sotos

[Peterson]

Pure, Tool & Parasite are incredibly cringey, and at times, downright awful. Nonetheless, an important collection that does have some merit, albeit not much re-visitation value other then for general reference: years, dates, names, etc.

I disagree. His entire work is important as far as development and chronology is concerned. I revisit Tool often as there is some amazing craft skill and clever humanity in those stories despite their reputation as invariably brutal with little intention otherwise - the section on Danny Bridges/Larry Eyler is one of his finest moments, flat out ("He said he seemed ('no offense') like his clients"). He wouldn't do something so specific today. He already had his start by Parasite, a lot of which ended up in Special, which gets knocked a lot but is also revealingly observant - "oh, so you didn't pay for no conversation, huh?" Pure is of course embarrassing to him more than any reader but we wouldn't have any of this had it not been published. Anecdotal cross-reference value alone warrants heavy revisitation, that's one of the things that typifies his writing.

[xerographia]

The merit I find in it lays specifically in that very notion- of seeing just how far he has come. I just don't see myself revisiting it on that note alone. But I hear what you are saying.

I was happy to see that the formatting was different in Total Abuse than the original layout of Pure as well as Parasite. I know Peter wasn't a fan of Jim's decision to lay it out in an almost newspaper style format, as well as James' decision to lay Proxy out in a similar manner, but holy hell is it easier on my eyes.

How did you feel about the last chapter of Tool? I thought that might be the best part of the book.

"What kind of man would do such a bestial thing? It's impossible to feel pity or sympathy toward such a person, isn't it? I think it's because they live another kind of existence-one where people don't matter and feelings don't belong."

[endors_toi]

I think such quotes are Sotos in a nutshell, in the best possible way. It's truly what differentiates him from any other writer of our generation; it's not the subject matter but the tone and attitude.
He sums up in one sentence what I always feel like when I see thousands of violent comments on news articles about a horrifying attack on a child, for example.

As I said before, I find his references to camgirls in Ingratitude  especially interesting (being a former one myself).
What's with camgirls being our modern day prostitutes (WELL... of some sorts), it would be interesting if he'd one day devote an entire book just for description of/and musings about it.

Sometimes I encounter certain porn vids or cam rooms, in particular, which make me so damn curious to imagine what Sotos would make of.
Yesterday night on Chaturbate the most popular room was this one petite Russian girl with two beautiful (in a Jean Genet characters kind of way, if that makes sense) Russian men. The room was fluorescent-lit with ugly, minimal furniture and they all looked out of their mind high, but mostly extremely bored. Nobody really managed to get hard, and still 35,000 people were in the room, watching. I wish so bad I could understand Russian just to understand what they were mumbling within themselves over there. I don't know, it was fascinating to me. It always is.

Sorry for the rambling.

[HongKongGoolagong]

Ingratitude is a colder and more guarded and defensive text than Mine or Desistance. Fewer glimpses of private fallibility like the stomach troubles and booze-free dry spell and quality time spent with Altamont festival tapes (Mine, a still astonishing passage). Or the affair with the wife while thinking of the husband (highly mischievous section of Desistance). Camgirls confessions didn't open up that much. I could hate him for comparing or proxying himself as a victim of pornography wars to actual child abuse cases like the ones quoted at length, then you think, well, he's giving them their voice. In a truly perverse kind of way.

Very much the Predicate as opposed to the surrounding Selfish Little and Comfort & Critique for this decade. For me the one-off Show Adult stands as his very best work. But then, Neil Young Year of the Horse, opening heckle: "It all sounds the same"/"It's all one song". The new book is the same song as ever, and no one else at all is doing this stuff, and I raced through reading it with great enjoyment.

Endpapers with long-withheld materials highly related to early Pure writings (Eyler, Bridges, Gecht) and the similar shape and size to Total Abuse made me think of it as a last book. My first is in my last. Just delighted he is still writing and being published.

[RyanWreck]

I agree on Show Adult, its my favorite too.

Seems like some of you guys didn't like MINE or at least wouldnt rate it as highly as most of his other work? MINE was one of my favorites of Sotos, probably my second favorite book overall, took about 3 passes but they were worth it, so i dont know what to make of some of these opinions on Ingratitude.

[boorman]

I agree on Show Adult, its my favorite too.

Seems like some of you guys didn't like MINE or at least wouldnt rate it as highly as most of his other work? MINE was one of my favorites of Sotos, probably my second favorite book overall, took about 3 passes but they were worth it, so i dont know what to make of some of these opinions on Ingratitude.

I think MINE is one of his most interesting books. I rate Show Adult very highly too.

[absurdexposition]

Mine was a trudge to get through for me. I read it coming off of Selfish, Little which I thought was amazing.

