sotos

[NEHPF]

Was looking on Discogs and found this release -http://www.discogs.com/unitauf-Predicate-The-Peter-Sotos-Reader/release/1444122

Does anyone know anything about this? Just curious if it's something similar to Martin Bladh - Dirge - The Peter Sotos Files.

Not at all, it doesn't have anything to do with Sotos. Just random digital sounding blasts of noise, pretty bad.

[HongKongGoolagong]

I received an unexpected and welcome bonus of Tool from Nine Banded Books too. In a neater literary oeuvre, Tool and Special would have remained unpublished 'trunk novels' and his first publication and first real writing would be Index. But of course nothing about Peter Sotos is neat and tidy and his entire work is based on the idiotic decision to write and publish Pure magazine and its consequences.

Chip Smith makes a decent case for the book being a unique and painful birth of a writer in his introduction and brings home the misery of the circumstances under which it was written during the late 1980s. As readers of the uncompromisingly highbrow Hoover Hog might expect, he's not one for using simple words, tending instead towards the polysyllabic as he tries to illustrate how 'dark nostalgia' works and points out the holes in the arguments of Sotos' apologists. The author's afterword or 'key' to the book "Mine/Kept" is in fact the same thoughtful and psychologically intense text presented at the Centre Pompidou last year as seen in the video linked above. The shift into real Peter Sotos writing is very sudden and obvious coming after the poorly executed final chapter of Tool.

As for the book itself, like Special it has its moments of great writing - often the more overtly comedic lines seem to work best. But the moments that fall flat can be painfully weak and cringeworthy. The 'evil narrators' with their "my dear woman" schtick remind me of nothing so much as Thomas Harris' hammy Hannibal Lecter character. A nice item to have and published at a bargain price. But anyone new to his work should start later.

[Jordan]

"Chip" seems to be very generous with bonus items, although I did order quite a bit of stuff from him. Seems like a genuinely nice fellow and responds to emails very promptly.

Putting off reading Tool for now, as I've already read most of it.

[vomitgore]

Does anyone know of any european mailorders who are currently stocking Tool and Mine or getting them in some time? Some Noise/PE distro(s) maybe?

---
EDIT: Chip just told me, that no copies were shipped to the EU. He stated, that he would be interested in getting some of these to Europe. Maybe interesting to know for some distro owners, who are registered here...

[simulacrum]

Yeah, Chip seems like a very nice guy. I swear I pre-ordered Mine through Amazon, so I was asking him when it was supposed to be shipped and we had a small back-and-forth about that. So I checked my Amazon account and saw I somehow pre-ordered Tool instead, and I had already pre-ordered Tool through 9BB so I asked if he could just replace Tool with Mine and he said, since I was one/20 to pre-order first, I was meant to receive an autographed copy and he said he'd throw Mine in for free.
I ordered Thirteen Girls as well, but I'll go back and order another book sometime later as a nice gesture since he's such a little sweetheart.

[HongKongGoolagong]

Very nearly finished reading MINE. It's a slight shift in style for him with much more sadness and exhaustion than violence and contorted language. Many passages are quite shockingly straightforward and autobiographical: one that really sticks out is about how he had to stop drinking as much for medical reasons and found himself home alone listening to audience tape bootlegs of the Stones at Altamont, which leads to a description of his memories of teenage life in the 1970s. The whole book is in dialogue form, with the 'found voices' and prompts taken from the long list of crime reporting etc on the cover. His censorship class thing mentioned in this thread gets used, and there are also some passages from Bodyguard and Crows I spotted, but it's almost all original and new material, and a long book too.

Very little sexual content although some typically unappealing homosexual encounters have started to creep in like entropy towards the end with greater frequency. The mournful and elegiac qualities seem to be related to the failure of a relationship with a female lover whom I think he also wrote about in Selfish, Little (which this book resembles more than any of his others to me) and there's a lot here about getting old too. His disgust for child abuse is made more clear than previously, as is disgust at any kind of sex and at the whole human condition. It's depressing as hell! Makes Show Adult seem upbeat.

[Jordan]

Very nearly finished reading MINE. It's a slight shift in style for him with much more sadness and exhaustion than violence and contorted language. Many passages are quite shockingly straightforward and autobiographical: one that really sticks out is about how he had to stop drinking as much for medical reasons and found himself home alone listening to audience tape bootlegs of the Stones at Altamont, which leads to a description of his memories of teenage life in the 1970s. The whole book is in dialogue form, with the 'found voices' and prompts taken from the long list of crime reporting etc on the cover. His censorship class thing mentioned in this thread gets used, and there are also some passages from Bodyguard and Crows I spotted, but it's almost all original and new material, and a long book too.

Yeah, that section about quitting speed in his sophomore year of high school, and having to stop drinking, but taking percocet and drifting in and out while listening to live recordings kind of confused me, despite being written in a fairly straight forward fashion. He was still drinking as of recently, right? Also, he seems to be still pretty upset about his weight, even though he seems to have lost a fair bit, or at least it seems that way to me. Maybe it's just the beard.

