know anyone there, sadly, but I might know some folks who do, I'll send the feelers out (but where do we draw the line at original research?). If all else fails, I suppose we can just create a big long list of notes (like I have started) stating the contradictions and utilizing the "most popular" beliefs in the article? SarahStierch (talk) 03:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

My friend used to work there, so he'll probably be able to get some good contact info for me. Also, what's the story with the "family friend"? I hadn't seen that claim before. Virtually every source I've read though states that Solanas claimed her father sexually abused her. I'm curious what Lord has to say about it. Can you paste the quote from the article (since it requires subscription)? Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I do have to say, the Lord article is really crazy and intense (with awesome book cover art for the manifesto), and it was her article that triggered me to really get concerned about contradictions. Here is the section:

"A bit of biography, then. Solanas was born in Atlantic City in 1936. Her father was a bartender, her mother a dental assistant. Either her father or a friend of the family abused her sexually. For a dime, she sold neighborhood kids insults to be hurled at other people. In high school, she beat up a boy who was bothering a younger girl. After that she hit a nun. She got pregnant, maybe by a married man, maybe by a sailor, maybe both, they are hardly mutually exclusive. She had a child when she was fifteen, still in high school. She and her son lived with a middle-class military couple outside Washington D.C., until she was dispatched to attend the University of Maryland. The couple paid her tuition. She never saw her son again. She continued to peddle language—dirty limericks for ten bucks a pop. She waited tables and panhandled. She may have had sex for money. She used the letters-to- the-editor column of the college newspaper to taunt male students into embarrassing themselves with protests about women’s equality."

She says that this is all based on conversation with Solanas's sister, Judith, in emails from 2007. She also states that the biographical data (and she has a lot of stuff that we don't have in the article, I got a bit overwhelmed, and I have other things to work on...) comes from the book I Shot Andy Warhol and then shares a pile of other sources that she pulls from. After that paragraph I posted above, she states: "She may have peed in her roommate’s orange juice. She may have put the orange juice back in the fridge. Stories multiply." SarahStierch (talk) 04:00, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be skeptical of the "family friend" claim if that only came from Solanas' sister. Keep in mind that Solasas' parents are possibly still alive, so Solanas' sister is not likely to want to public accuse them of anything. Since our sentence says "Valerie Solanas claimed..." I don't think we should include "family friend" unless Solanas actually said that, which doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can tell. Kaldari (talk) 04:22, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense! +1 SarahStierch (talk) 04:26, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

But get this! Steven Watson's book quotes Valerie's sister as saying that her father sexually abused Valerie. What the hell? Kaldari (talk) 04:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I give up. SarahStierch (talk) 04:39, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

One more to complain about: Trying to pin down when she actually wrote anything is a nightmare. Every source claims a wildly different year for when she started writing Up Your Ass and the Manifesto. The only one that has consistent dates is "A Young Girl's Primer" (written 1965/published 1966) and that's only because there's only 1 or 2 sources that even mention it. Kaldari (talk) 04:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, well, let's see what the Warhol Museum reports back, and then perhaps we can come up with a good game plan on how to dissect the chaos (tally sheets and whatever date is mentioned more wins? :) ) and input it into the article (and figure out layout). Oh Valerie... SarahStierch (talk) 04:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I got ahold of a copy of Up Your Ass. It is definitely the exact same play as the one that Solanas gave Margo Feiden,[3] except the pagination is different. Feiden apparently didn't know the title of the play since her copy was missing the first few pages for some reason. Kaldari (talk) 09:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, the fact that her mother might have also been a nurse is just too funny at this point based on my talk page participation tonight (re: nursing stereotypes). SarahStierch (talk) 04:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Price she charged for the Manifesto (responding here to above but if extended perhaps we should copy this discussion to the Manifesto article): The ad illustrated in the SCUM Manifesto article looks like it's about the meeting, not the Manifesto, and she sold Manifestoes on the street, so I doubt she generally sold copies to men for $2.50 and had to make change. One and two dollars is likelier and sourced. I don't recall 10 and 25 cents, but perhaps that was earlier and/or for a shorter (perhaps lost) edition, and it uses common coins that probably didn't require much change-making. Nick Levinson (talk) 11:48, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Sister as copyright holder

I was also thinking, perhaps we can move the mention of her sister as possible copyright holder of the manifesto to the manifesto page. It's sort of irrelevant in the early life paragraph without context to what it is so early (if that makes sense). If people are okay with it, we can remove it? SarahStierch (talk) 03:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Kaldari (talk) 03:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Totally off-topic comment

One of the alt titles for Up Your Ass is "From the Cradle to the Boat". For a while I had no idea what this meant, but I finally figured it out. The "cradle" is a reference to the poem "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (coincidentally a stub I wrote) that is about the role of women as mothers. The "boat" is a reference to the phrase "rock the boat", which was a political phrase before it was put into that song in the 1970s. In other words, Solanas believed that women should advance from "rocking the cradle" (motherhood) to "rocking the boat" (political upheaval). Pretty clever. Kaldari (talk) 06:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering about that, actually, after placing the note. I do have to say - I agree with the sentiment! ;) Great gratuitous photo, btw, that has truly made my night, thank you for taking it!!! SarahStierch (talk) 06:21, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Also totally off-topic: slightly out of the frame of the photo I just posted was a graffiti stencil of the word "MADNESS". 2nd fun fact: While Solanas was living at the Bristol, the serial killer Richard Ramirez was living on the floor above her and occasionally killing people. I can imagine Solanas running into him in the elevator and calling him a slob for having blood on his shirt. Kaldari (talk) 06:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

It truly was the Hotel Chelsea of San Francisco. I think my dreams are going to be really disturbing tonight. Awesome stuff! SarahStierch (talk) 06:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

And if so, I guess that makes Solanas, Dylan Thomas, and Ramirez, Nancy Spungen... SarahStierch (talk) 06:28, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Ha! Totally. BTW, the 2nd entrance next to the main door in that photo of the Bristol is the VIP entrance (for all the famous murderers and assassins). Kaldari (talk) 06:33, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

When I first saw it I thought it was a strip club. Anything goes, at the Bristol. Regardless, I'm fine with not having special treatment there...heehee SarahStierch (talk) 06:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, you're probably right. I asked the guy at the front desk if he had ever heard of Valerie Solanas. He said he hadn't. I asked if I could see room 202, but he said it was occupied. With a ghost sitting at a typewriter no doubt. Kaldari (talk) 06:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Shooting wasn't at the Factory

The Factory was a space on East 47th Street. Warhol et al. moved from the Factory to a loft in Union Square in early 1968, and it was in the Union Square loft that Valerie shot Andy.

I'm not sure how the other sources report this, but re-reading Warhol's Popism reminded me. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 06:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

All his studio/office spaces were called The Factory. freshacconci talktalk 16:38, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Popism

According to the article:

In his book, Popism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol wrote that before she shot him, he thought Solanas was an interesting and funny person, but that her constant demands for attention made her difficult to deal with and ultimately drove him away.[citation needed]

I think that sentence has been in the article for a long time, but Warhol doesn't really say that. The text about her starts here. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 06:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I've removed the sentence from the article. Kaldari (talk) 19:06, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Some random facts

Just putting these here for safe keeping:

• According to Paul Krassner, Solanas originally submitted Up Your Ass to The Realist, but he had rejected it as editor, remarking that he "had no overwhelming desire to share Valerie's misanthropic evangelism with my friends". --SCUM Manifesto (1968) Olympia Press Edition. p.88.
• At one point, Solanas offered to write a column for Cavalier magazine called "Lesbian at Large". --SCUM Manifesto (1968) Olympia Press Edition. p.89.