[KillToForget]

I loved Mine, and definitely liked reading it more than Ingratitude. Lazy has easily been my favorite of his, with Selfish, Little or Predicate coming close

[PuddysJacket]

Just picked up Total Abuse for the lowest price I have ever seen it. Read most of this shit before, but you know. It was cheap. Pure, Tool & Parasite are incredibly cringey, and at times, downright awful. Nonetheless, an important collection that does have some merit, albeit not much re-visitation value other then for general reference: years, dates, names, etc.

On the other hand, Selfish, Little is the single most important piece he has wrote that I have read. This fucking thing will most likely go down as his magnum opus after all is said and done, I hope. Signed, first edition hardcover. If you need a copy of the softcover, I have that as well, please message me as I would love to trade it for a copy of Mine or something I have not read yet.

Been waiting to find a reasonably priced copy forever...Paypal ready if you feel like sliding into my PMs son

[simulacrum]

Mine was a trudge to get through for me. I read it coming off of Selfish, Little which I thought was amazing.

Mine was a slog for me as well, although for that reason it's what I'd most like to re-read so I can see whether or not I can enjoy it some more the second time around, although it'll have to wait til after I actually bother cracking Ingratitude open.

[cantle]

Only got the files too- saved them some years back.... a lot of internet history got wiped when yahoo did that.

I remember seeing those types of photos on the old newsgroups- but that was some 20 years ago....

[cantle]

Thanks for that- very useful.

[Yrjö-Koskinen]

"Recent posts from # petersotos are currently hidden because the community has reported some content that may not meet Instagram's community guidelines."

As someone who has zero interest and quite a lot of distaste for Sotos' works (as an author, not as a "musician"), I feel like this might be a good place to retain some credibility while asking this question: how long can this "community guidelines" bullshit go on? Granted, pornography and entertainment doesn't necessarily have that much to do with "free speech" per se, but convention, recent history and various court rulings have determined that they actually do, so how is this even happening? More importantly, why isn't some form of "neutral" free speech platform arising?

Are the mainstream alternative scenes all now so obscenely useless and non-offensive that they can't even grasp the theoretical value of free speech? It is extremely strange to me that every single initiative in these matters is always "far right" in nature - or at least only attracts that kind of people - and consequently turns to shit (sorry to say so, but if anyone is offended I believe James Mason shared the assessment in Siege, so relax). Is everyone except "literal nazis" fine with billionaires determining exactly what can and cannot be said/done/discussed online? Considering the ever widening, ever more arbitrary and ever more conflicting nature of "community guidelines" style private censorship, one would think this is an issue which should be worry people enough to provoke a reaction. Preferably one with some kind of insane, government Dorrnie-Trumpers-Commie-Fascist legislation/firing squad, but more realistically simply one with the boring free market doing its boring free thing and establishing a few functioning alternatives to the social media giants (as well as PayPal and such). It would really be quite easy; a nice interface, ban any form of personal attacks on individuals, implement absolute political free speech and add an on/off switch for "adult" stuff like verbal obscenity and PRESTO - the village square is restored.

[Andrew McIntosh]

It would really be quite easy; a nice interface, ban any form of personal attacks on individuals, implement absolute political free speech and add an on/off switch for "adult" stuff like verbal obscenity and PRESTO - the village square is restored.

I think places like this forum fit that bill, at least for discourse. It's still just a matter of sniffing around. It isn't easy to find forums one can be oneself on, but then it never was.

[Yrjö-Koskinen]

I think places like this forum fit that bill, at least for discourse. It's still just a matter of sniffing around. It isn't easy to find forums one can be oneself on, but then it never was.

Definitely, but this is a freak occurrence owing to the fact that this odd music style of ours is one of very few "open" forms of art, while remaining on the outskirts of even outskirt discourse. This has created a situation in which any ideological orientation becomes at least temporarily subordinate to the sound at hand. It forces a certain type of esprit de corps. I believe it was Voltaire who said: "I may  hate your political views, in fact I think you should be fucking strangled for even entertaining them if you ever were to contribute to their implementation, but we do have the same retarded taste for audio recordings of someone violating gasoline containers, so I'll at least read your bullshit." A subaltern version of George Soros and the Koch brothers hanging out on the same cocktail party, if you will.

Once again: I think it would be both financially viable and "socially responsible" to create a major social media site based on the principles I delineated in my last post. Not that it will happen anyway, and it may well be that the entire notion of "global communication" online is inherently flawed and absolutely awful.  At least as long as it is based on anything else than simplifying contact within ultra-specific, "special interest" communities.

(as a post-script, the Soros/Koch cocktail party I made up appear to have existed and been a surprisingly decent affair, after all: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/06/30/soros-and-koch-brothers-team-end-forever-war-policy/WhyENwjhG0vfo9Um6Zl0JO/story.html)