EDIT: On rereading that passage, it occurred to me that his saying "My insobriety isn't a problem for me." implies that he hasn't stopped drinking. The next line is "My gut is." I first read it as "My sobriety isn't a problem for me" which also could have implied being a non-teetotalitarian. My insobriety is sometimes a problem for me when reading/thinking.

[Jordan]

I don't remember "Show Adult" being downbeat or depressing. I do remember thinking "Tick" (I think) sounded like he was going through a mid-life crisis. Not sure I want to spend the dough on "Mine" now- I have no interest in anyone's health issues...

HA! It's a very small fraction of the total work.

[deakin]

adam parfrey on mark merons podcast, at 59 min they talk about sotos
http://www.avclub.com/articles/episode-372-adam-parfrey,95364/

[online prowler]

Does anyone know of any european mailorders who are currently stocking Tool and Mine or getting them in some time? Some Noise/PE distro(s) maybe?

---
EDIT: Chip just told me, that no copies were shipped to the EU. He stated, that he would be interested in getting some of these to Europe. Maybe interesting to know for some distro owners, who are registered here...

Hei, just got a package from Nine-Banded Books and Chip today. Items: "Tool." - "Mine" - "Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Ann Downey". Check thread: Where frost reign label & press in new releases ann or store/distro site: http://wherefrostreignhangar.tumblr.com/ On orders exceeding a certain amount I give discount.

For those of you in the Baltimore (USA) area I understand Chip is organizing an event with Sotos for next month:

"AN EVENING WITH PETER SOTOS

Saturday, April 13.
7:00PM. Atomic Books.
Hampden, Baltimore.

To celebrate nearlyly simultaneous re-release of Peter Sotos' TOOL  and MINE (Nine-Banded Books editions), the controversial author will be appearing at Atomic Books to discuss the evolution of his thought and writing, and to sign books.

"Peter Sotos is one of those rare writers who can say, 'The words I write are me,' or at least as close as anyone can come to communicating who they are in words." –Thomas Ligotti, author of The Conspiracy against the Human Race

"For this latter-day homo sacer, wounds are not to be healed but poked and worried until they bleed. Sotos is literature's outcast, carrying stigma like a rat carries plague." –Mikita Brottman, author of Thirteen Girls

"...among the most important writing being done today."
–Dennis Cooper, author of The Marbled Swarm

Adult beverages will be served."

Event site Atomic Books: http://www.atomicbooks.com/calendar.html


Here is the announement/event of the last aktion in Chicago, March 23rd: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/peter-sotos/Event?oid=9033745

[HongKongGoolagong]

So much of Mine does seem to relate to health problems: mental and sexual health problems to be specific.

There is a long and very effective section towards the end in which wordy expressions of autobiographical existential angst are juxtaposed against simple and harrowing excerpts from the book 'Abducted'. Sotos subverting the image of himself as 'suffering artist' by pointing to ordinary people who experienced horrific events most of us cannot imagine - a new and extreme slant on self-loathing - like an anorexic poring over photos of African malnutrition rather than thinspiration. The system of the book's construction is something I will return to to try and figure out more. The source list on the covers is invaluable, and features some obscure crime cases I hadn't come across. There's also a dedication for the fist time since There, Rat and Au Fait LV - POOR DEAR, DOLL.   

[Jordan]

Didn't catch that POOR DEAR, DOLL thing on the back, and I was looking for a dedication too.

There is enough material about health and getting old, but there's a whole lot more to it than that.

*about two-thirds into my second go at Mine, and I see the Selfish, Little comparison now.

Having finished reading it twice, I think this may perhaps be my favourite Sotos book. I wasn't blown away the first time around, but now I think I'm convinced. The middle section with the -- "How long did you remain away from the arcade?" "Did you return to the restroom area?" "What did you think, your state of mind?" "When you said you feared the worst, what were you fearing?" "So you had some concern?" -- part is permanently burned into my brain, it's an engram.

[RyanWreck]

Not at all, it doesn't have anything to do with Sotos. Just random digital sounding blasts of noise, pretty bad.

Ok, thanks for letting me know.

This album does "have something to do" with Sotos, I don't know what NEHPF was listening to but it most certainly was not this. The majority of the recording is in the style of "Buyers Market" with its cut-up sample collages through-out. I believe they were pieces Sotos was going to use but ended up scrapping or that he made specifically for Martin, but in any case they are Sotos sound collages. There is some decent Noise over top and between the samples and loops, not on the same level as IRM but not just "random blasts". Here is one of the tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxBz0G1R44

...the rest pretty much fall in line with that.

[NEHPF]

Not at all, it doesn't have anything to do with Sotos. Just random digital sounding blasts of noise, pretty bad.

Ok, thanks for letting me know.

This album does "have something to do" with Sotos, I don't know what NEHPF was listening to but it most certainly was not this. The majority of the recording is in the style of "Buyers Market" with its cut-up sample collages through-out. I believe they were pieces Sotos was going to use but ended up scrapping or that he made specifically for Martin, but in any case they are Sotos sound collages. There is some decent Noise over top and between the samples and loops, not on the same level as IRM but not just "random blasts". Here is one of the tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxBz0G1R44

...the rest pretty much fall in line with that.

Dirge is a good record, but that was not the record in question.

[RyanWreck]

Ah, I see now. Sorry.