Kaldari (talk) 09:54, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Anyone have access to the Breanne Fahs article? Kaldari (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, but apparently only when I'm at a library, not from outside. I don't know when I'll be there next.

I probably cannot email the article or quote extensively, but I can probably try to answer a question. What would you like to know?

I'm puzzled that the Wikipedia article cites volume 3 and dates it as 2008 when the library seems to be saying that the journal began in 1972.

Apparently, the journal article, depending on the publication year, may be in library databases JStor, ProQuest Research Library (Legacy Platform), Academic Search Premier, Academic OneFile, MasterFile Premier, LGBT Life with Full Text, SocIndex with Full Text, Gale U.S. History in Context, Literature Resource Center, Humanities International Complete, Religion & Philosophy Collection, and Literature OnLine. Maybe a library you use has access to one of these.

Nick Levinson (talk) 04:07, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I looked, but I couldn't find it in JSTOR or Muse. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:05, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

overduplication?

How much about the SCUM Manifesto itself should be in the Valerie Solanas article? Some, since it's a major reason for her notability and some content is about her as author or as one interacting with it or dealing with reactions to it, but, since the Manifesto has its own article, how much is too much? (I ask as one who has contributed some of that content to this article.) It seems some content is somewhat duplicative, but I'm not the best person to judge this. Nick Levinson (talk) 06:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

The grave of Valerie Solanas

I visited Valerie Solanas' grave recently during my last few weeks of living in the Washington, D.C. metro area. A very peaceful nice place. Oddly enough, the place where she is buried is a historic landmark - the church was a site where Clara Barton tended to the injured during the Civil War. We have a photo of the hotel in the later life/death section, so I'm not sure where this might fit in, but..it could be a nice addition to the article. Just not sure where to put it.. Sarah (talk) 05:48, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for making the picture and offering it. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:33, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Lede

The lede reads:

Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist writer.

and then it goes on to say (leaving a space between the paragraphs):

She was abused in her family and went on to study psychology. She was best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex." (...)

As pointed out above on this talk page by other editors, Solanas is primarily known for attempting to murder Andy Warhol. Not for any other reasons, including being a radical feminist or a writer. And this is what the lede should reflect. Solanas doesn't have any notable standing in the history of feminism (like other radical feminists have, such as Andrea Dworkin, for example) and neither does she have any standing in the literary world.

The lede should start by noting that she came to fame for attempting to murder Andy Warhol; and this is what most of the lede should be about, although other things such as the SCUM Manifesto, radical feminism, a short paragraph about her biography etc, should be mentioned too, because the lede is supposed to be a summary of the article.188.25.26.70 (talk) 04:30, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Sources about her SCUM Manifesto are numerous and Wikipedia gives due weight partl;y because of sourcing. This article does that and the lead is supposed to summarize the article. It already says she was "best known" for attempting the murder and that subject is covered in the article. The lead was previously too short, thus the expansion, but even a much shorter lead would reasonably give roughly equal weight to both the murder attempt and the manifesto. Probably, people who remember her outside of Wikipedia remember her more for one than the other and others remember her the other way around, because one involved art and the other feminism with only some overlap, leaving it to Wikipedia's lead to cover both.

As to the spacing between paragraphs, Wikipedia requires two consecutive paragraph breaks for one blank line to result, which is the desired styling of paragraphs.

Nick Levinson (talk) 14:33, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

propose removing the Lead Too Short tag and discuss other edits

I propose to delete the {{Lead too short}} template. Further editing can be done to the lead at any time without the template. I'll wait a week for comment. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm okay with it being removed but I'd like to take a stab at writing it. There are a few aspects of it which are just not as relevant to me or could be written differently. There also isn't a must to have citations in the lede unless there is something not covered in the lower portion of the article, from what I know (and from my GA writing experience). SarahStierch (talk) 16:29, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought the standard was generally to omit citations from the lead because they were in the body, but, if that was once true, it no longer is (WP:MOS Lead Section Citations). It's more work to include them, but that seems to have been a change from the past. I look forward to seeing what you come up with overall. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:06, 8 August 2012 (UTC) (Corrected link by piping: 17:11, 8 August 2012 (UTC))

(edit conflict) Ok, I rewrote it and the citations that needed to be moved down were moved down (and two that weren't cited anywhere but in the lede were kept in the lede). I did remove the mention about radical feminism (that was towards the end of the lede) as she was most notable for the assassination attempt. I'm sure there could be a better way to add it in with more than just one sentence. I do think the lede probably can be trimmed down a tad, or even three paragraphs can be created. I removed the template, too. SarahStierch (talk) 17:14, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure the chronology in the last paragraph is correct. I believe SCUM Manifesto was only commercially published after the shooting. Kaldari (talk) 04:39, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps I misread something in the article itself. Change away. PLEASE :) SarahStierch (talk) 06:03, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I copyedited as follows (give or take allowing for intermediate edits in the last few days by other editors while I was preparing these offline): I changed the present tense to the past for a statement by Solanas and for her judicial plea since she's dead and "begin" to "began" for a 1960s event. I inserted "that" into "said that she was the victim of sexual abuse" because many who were sexually abused prefer not to consider themselves victims but survivors, victim being more appropriate to people who died because of what they didn't survive; police often spoke of victims but feminists disagreed; it's better to try for wording to which she wouldn't have objected. I pluralized the genitive in "parent's divorce" because not just one could divorce. I rephrased before "unruly behavior" because stating that as causation implied that the bad family relationship was all her fault. I made a proper noun into a genitive in accordance with context. I'm not sure she misunderstood the contract when she complained about it (her complaint is a valid interpretation of the known wording of the contract), so I turned the verb into "understood", which is consistent with her being either right or wrong about its meaning. A contract doesn't believe something, but it may mean the something, so I rephrased. I corrected the spelling of Hughes' name. I added serial commas and another comma and moved a comma to outside of the adjacent quotation mark. I hyphenated "three-year sentence". I clarified that the criminal sentence was to prison and hospitalization (e.g., it wasn't suspended or community service). I dropped the comma in "promote the SCUM Manifesto, living under the pseudonym Onz Loh", because that meant that the Manifesto was called Onz Loh, when instead she was. I edited about the duration of the name Onz Loh because we know only that that was her name sometime before she died, not all the years after her release; for example, when, post-release, she was interviewed by the Vilage Voice, she was Solanas. I edited pseudonym because we don't know if she kept the name Solanas and used Loh as a pseudonym or if she changed her name; in some jurisdctions, consistently using a new name without fraud is pretty much enough for that to become your new legal name and not a pseudonym; either way, Loh is a name. I moved a couple of punctuation marks. These edits generally depended on the body and the sources.

I'm still not sure that she's much more famous for the attempted murder than for the Manifesto. The Manifesto has been published a bunch of times by a bunch of publishing houses over a bunch of years and translated into a bunch of languages and it's been written about by a bunch of apparently unrelated scholars. But the lead is reasonably balanced between the two matters anyway.

