First published as Drömfakulteten – tillägg till sexualteorin
by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, in 2006
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
MacLehose Press
An imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 2006 Sara Stridsberg
English translation copyright © 2019 by Deborah Bragan-Turner
The moral right of Sara Stridsberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Deborah Bragan-Turner asserts her moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.
Translation sponsored by
Claudia Rankine, excerpt from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, pp. 21–23. Copyright © 2004 by Claudia Rankine. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EBOOK ISBN 978 0 85705 473 9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Also by Sara Stridsberg in English translation
The Gravity of Love (2016)
The Faculty of Dreams is not a biography, it is a literary fantasy derived from the life and work of Valerie Solanas, American, now deceased. Few facts are known about Valerie Solanas and even to those this novel is not faithful. All characters in the novel should therefore be regarded as fictional, including Valerie Solanas herself.
*
This also applies to the map of America, there being no deserts in Georgia.
Hope was never a thing with feathers.
CLAUDIA RANKINE
A hotel room in the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s red-light district. It is April 1988 and Valerie Solanas is lying on a filthy mattress and urine-soaked sheets, dying of pneumonia. Outside the window, pink neon lights flash and porn music plays day and night.
*
On April 30 her body is found by hotel staff. The police report states that she is found kneeling by the side of the bed. (Has she tried to get up? Has she been crying?) It states that the room is in perfect order, papers neatly piled on the desk, clothes folded on a wooden chair by the window. The police report also states that her body is covered with maggots and her death probably occurred around April 25.
*
Some weeks earlier, the report goes on to say, someone on the hotel staff had seen her sitting by the window, writing. I imagine piles of paper on the desk, her silver coat on a hanger by the window, and the smell of salt from the Pacific. I imagine Valerie in bed with a fever, attempting to smoke and make notes. I picture drafts and manuscripts all over the room . . . sun, perhaps . . . white clouds . . . the desert’s solitude . . .
*
I imagine myself there with Valerie.
Bambiland
NARRATOR: What sort of material do we have?
VALERIE: Snow and black despair.
NARRATOR: Where?
VALERIE: The crap hotel. Last stop for dying whores and junkies. The last epic humiliation.
NARRATOR: Who’s in despair?
VALERIE: I am. Valerie. I always wore rose-pink lipstick.
NARRATOR: Rose-pink?
VALERIE: Rosa Luxemburg. The Pink Panther. Her favorite roses were pink. Someone bikes away and burns down a rose garden.
NARRATOR: Anything else?
VALERIE: People lying dead in the wilderness and I don’t know who’s going to bury all those people.
NARRATOR: The President, maybe?
VALERIE: Death is seldom in the same place as the President. All activity has ceased in the White House.
NARRATOR: Where will you go now?
VALERIE: Nowhere. Just sleep, I suppose.
NARRATOR: What are you thinking about?
VALERIE: The girls from the underworld. Dorothy. Cosmogirl. Silk Boy.
NARRATOR: Anything else?
VALERIE: Prostitute stuff. Shark stuff. Me reeling at the prospect of all this eternity.
New York Magazine, April 25, 1991
The day Dorothy is interviewed by New York magazine over a bad telephone line the sky above Ventor is the same pink as a sleeping tablet or old vomit. No-one ever comes to fix the lines in Ventor anymore; desert birds have eaten the withered black wires, distorting conversations and laughing at Dorothy and the way she persists in her role as the victim of unfortunate circumstances. Her words flutter like wrapping paper in the wind.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Dorothy Moran?
DOROTHY: Yes.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: We’d like to talk to you about Valerie.
DOROTHY: Yes.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It’s three years today since she died.
DOROTHY: I know.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Tell us about Valerie.
DOROTHY: Valerie . . .?
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Your daughter. Valerie Solanas.
DOROTHY: Thank you, I know who Valerie is.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Tell us something . . .
DOROTHY: Valerie . . .
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Why did she shoot Andy Warhol? Was she a prostitute all her life? Did she always hate men? Do you hate men? Are you a prostitute? Tell us how she died. Tell us about her childhood.
DOROTHY: I don’t know . . . We lived here in Ventor. I don’t know . . . the desert. I don’t know . . . I burned all her things after she died . . . papers, notebooks . . .
(Silence.)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Anything else?
(Silence.)
DOROTHY: Valerie . . . used to write . . . fancied herself as a writer . . . I think she had t-t-talent . . . she had talent . . . She had a fantastic sense of humor . . . (laughs). Everybody loved her . . . (laughs again). I loved her . . . She died in 1988 . . . April 25 . . . She was happy, I think . . . That’s all I have to say about Valerie . . . She was dedicated, reaching for the sky, the way I see it . . . I guess that’s how it was . . .
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Was she mentally ill? People say she was in and out of mental hospitals throughout the ’70s.
DOROTHY: Valerie was not mentally ill. She even lived with a man for a few years. In Florida. On the beach. Alligator Reef. In the ’50s.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: There is evidence she was in Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital. We know she was in Bellevue. We have reports she spent time in South Florida State Hospital.
DOROTHY: That’s not right. Valerie was never mentally ill. Valerie was a genius. She was an angry little girl. My angry little girl. Never mentally ill. She had some strange experiences with strange men in strange cars. And once she pissed in a nasty boy’s juice. She was a writer. You can write that down . . . I’m hanging up now . . .
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It’s alleged that she was subjected to sexual assault by her father. Did you know about that?