I think her having helped start (or restart) radical feminism is a move of major import once it's been ascribed to her by third parties, and I think it warrants inclusion in the lead. Expanding on it in the lead is probably more than is needed; I would simply add it without much more (the body takes care of any elaboration). It can go as a single sentence or as just a clause into an existing paragraph, since her instigation of feminist radicalism was through her disseminating the Manifesto; I doubt she did a lot of very public speaking out about the movement or there'd be more of a record about her as organizer, proponent, or social critic. Instead, she probably mostly let the Manifesto speak for her. A clause will probably suffice. I'll wait a week for any comments.

I added to the heading of this topic/section.

Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC) (Deleted a sentence that wasn't applicable due to intermediate editing of the article: 18:23, 11 August 2012 (UTC)) (Deleted the paragraph about dividing lead paragraphs as inapplicable due to intermediate editing, added about punctuation, and added about radicalism: 20:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC))

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:00, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

role of Paul Krassner

The article until recently said that Solanas went to Krassner for money and spent it on a gun. Then (ignoring two revertings) it was edited to say she asked him for a loan for food, got the loan, and maybe used that to buy a gun. Both statements were sourced, to different sources. Either statement seems plausible. There may be a BLP issue respecting Krassner, but, while I'm not a lawyer, I doubt Krassner still has legal liability if he did give her money to buy a gun in 1968 and that should reduce any BLP concern. While the two statements more or less conflict significantly, I know of no reason to find one statement much more likely to be true than the other, and whichever statement is true is important and should be reported in the article. So I edited the article to include both statements in "[e]ither ... or" form. If BLP requires we rewrite this, we should still allude to there being a different statement of facts than the food version, in case the latter was not true. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The 2nd statement is from a recent interview with Krassner where he clarifies the exact circumstances and specifically states that the first statement is incorrect. Both statements are based on Krassner's recollections, but the first source is Alan Kaufman quoting Taylor Meade quoting Paul Morrissey quoting Krassner, while the 2nd source is quoting Krassner directly, and thus far more likely to be accurate. There is a bit of a BLP issue as the original statement makes it sound like Krassner wanted Solanas to shoot Giodias. Kaldari (talk) 18:12, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I edited.

Both sources are partly credible. To discredit one is rather a hazardous enterprise, especially if dropping one leads to it reappearing by another editor's hand making up for an apparent oversight by us. So I reported both.

Krassner may well be telling the truth and have a generally good memory, but his is a primary source and one flaw remains: While he loaned her the money a few days before the shooting, on the day of the shooting Krassner went to a restaurant for lunch with his 4-year-old daughter 5 hours before the shooting which, according to Wikipedia, was after 2:00, a persistent talk and order to leave, seven elevator rides (even assuming round trips), an order to leave, a threat to beat her up and throw her out, the start of a phone call, and someone going to the bathroom. So I doubt the shooting was after 3:00. Krassner had lunch 5 hours before with a 4-year-old; that would mean lunch at 9-10:00 a.m., at which time Solanas was at a hotel, which she was at from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. But Solanas saw Krassner at the restaurant as lunch started (Krassner turned her away). Krassner was an iconically countercultural man, but he didn't get to see his daughter very often, which implies a parental separation and thus likely a need to show normal forms of responsibility to the other parent and maybe a court, so I doubt he would be having a restaurant lunch with a 4-year-old at 9-10 a.m. In short, I doubt the gap was 5 hours, Krassner's figure. So I doubt his memory's accuracy. (He was still publishing The Realist long after the shooting and I don't know if it's indexed, if he wrote about their meeting back then, or if he was interviewed or otherwise in a contemporary source about his role. Even without the '96 accusation, this meeting seems significant enough he might well have recounted it much closer to 1968.)

But I don't want to put a stamp of certainty on the other version, either. It was by Freddie Baer, only a compiler who cited no source, thus apparently Baer's work is only a tertiary source. This passage was not attributed to Morrissey (subsequent passages weren't attributed to anyone). I'm pretty sure that in 1968 the law would have held Krassner to a criminal standard if he had had criminal knowledge of Solanas' intent (I don't know what day Solanas crossed the line from anger to wanting to kill). While I think Solanas' sentence was probably lenient and I speculate that the leniency was because Warhol was unlikely to have been good as a victim-witness before a jury that was not from a hip art crowd, prosecuting Krassner might have been a lot easier. But I take it no one brought that case. Maybe there was no contemporary evidence of the non-food version. The version of events that included saying she wanted to kill may not have been known in 1968.

So I have doubts about both versions. Yet either one could be approximately true. And I think Solanas could have either advertised her intention or kept quiet. And it may be relevant that, according to Baer, she turned two guns over to the police (Baer (1996), p. 53, & Baer (2004), p. 203 (full citations in article as newly edited)).

I suspect a secondary source once existed somewhere but I don't know where to look (maybe we could search for Taylor Meade). Maybe Baer meant to attribute to Morrissey, but he didn't.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:05, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Seems like a lot of hemming and hawing over a rather insignificant detail. Is there any way we could trim it down any? I would suggest removing the "Baer wrote this in 1996 and 2004" sentence at least. Such details would be fine for a book on Solanas, but it's overly detailed for an encyclopedia article. Kaldari (talk) 20:26, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I simplified it a bit, but kept enough and organized it (Krassner getting the first and last words) to avoid a BLP issue while still reporting both versions of events. After taking out the 1996 and 2004 dates from the main text, I added them to the citations in the endnotes, so that, hopefully, no one will delete one citation, since neither one is excessive. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:03, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

"her most notable work, the SCUM Manifesto "

What were her other notable works, that this is the most notable? (tried to figure it out from article, but failed). Seems nothing else was published, just the self-published SCUM Manifesto. Is this incorrect and other works were published and (somewhat) notable? MathewTownsend (talk) 17:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

If she had other works that were not notable at all, wouldn't the Manifesto be her most notable work? CityOfSilver 17:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

"In 1965 she wrote two works: an autobiographical[21] short story called "A Young Girl's Primer, or How to Attain the Leisure Class", and a play titled Up Your Ass[note 3] about a young prostitute.[17] The short story was published in Cavalier magazine in 1966.[22] Up Your Ass remains unpublished.[17]" Kaldari (talk) 18:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

"screwed" and quotational accuracy

I favor quotations being accurate, including verbal ones that were published in printed media (in this case, regarding "He's screwed me!", it was published twice eight years apart), even if they seem erroneous or even if readers will tend to think it's erroneous. The one exception that occurs to me about quotational accuracy is with dashes to use and whether to surround them with spaces, and that's because the Wikipedia Manual of Style openly specifies that. Perhaps Freddie Baer erred; but it's possible that Solanas used the capitalization in the theological sense (otherwise, "sic" would be appropriate). This time, in case editors are concerned that the ellipsis has too few periods, I added a comment visible only in editing mode, so that editors can know that the ellipsis is not mistyped. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:21, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Heh, I doubt she was referring to Girodias in the theological sense :) Regarding the punctuation, I've started a discussion here to seek clarity on the issue. Kaldari (talk) 06:01, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for ther heads-up. I added my opinion.

I think it's likelier that Baer erred twice than that the pronoun was theological, but the latter is not out of reach: getting published (by a nonvanity press and in print) was hard, a publisher being interested in her work was probably wonderful, and she might have, at the moment of the comment, both admired and hated Girodias.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

edits on Saturday

While the writing style may have been improved by Saturday's editing, it created a few problems.

• Neither of the Baer sources (one cited and one not there but elsewhere in article) says anything paraphraseable into "[i]n August 1967, Girodias agreed to publish Solanas", so it shouldn't be in the same sentence as the description of the contract, which Baer did describe, unless the first clause is sourced or otherwise separated (the latter assuming nonchallengeable). I added a source for part of it (Harron's, not by Baer) and deleted the rest of the clause. What I deleted was about the contract saying it was to publish her work; this may seem like a technicality, but all we know is that he was a publisher who advertised to writers and that under the contract she would provide writings and he would pay, but I have no source saying what he would do with them. It's only our presumption that the contractual purpose was publication, and our presumption is not sourceable, so I dropped it.
  • I think it's pretty safe to say that the contract was a publishing contract. Is there some other realistic possibility? Generally publishers don't give writers large sums of money just to read their work. Kaldari (talk) 06:09, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Kill fee and/or licensing of derivative work or maybe it was vague. The first is not ironic; some major publishers pay those, thereby keeping a work out of sight (one Hollywood script writer made a living off of those and said (unverified) that Hollywood buys 800 scripts for each one they use). The second would apply if Girodias wanted to novelize the manifesto or turn it into a play, for example. And the third would apply if he simply bought the rights and didn't say how he intended to use them, typical if someone wants to buy all of the rights. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:21, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Why would he pay her a kill fee for her future work and yet publish the SCUM Manifesto? How would that possibly make sense? Regarding the derivative work, yes Girodias wanted a novelization, but he wanted Solanas to write it (as Girodias wasn't a writer). "To make a living Valerie went out in the streets of the Village and peddled mimeographed copies of her literary productions. That was an obvious waste of talent, and I offered her a contract to write an autobiographical novel for me." - Publisher's preface, 1968 edition of SCUM Manifesto. Kaldari (talk) 04:02, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
        • He might not have specified and might have had an open mind on how he would use her writings, so that the money could be for publishing or for not publishing (killing), thus denying it to any competing publisher. And, on derivatives, he might have planned to have someone else create a derivative work once he had the right. The quote from the preface suggests two contracts existed (his recall doesn't sound compatible with the two-sentence text Solanas recalled), which doesn't tell us what the one contract in question said. A publisher wanting rights without committing to publishing might tell someone like Solanas, who probably came across to him as believing in her work and wanting it published, that he wants to publish it without legally committing to doing so. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
• Baer described the non-food version as occurring in 1968, but did not publish that description in 1968, but in 1996 and 2004. What happened in 1968 was Solanas going to Krassner. While restoring the comma's position would technically have sufficed, presumably it was misunderstandable, so I moved the date further into the sentence.
• A sentence beginning with an attribution to Baer and ending with two citations to Baer was divided into two, effectively leaving one sentence without sourcing and the other without an attribution. Either both need attributions and both need both citations or the sentences should be rejoined, both under general standards and because of BLP. Rejoining gives a more readable and supportable result, so that's what I did.
• The last sentence had begun with a clause intended to separate the denial from the version of events immediately preceding it. Because of BLP and because Krassner denied what essentially could be criminal culpability on his part (if the statute of limitations hasn't ended it), I think Krassner should be given the last word. It's confusing if our descriptions of events give the impression that his denial is part of the non-food version. It's part of the food version, but stated after the non-food version as the last word. So it needs a clear separation. So, I supplied a clause that's perhaps a tad clearer than the deleted one.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

"...working as a writer, beggar, and prostitute."

I wasn't aware that begging was considered a form of employment. Forgot to sign 212.250.138.33 (talk) 04:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, some people make pretty good money doing that per year. — Cirt (talk) 04:17, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I assume this is about how to write the lead. It is self-employment (and, by the way, among children in India who beg, employment, if underground). It is work even if the only service is the providing of psychic relief from hopefully doing some good. It is work because one has to ask and usually keep asking because one will often be refused, and one has to refine one's pitch, location, and so on, not unlike what street musicians and sellers of knick-knacks must do. Whether beggars are annoying or should be given to is a different question. I usually don't give, but work it is. Nick Levinson (talk) 14:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Stylistic issue more than anything else. I would have phrased the above as something like, "...working as a writer and prostitute or begging." I see your point however that begging could be construed as a form of employment although it is usally not cosidered a form of "work" in the usual sense of the word. 212.250.138.33 (talk) 18:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but it's a relatively minor issue. :) — Cirt (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't have sources or time in a week

I don't have the answers requested in the GA review and finding them is not something I'm about to have time for in anything like a week (the challenged content does not look like anything I added). I hope someone knows the answers. Thanks. Best wishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 14:41, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The possibility exists that if someone needs a bit more time than a week an extension may be considered (per User talk:Nick Levinson#re I don.27t have sources or time in a week). It's only a possibility, not a promise and not by me. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, no worries, either way. :) I'll stop back in a week and see if there's progress, if not, I'll inquire if those working on the article would like an extension. :) — Cirt (talk) 16:57, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The storm Sandy meant libraries were closed, and they were my main Internet connection. I didn't personally suffer much else from the storm, other than much slower commutes for less work. I'll catch up on this article shortly, maybe this weekend, at least some of it, and complete the rest soon after, I think. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:40, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

That is definitely a mitigating circumstance, I'll take it into account, take your time and good luck, keep me posted here on the talk page. — Cirt (talk) 19:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

GA review & major deletions

It'll probably take substantial time to provide the needed citations for the article (one possibility is to try to figure out from the article history who probably contributed the content and contact them, but that may be time-consuming, especially if someone copied or moved it from elsewhere in Wikimedia). Unless there's a consensus to forgo the Good Article status for the time being, I propose to delete the content that has been challenged as needing citations by moving it to the talk page within a few days and to rewrite other content so that gaps are not obvious. There's also an additional statement that I will probably do the same to, because it looks very dubious and which is already on my list for a library visit to check. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:28, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I'll agree with that idea, so long as that action doesn't hurt stability, which would be quite unfortunate. Good luck! — Cirt (talk) 18:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

En route to resolution. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Another cite needed tag by a different user, diff, could be cited later in the article per WP:LEAD, maybe that user missed that, if so? — Cirt (talk) 19:12, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

The last point is resolved (see the edit summary). Nick Levinson (talk) 18:50, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed as to that last point, however there are still multiple citation needed tags on the page, and apparently a tagged identified problem in the References section about ibid usage. — Cirt (talk) 19:05, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Univ. of Minn., I, A Man, prosecutor Lankler, & Warhol not discussing & major deletions of text toward GA status

The following content was deleted from the article because it has been tagged as needing citations and the article is under consideration as a Good Article, so if you know of a source for any of the following, please post it:

• "She did nearly a year at the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Psychology, where she published two articles".
• "In her role in I, A Man, she and the film's title character ... haggle in a building hallway over whether they should go into her apartment. Solanas dominates the improvised conversation, leading [him] ... through a dialogue about everything from 'squishy asses', 'men's tits', and lesbian 'instinct'." Also, I didn't see the information for this statement in the I, a Man article.
• "Corroboration of Feiden's accounts was recently uncovered in the handwritten notes of New York Assistant District Attorney Richard Lankler, who was part of the prosecution team in the Solanas case. Under his handwritten heading of June 4, 1967, which is the day after Warhol was shot, Lankler lists Margo Feiden's name (as Margo Eden) at the address at which Solanas visited her. Next to the address Lankler's notes include the two telephone numbers to Feiden's apartment." (Brackets omitted, as apparently useless, and apostrophes straightened.)
• "While his [Warhol's] friends were actively hostile towards Solanas, Warhol himself preferred not to discuss her."

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:01, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Great. Best practice is doing like you're doing, removed unsourced content from article and obviously admonishing others to not add back to main article space until properly sourced. — Cirt (talk) 22:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Two things left

1. The shooting = 6th paragraph, tagged at end "not in citation given" ?
2. References = tagged as "Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title." ?

After these are both explained here, or addressed suffficiently, I think that's all the outstanding stuff left. — Cirt (talk) 23:32, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

deleted image toward GA status and kept one

One image, the one of her being booked by the police, was deleted by me from the article because I'm unclear on the licensing or fair use and the article is under consideration as a Good Article, so if you know of a more clearly available image that is similarly nteresting or a way to clarify or resolve licensing or fair use, please post accordingly.

The other questioned image, the one near the top, has in its [[File:Valerie_Solanas.jpg]] file page information an assertion that nothing else was available ("[a]s the subject is deceased, no free equivalent could reasonably be obtained or created to replace this media"), which seems to answer the question raised; but, if it does not, please post accordingly.

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:21, 3 November 2012 (UTC) (Corrected link to end image display by adding nowiki tags and depiping: 21:28, 3 November 2012 (UTC))

I don't really care what happens with the image of her being booked. It was added by me to actually add to the article, of course, and under fair use. If you go to my Flickr, which I used just to upload it easily to Commons, it's fair use, that's for sure - there is a copyright on it, it's from some old newspaper. Anyway, doesn't matter now, it'll be deleted now. Anyway, I do think it's totally acceptable for us to have the infobox image of her, as it is fair use, there are no free images of her and we haven't been able to find any (any attempts made by myself and Kaldari to talk to people who knew her have been shot down by those people - no one wants to talk about her let alone release images of her). So it's acceptable to have that infobox image. SarahStierch (talk) 23:11, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that the infobox one is defensible, too. Interesting that no one wanted to talk about her and I guess that firms up keeping the image we have. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:44, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, good rationale. — Cirt (talk) 23:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

that Manifesto predicted what medical science achieved

A discrepancy is claimed between the SCUM Manifesto and the N.Y. Times. Whether there is one doesn't matter. The statement in the article was not strictly warranted regardless of sourcing, so I deleted it.

External fertilization is probably a step toward what the Manifesto predicted, and that would be relevant for the SCUM Manifesto section of this article or the main article about the Manifesto. But it might be better if most such claims, about parts of the Manifesto having come true or begun to or unable to, be sourced. There has been sourcing that associated her prediction about men being able to watch women in action and the modern debates about privacy, for example. Otherwise, we could write extensively about what has come true or not but it would look like original research.

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:23, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

op. cit. utility and a new list

In the references, the op. cit. form is needed and not like the forms discouraged in the tag. Those other forms are often used alone, thus with less clarity for readers. Without op. cit. or something similar, every time a work is cited it would need to be cited in full, viz., including the city of publication each time the same book is referenced, making the endnotes more cumbersome. We can't name ref elements so as to yield a single endnote in situations where details such as page numbers vary. Instead, therefore, I collected some referents into a list before the endnotes and, where a work was cited in full in an endnote, replaced the full form with a shorter op. cit. form. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:28, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Please add the year of publication to these shorter op. cit. cites. — Cirt (talk) 23:09, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll get to it. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Done on Wednesday. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:21, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

New York Daily

I'm editing shortly, because I doubt a reliable source called New York Daily ever existed. Probably either the Daily News or the Daily Mirror was meant, both having been prominent city tabloids when Solanas shot Warhol. I confirmed the initial headline as a front-page headline in the News in the Final edition but forgot about the reported same-day subsequent change of headline, so if I get a chance to I plan to try to confirm the change within a week or so (that library is closed tomorrow), but that's probably going to be impossible from the microfilm, because I turned the microfilm in as defective and the library might replace it or not return it for public use and because, I think, most serial publishers keep only one edition as authoritative for their archives (years ago the Wall St. Journal, which published 11 editions, told me they kept only the Eastern one). The library was permanently missing several years of the Mirror, which has been out of business for decades. I haven't found any serial called simply New York Daily; I assume that was a Wikipedia editor's error. I imagine some retailer might have dressed up a sales circular as a faux newspaper and perhaps called it New York Daily, but other than that kind of thing I don't think such a serial existed. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a little bit of helpful info in the history of this redirect here, not sure if that help's your determination, but there it is. — Cirt (talk) 22:26, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks; that was interesting. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:59, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I got the Daily News microfilm again (the damage remained without affecting the pages needed for this article). Only one edition of the June 4th newspaper was microfilmed between the June 3d and June 5th editions. But even if there was an edition on June 4th after the Final 5-star, the June 5th Final 5-star edition headline on p. 42 says "Actress Defiant: 'I'm Not Sorry'". That article does, in column 3, say "Valerie urged the press to read her 'manifesto,' a remarkable 21-page outline", so the News probably knew she was a writer. So I doubt what it said in the Wikipedia article that "later that evening [June 4] the headline was changed" and I didn't find the caption that's mentioned in the Wikipedia statement "[a]n updated caption included a quote from Solanas stating 'I'm a writer, not an actress.'". Both statements are unsourced. Maybe sourcing reported on a newspaper edition I didn't see and can support both statements. I also haven't found a source for the statement that "[h]er demand to be called a writer helped to solidify her independence from Warhol". I'm planning one more attempt to find sourcing for all three. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The three statements supra I was going to trace for sourcing, I now have, editing one to conform to the sourcing. So that's done.

On the correction Solanas allegedly persuaded a newspaper to publish, about her being a writer and not an actress, it turns out the Harding source says so but attributes the seeing of the change to Warhol, who was an artist, not a journalist or a scholar. I suspect Warhol may have gotten the overarching idea right but some of the details wrong, so I rephrased the article to be especially careful with attributions, albeit wthout stating my judgment about Warhol's perception in the article. I don't think it was common for newspapers to announce corrections as prominently as Warhol recalled it being, unless it was a correction to a competitor's paper. So I suspect Warhol may have seen a different tabloid; the Daily News and the Daily Mirror may have looked rather alike as generic tabloids back then, with giant-fontsize headlines in black ink on same-size white paper. And back then there were a few newspapers; for example, the New York Post was an afternoon paper then, so the Post 's might have been the "evening edition" Warhol saw, not an edition of "the same paper", the News. (Harding, Cutting Performances (cited in article), p. 152 and see p. 152 n. 3). Warhol recalled Solanas being pictured holding a copy of the erroneous paper (Harding, ibid.), but she was in police custody from her arrest (only after which was the first story published) until she was brought to court (after the supposed correction), and I wonder if she was holding the erroneous paper while being photographed by the press anytime in the days after her booking because I wonder if the police or the court would have allowed it, as it wouldn't have been in the police department's interest to permit it and most courts usually forbid in-courthouse photography by anyone anytime. But in the article we can't say Warhol was wrong without at least one source directly contradicting him, which I don't have, so I don't say so.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

shooting especially re Feiden and script lost or held

The subsection The Shooting requires a lot of research before editing it, unless we do wholesale deletions in the very section the GA revewer suggests we expand and therefore presumably doesn't want shrunk. Several sources are cited and are the likeliest sources for statements in need of citations, and those sources would have to be retrieved and read. If anyone can help, please do.

A discrepancy seems to be present in the Feiden account: I thought a copy of Solanas' play, Up Your Ass, had been discovered in a lighting trunk belonging to Warhol. Granting that Feiden had the script all along, I think she simply had another copy, but thought she had the only one, and so thought she could exonerate Warhol of having lost a copy. But I think it's likelier that Solanas had made two copies, counting the original as one, before meeting Feiden. We may have to rephrase the subsection so as not to agree that Warhol didn't have the script after he was shot (losing it in-house doesn't mean not having it).

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:35, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Given that Solanas was very familiar with the use of mimeograph machines and rather protective of her work, I wouldn't be surprised if she had several copies. I agree that we should not imply that Feiden had the only copy. BTW, the copy that Warhol lost (and was later rediscovered) is now held at the Warhol museum and is occasionally on exhibit. Kaldari (talk) 20:53, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I clarified that Feiden's copy of the lost play was probably not the only copy, although my method is a kludge, since I didn't want to tamper with what a source may have said about Feiden's account until I've seen the source. The kludge therefore may be temporary. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:42, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm in the middle of fixing the Feiden content.

It turns out to be scattered and redundant. It looks like we missed that roughly similar content was being added two or three times (unless it was all done at once, but I doubt that).

It's not clear exactly what Feiden possesses that's supposed to be Solanas' play. It seems to have been titled The Society for Cutting Up Men and not Up Your Ass, it starts at page 30 with no title page, and the discussion with Solanas seems to have been themed on the Manifesto, all according to the Interview magazine interview, in which Feiden speculated that Solanas cleverly renamed the play to foil Feiden possibly disrupting Solanas' court defense. I've been assuming that Up Your Ass did not track the Manifesto, although it might have had some overlap, but perhaps what other people decribed as, e.g., "dirty" (Warhol's word, per the Times) was really a failure to recognize Manifesto–like content; I don't know.

I have some of the sources. Another I'll probably have to try to get through interlibrary loan, which means maybe a couple of months. I'm not relying on the N.Y. Post, which has been notoriously unreliable under Rupert Murdoch's ownership, and am deleting the one citation to it (there's another source remaining for the content it supported). I was unable to find a text, summary, or report of Feiden's 2009 lecture at the National Arts Club via Google or at NationalArtsClub.org when I searched on November 9, 2012, so I'm treating that as an unverifiable source and deleting the citation and whatever challengeable content it supports by itself; I don't plan to try to trace which editor added it.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:46, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I've seen an excerpt from Feiden's copy (unfortunately no longer on the web) and it's definitely Up Your Ass. I have no idea where Feiden got the idea it was titled The Society for Cutting Up Men, especially since it's missing the title page. Kaldari (talk) 22:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I now have copies of all 3 of Solanas's published works, so if anyone needs me to verify anything, let me know. Kaldari (talk) 22:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

ID: As I recall the cited intervew, her interviewer said so.

3: Thanks; nice accomplishment. If it's handy, and although we can't cite to it because it's unverifiable, does Up Your Ass thematically match the Manifesto substantially?

On the article per se: More editing was done Thursday and more is likely to come.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:52, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

All 3 of her works are completely different. The only things that tie them together are Solanas' acerbic sense of humor and unique world-view. Up Your Ass is an absurd lesbian-feminist comedy that reminds me more of Pink Flamingos than any political satire. A Young Girl's Primer is a grittier dark comedy short story that could have been written by a female Chuck Palahniuk or JT LeRoy. And SCUM Manifesto is a classic 60s counter-culture screed that just happens to have been written by the person who tried to kill Andy Warhol (otherwise, it would have a completely different reputation than it does today). Kaldari (talk) 22:44, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

More editing was done Sunday. More may come but not very soon; I have to get a source.

Feiden had a mimeo of whatever was in the folder Solanas handed to her, which, per N.Y. Times (as accessed 11-9-12), may have been something else altogether. I don't want to ask Feiden if she wants to let it be seen; it's probably still too painful, and the release would have to be public to generate a source we can use. At any rate, the Wikipedia article no longer claims that she had the only copy.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:14, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I listened recently to a broadcast interview, a podcast of "highlights", of Margo Feiden. It sounds like Solanas gave Feiden a copy of the Manifesto with handwritten notes but called it a play. Maybe Solanas thought Feiden could derive a play from the Manifesto with her notes, which would mean that Up Your Ass was not under discussion. I assume Solanas handed Warhol Up Your Ass not on the day of the shooting but well before that, and if what Solanas handed Feiden the morning before the shooting was her philosophy as described in a manfesto and an expert thinks it was a play's sequel, then maybe Solanas had penned an extension of Up Your Ass that was more closely tied to the Manifesto, Solanas had edited or annotated the Manifesto into an altogether different play, or Solanas handed Feiden a new work we know little about. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:35, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Oops; I shouldhave integrated what Kaldari wrote above. It'd be interesting if archive.org has what disappeared from the Web but for that the old URL is needed. Anyway, sources are in substantial conflict right now. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Warhol refusing to testify

At the trial, Warhol refused to testify, according to Margo Feiden in what appears to be a tertiary source on point, but she didn't provide a source for her statement and I don't think it's quite accurate,<ref>[http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090706.mp3 Ghomeshi, Jian, host, ''Q: The Podcast'', from ''CBC Radio 1''], as accessed November 18, 2012 ("highlights" from the July 6 [2009] program, per approximately 0:03–0:06 from start) (interview of Margo Feiden overall approx. 1:14–18:56 from start) (fragment approx. 12:59–13:10 from start) (Feiden: "Andy Warhol, I found out since, also refused to testify, I don't know if you [Ghomeshi] know that, but he refused to, to testify about what happened.").</ref> so I didn't add it to the article. As I understand the legal process, Warhol would not have had the right to refuse to testify but he probably would not have made a good prosecution witness, being a countercultural figure who would likely have looked bizarre and untrustworthy in front of a jury if he hadn't chosen to focus on being a prosecution witness, with the result of a complete acquittal or a conviction on something very minor. Whether to add this to the article could be argued either way. If anyone thinks this should be added, edit accordingly or suggest it. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:40, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Poor wording in intro

"Assassination" attempts are done against political or military figures. Andy Warhol wasn't a politician - the intro should call it a murder attempt, as the Warhol article itself says. And yes I think it's wrong to refer to the murder to John Lennon as an assassination too - Lennon never held office nor was he military. Outside of those two contexts, assassinations are carried out on individuals by assassins who are usually assigned or hired to do such a deed. There's no indication of that applying here, either. 70.72.211.35 (talk) 06:19, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll check at home. We rely on sources. I don't have all of them and maybe none of these but I'll see what I have. If sourcing says assassination, maybe the Andy Warhol article is wrong in not saying it, but I think you might have a point, just that your point might have to be addressed to the authors of sources. And if it is a debatable point with sources on both sides, then both sides might be reportable. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I now don't think the change is appropriate. Assassination has a wider meaning that includes this case. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles ([4th] ed., 1993) defines assassinate as "[k]ill (esp. a public figure such as a political or religious leader)". Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged ((Merriam-Webster ser.), 1966) defines assassin as "one that murders ... from fanatic adherence to a cause", i.e., otherwise regardless of the importance of the one killed. Solanas' act certainly fits, especially considering that she was little known before the shooting when Warhol was already a public figure, and that's not counting a now-obsolete definition in SOED as simply "[a]ttempt to murder", that is, an attempt to murder used to be considered a completed assassination. I haven't checked other sources, although it's likely that some discoursive sources referred to the attempt as one of murder. At the moment, however, I don't know which sources now in the article should be reparaphrased as referring to murder. On a related point, some definitions also refer to the means of killing; W3 at kill gives a synonymy that distinguishes assassinate as relying on a method of 'stealth or treachery'; Solanas entered the premises (where she soon shot Warhol) as someone already known for other reasons and without announcing her intent to shoot or kill, so that may qualify her act on the ground of means as well. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

"undeniably disturbed"

I discussed whether to add that Solanas was "undeniably disturbed" and decided that at least I wouldn't. See Talk:SCUM Manifesto#SPLC material. Nick Levinson (talk) 14:11, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with not adding this material. The SPLC source is (a) talking about something else and Solanas only tangentially, and (b) the "undeniably disturbed" line from that source is clearly a CYA statement of opinion on the part of the author and (c) whatever the SPLC is good for they're not psychologists and their opinion about Solanas doesn't seem important at all. — alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:13, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The New York Daily

The source that this was cited to says explicitly that it was The Daily News. I fixed this in the paragraph and rephrased the sentence slightly, so at least that glaring error is taken care of. Thanks to NL for pointing it out.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:14, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:57, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Statement and Further Discussion on Feiden Content

Dear Editors and other interested parties:

Hullaballoo Wolfowitz has returned to Wikipedia, he says, "...after a long absence. And after a longer period of silence." Then, on June 1st of this year, apparently one of his first tasks upon his return was the wholesale deletion of almost all of the contributions that included my name.

Mr. Wolfowitz, using offensive and vitriolic language, made repeated declarative assertions about my motives and sourcing for the contributions that include me. Analysis of what motivates me, or anyone contributing to Wikipedia, is clearly beyond Mr. Wolfowitz's purview and ken; therein Mr. Wolfowitz should be more interested in what motivates him. Mr. Wolfowitz's use of inappropriate language reflects not upon me but upon him, and adds further to the doubt that Mr. Wolfowitz is dealing in good faith.

If Mr. Wolfowitz were dealing in good faith, then, consistent with Wikipedia's policies, he could have addressed his concerns on the appropriate Talk page or on the Reliable Sources Notification page, giving me and others within the entire Wikipedia community the opportunity for discussion. Even if Mr. Wolfowitz genuinely believes that my account is not true, which is the most serious accusation that can be made, there exists in Wikipedia the expectation of certain courtesies by which Mr. Wolfowitz could have notified me, and allowed me and others to respond before deleting an important contribution to a historical document. Wikipedia is not Mr. Wolfowitz's personal gameboard.

As to the motivation of any contributor, is motivation a test that can or should be applied? Three tests clearly should be applied: That the added material is the truth, that the material is well written in an encyclopedic style, and that the contribution enhances the article. As long as a contribution passes those three tests, what actually motivates a contributor cannot matter and in a dispute would be impossible for any side to prove.

My contributions are based on the decades I have spent as a professional art dealer and author and, before that, the dozen or so years that I spent in the New York theater. Most of my contributions to Wikipedia consisted of short factual statements along with related art that was added to the articles about certain visual and performing artists. The longest contribution was made to the article about Valerie Solanas, which is the focus of this letter.

In the case of the Valerie Solanas article, text was added in October of 2012 that described what took place in my apartment on the morning of the shooting of Andy Warhol. This contribution survived in the main until Mr. Wolfowitz returned from his period of silence. Then, on June 1, 2013, Mr. Wolfowitz wiped out not only all of the Solanas text but almost all of the text throughout Wikipedia that referenced me or my gallery. Mr. Wolfowitz repeatedly leveled the charge that my motive for the contributions to Wikipedia was self-promotion, and that the contribution to the Solanas article lacked reliable sourcing. That second charge is really a surprise, as the primary references for the Valerie Solanas contribution are the New York Times [4] and Interview Magazine[5].

Mr. Wolfowitz’s case for dismissing the New York Times article is that, Mr. Wolfowitz says, it includes a “disclaimer.” What Mr. Wolfowitz is calling a disclaimer is not part of the article, as Mr. Wolfowitz would suggest, but was simply a pro forma reply written by an assistant editor to a comment made by one online reader. What Mr. Wolfowitz calls a disclaimer is simply a statement that, in effect, the New York Times wasn’t there.

Interview Magazine was founded by Andy Warhol. The published interview with me was written by Glenn O’Brien, who was then the Editorial Director for all of Brant Publications—which includes Interview Magazine, Art in America and Antiques. Glenn O’Brien has impeccable editorial credentials. In addition, he was a close friend of Andy Warhol’s at the time of the shooting. Mr. O’Brien spent time at The Factory and knew Valerie Solanas. It was therefore Mr. O’Brien whom I called when I decided to disclose that I was with Valerie Solanas for the entire morning on the day of the shooting. Mr. O’Brien found me credible enough on the telephone that he came to see me, and spent hours with me vetting my account with very incisive questioning. I was able to satisfy Mr. O’Brien completely with my account, with my documents, and with my descriptions of Solanas; how Valerie Solanas looked, what she was wearing, the words that she used and the way that she spoke them, and, very distinctly, how she smelled. The result of Mr. O’Brien’s vetting is the article he published, entitled, “History Rewrite.”

Another close associate of Warhol’s at the time of the shooting, Mr. Stuart Pivar, who co-founded with Warhol the New York Academy of Art, interviewed me for about an hour and a half at the National Arts Club on June 23, 2009. Mr. Pivar publicly expressed his complete confidence in my account of the time I spent with Solanas on the day that Andy Warhol was shot.

There’s more. My copy of the play that Valerie Solanas left with me has been studied by scholars, and all of them have authenticated the play as being Valerie Solanas’ manuscript, which includes Valerie Solanas’ own handwritten notes. There are other documents that Valerie Solanas gave me as she was leaving my house on the day of the shooting. These also contain her handwritten notes.

On June 4, 2013, two scholars came to see the material. They are Mary Jo Watts and Sara Warner. Both are of Ithaca College, New York, and both are experts in Valerie Solanas. Ms. Watts and Dr. Warner were in New York City for the Lambda Awards that were held on June 3, 2013; Dr. Warner’s new book, Acts of Gaiety (University of Michigan Press, 2012), was nominated for a Lammy. Dr. Warner told me that the first chapter in the book is devoted to Valerie Solanas.

Ms. Watts and Dr. Warner have done years of scholarly research on Valerie Solanas in connection with a separate book that they are writing about her life. In furtherance of their scholarship, Mary Heron, director of “I Shot Andy Warhol,” gave Ms. Watts and Dr. Warner the files that belonged to Assistant District Attorney Richard Lankler, who represented New York State in the case against Valerie Solanas. Ms. Watts was kind enough to send me a scan of a page from those files; on the top of that page, handwritten and dated “6/4/68”—the day after the shooting—is my name, address, and telephone number. I will be happy to post a copy of that page to Wikipedia, should such a request be made. (My name as it appears in Lankler’s notes is “Margo Eden,” a stage name that I used from 1961 to1969.)

How Mr. Lankler got my name is not known to me. It is very possible that Valerie Solanas herself gave it to the police when she reported the events of the day she shot Andy Warhol. It is also probable that one or more of the police precincts that I called to try to prevent the shooting passed my name along to the office of the District Attorney.

At least one reader of the aforementioned New York Times article commented that it wasn’t plausible that I had called the police but they did nothing. Although this reader is identified only by his or her screen name, I do know one thing: It is almost certain that this reader is not of my generation, but considerably younger. The New York City police department of 1968 was very different from the New York City police department of today. In 1968, stalking was not a crime, and the standard police response to reporting a threat was, “We can do nothing until a crime has been committed.” In 1968, if you tried to report a missing person—even a child—the standard police response was that they could do nothing until at least 48 hours had passed. I will repeat: it is hard to believe, and nothing like that could happen today, but in 1968 in New York City a missing child would not bring a police response for two full days! In addition, although I have only felt prejudice against my gender very few times in my life—in 1968 the first desk sergeant that I reached after Valerie Solanas left my house with a gun said to me, “Oh yeah, lady, how would you know what a real gun looked like, anyway?!”

I continued to call different police precincts—mine, Andy Warhol’s, police headquarters, the Mayor’s Office, the Governor’s Office, crying, pleading, and shouting that they needed to reach Warhol before Valerie Solanas did. In the background, I had turned my television on. There were no 24-hour news programs in those days, but I knew that if Warhol were shot, the regular programming would be interrupted with breaking news. And then it came, the news of the shooting. And from that moment, and for forty years, I have carried the burden of my failure.

As to why I came forward when I did—or, more to the point, why I did not come forward until I did— it is very simple. The incident involving Solanas pained me to the depths of my soul. I assiduously avoided reading or listening to anything that involved Andy Warhol or Valerie Solanas. Then, in 2008, in connection with the fortieth anniversary of the shooting, PBS’s American Masters re-aired its program about Warhol. I forced myself to watch. It was only then that I learned that Valerie Solanas’ attorneys had used as part of their defense the assertion that Warhol had stolen Valerie Solanas’ play. I knew that I had the play in my possession because Valerie Solanas had left it with me that day. I also knew that Valerie Solanas’ own words about why she was going to shoot Andy Warhol told a very different story from what was being proffered on American Masters. As Valerie Solanas was about to exit my apartment, her last words were a repetition of what she had been saying during the last 15-30 minutes of my almost-four hours with her. “If you won’t produce my play, I am going to shoot Andy Warhol. And then I will become famous and the play will become famous, and then you will produce it.”

I end this letter by going back to how I began it, about my motive for wanting the history to be corrected in Wikipedia. Again, my motive should not matter, but I will address it, anyway. My motive is that the truth be known. If my motive were self-promotion, my actions should be consistent with that. Then, why would I have waited for three and a half years after Interview Magazine’s publication to correct Wikipedia’s version of the shooting? Self-promotion? And to this day I have not made those same corrections in Wikipedia's “Warhol” article. Self-promotion?

Mr. Wolfowitz is correct that Robyn42 has been a single-purpose contributor, but consider this: if I were fostering a made-up story, picking Valerie Solanas and Andy Warhol as my subject would be a very odd choice. As the longtime gallerist and agent for Al Hirschfeld, I have sold drawings to many of the most famous performing artists in the world, spending time with them at my gallery, in their homes, and in their hotel suites when they visited New York. Yet I have not included one word of gossip about these legendary people on my website, in Wikipedia, or in an interview in any published source. If self-promotion were my motivation, I could do a lot better than to have my name tied to Valerie Solanas for all time.

Respectfully yours, Margo Feiden

Factor-ies (talk) 07:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Motivation is usually not tested for, but an exception is when a conflict of interest applies, as when an editor writes about themself in a Wikipedia article, which is why such an editor has to be especially limited in editing where the conflict applies, because it is assumed that they would rarely be neutral about themself, those who pay them to edit Wikipedia, or sources they authored or if they're sockpuppets (if any); and COI also risks lawsuits. It is a real and frequent problem addressed by policy. In this case, sources disagree on some important points, as has been discussed on this talk page (to which I would add whether the Solanas-Feiden meeting was around 3 hours long or nearly 4). While Wikipedia would like to use truthfulness as a test, it's not equipped to do so and relies instead on sourcing as a test, and that would be relevant to what play Solanas left where and how many copies existed at a minimum. The Times editor's comment is more important than the Feiden letter suggests (e.g., it's not pro forma as far as I know) but less dispositive than Hullaballoo Wolfowitz suggested. We could only acknwledge what checking Interview did from what Interview says about checking, but what's important there is that Interview is a source that checks in enough instances to be considered as reliable, not that it had to check in every instance (the Wikipedia article also has a statement about the shooting contributing to Warhol's death decades later, a statement that doesn't appear to have been medically checked by the source but is still reportable). If a source reporting or transcribing the National Arts Club event is available (not just announcing it as a then-future event), that could be helpful as an additional source; I think I tried to locate such a source but failed (private documents are not publicly verifiable so can't be used). As indicated elsewhere on this talk page, I favor reporting something about Feiden's participation, but also agree with another editor or two that there is a weight issue about going much beyond that. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC) (Corrected italicization: 16:59, 11 June 2013 (UTC))

Hello Ms. Feiden. Sorry to hear that you have run into a conflict with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz. Although I'm sure this has been a frustrating turn of events, we would be happy to work with you to help improve these articles within the bounds of what Wikipedia policies allow. As Nick mentioned above, the standard for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Unfortunately, in this case there are verifiable sources that report conflicting versions of the events. Per our policies, we must report both versions of the story weighted according to their prominence in reliable sources. I realize this is a very conservative approach. Indeed, it may take several decades for your version of the story to become the "accepted version". However, it is not Wikipedia's place to advance that transition. Wikipedia can only reflect the consensus of other sources. In the meantime, any published sources that you can provide will help us to accurately assess the weight of your version. Clearly The New York Times and Interview magazine are reliable sources that carry some weight. If you know of any other published sources in support of your version of events, please let us know. Also, if you could publish your scan of Lankler’s notes somewhere on the internet, that may be useful as a primary source. Hopefully we can work together to figure out a compromise that will improve the article without violating any of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Kaldari (talk) 20:45, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Protection

I was just reading he edit history, and major details are constantly being added and removed, I feel to further a political agenda on both sides, I think it would be best to protect the article, and add in as many details as we can find citations for, so the readers will be the most informed they can be. I don't know how to officially request it be protected, and I'm sure there will be a debate here about it, so leave your opinions. Bumblebritches57 (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

The shooting

This is probably the most poorly written section I've read in any otherwise legitimate article. It should begin with the generally accepted narrative of the subject of the heading - the shooting. It doesn't. With the narrative established, we can then go into alternative theories conflicting testimonies, and so on. I'm sure all the information we want is in the section now, it's just very poorly arranged - like walking in a room following an accident and everyone is talking all at once. I'll be happy to take a stab at it if there's consensus the section could be improved in the manner I described. Though I'd be just as happy if someone else did the work. By way of background, I never heard of Valerie or the shooting until just a few minutes ago and came here to read up on the details. Obviously, I found myself quite disappointed. This section simply isn't up to Wikipedia's usual standards (I haven't read the other sections). Rklawton (talk) 21:04, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

It's largely chronological, so that a criticism of or disagreement with a view is presented with that view, which is where Wikipedia prefers it. Another arangement is possible but would have to be done carefully to be accurate. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:16, 7 February 2015 (UTC)