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Peter Sotos, the writer who "rapes a blank page", whose pen is "the verbal knife of a sadist", unleashes Tick, his latest controversial dispatch from the cutting edge of pornography, sexual abuse and degradation.Drawing from his own experiences, insights and investigations, Sotos slices open the dark underbelly of the sex industry and reveals the harsh, gritty and brutal extremes that lurk within. From prostitution, pornography and drug abuse to the most notorious sex crimes, Sotos' obsession with the darker side of humanity is relentless and uncompromising.
Intersected throughout with documentary extracts reporting on and responding to sex crimes and related subjects, Tick not only presents an unsanitised account of pornographic excess and extreme sex, but through its frank delivery, it questions society's own, often hypocritical, fascination with these taboo subjects.
Intersected throughout with documentary extracts reporting on and responding to sex crimes and related subjects, Tick not only presents an unsanitised account of pornographic excess and extreme sex, but through its frank delivery, it questions society's own, often hypocritical, fascination with these taboo subjects.
293 pages, Paperback
First published September 22, 2000
7 people are currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Peter Sotos
36 books226 followersPeter Sotos (born April 17, 1960) is a Chicago-born writer who has contributed an unprecedented examination of the peculiar motivations of sadistic sexual criminals. His works are often cited as conveying an uncanny understanding of myriad aspects of pornography. Most of his writings have focused on sexually violent pornography, particularly of that involving children. His writings are also considered by many to be social criticism often commenting on the hypocritical way media handles these issues.
In 1984, while attending The Art Institute of Chicago, Sotos began producing a self-published newsletter or "fanzine" named Pure, notable as the first zine dedicated to serial killer lore. Much of the text and pictures in Pure were photocopied images from major newspapers and other print media. Sotos also used a photocopy from a magazine of child pornography as the cover of issue#2 of Pure. In 1986 this cover led to his arrest and charges of obscenity and possession of child pornography. The charges of obscenity were dropped, but Sotos eventually pled guilty to the possession charge and received a suspended sentence. Sotos was the first person in the United States ever to be charged for owning child pornography.
Sotos' writings explore sadistic and pedophilic sexual impulses in their many, often hidden, guises. Often using first person narratives, his prose takes on the point of view of the sexual predator. Despite his early legal troubles, and the seemingly fatal stigma of falsely being labeled a pedophile, Sotos continues to garner support for his ideas and literary output.
He was until 2003 a seminal member of the industrial noise band Whitehouse.
In 1984, while attending The Art Institute of Chicago, Sotos began producing a self-published newsletter or "fanzine" named Pure, notable as the first zine dedicated to serial killer lore. Much of the text and pictures in Pure were photocopied images from major newspapers and other print media. Sotos also used a photocopy from a magazine of child pornography as the cover of issue#2 of Pure. In 1986 this cover led to his arrest and charges of obscenity and possession of child pornography. The charges of obscenity were dropped, but Sotos eventually pled guilty to the possession charge and received a suspended sentence. Sotos was the first person in the United States ever to be charged for owning child pornography.
Sotos' writings explore sadistic and pedophilic sexual impulses in their many, often hidden, guises. Often using first person narratives, his prose takes on the point of view of the sexual predator. Despite his early legal troubles, and the seemingly fatal stigma of falsely being labeled a pedophile, Sotos continues to garner support for his ideas and literary output.
He was until 2003 a seminal member of the industrial noise band Whitehouse.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
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December 30, 2007I can't even choose a star rating for this book. It's too disturbing to really recommend to anyone. I maintained a love/hate relationship with it the whole time I was reading it. When you stop feeling disgust while reading it you begin to realize what a short trip it is to become a complete sociopath. That in itself is a pretty nifty trick.
January 19, 2008
Peter Sotos, Tick (Creation, 2000)
All hail the new Sotos.
Chicago's demented master of journalistic debauchery has returned with another look at what makes America's criminals so notoriously American, that underbelly of anticulture, epidemia, slime, drugs, free love, and contempt that few Americans are even aware exists, and those few know it because either they're involved or the name "Cabrini Green" rings a bell because they saw it in a Clive Barker film.
Some would have you believe that Sotos' work is pornography, a view that Creation seems to subscribe to; at least, "Peter Sotos Pornography" is emblazoned upon the back of both the last two Sotos works. It's certainly good for shock value. But is it really the case?
In the popular definition of the term, perhaps. Sotos reports on, and revels in, the prurient. He shows us what most of us would rather not see. In the two hundred twenty-two pages of Tick, we are handed the case of Girl X, which made a very brief splash in the newspapers and brought the name Cabrini Green back to the frontal lobes. We're given JonBenet Ramsey's autopsy report, as gruesomely amusing as it was. We're told the side of the Matthew Shepard killing that most news reporters refused to report-- that Shepard's killing was "most likely" drug-related and had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. It's tabloid journalism without the pictures and the necessity for self-censorship that one is required to follow if one wants to have one's work published in the Weekly World News.
But the court's definition of pornography is more stringent. Prurience is not the only requirement; the work must also serve no social purpose. This is the great paradox of obscenity law. It can be argued, and strongly, that any depiction of society's dank underbelly serves a social purpose, be that purpose reform or simply exposure. Whether we want to see the spectacle isn't the issue, and of course we're all aware that Americans, as a culture, will cause traffic jams by slowing down to look at particularly gruesome auto accidents. Couldn't you argue, in light of the cases of Girl X and JonBenet Ramsey, or the handful of other missing-child cases Sotos mentions, that keeping these things in the forefronts of the minds of parents is a public service? A social necessity, even?
Sure. And you'd be right.
Couldn't you argue, in light of Americans' appalling ignorance about HIV and AIDS, that a detailed understanding of its transmission is essential not only to every man who puts himself at risk, but every woman married to such a man?
Sure. And you'd be right.
If you wanted to strike out into the grey areas of the law, you could make the case that well-written personal experience is more likely to stick in the head than dry textbook relation. Who gets more listeners around the fire, the Ben Stein wannabe or the jolly old chap who makes up voices for each charater and punctuates with hand gestures?
Make no mistake, Sotos is a gifted writer. When he lapses into the rhythm and dictions of a third-grader, made-up words and all, he does so for a purpose. When he wants to be, which is most of the time, Sotos is precise, collected. Not detached-- after a certain amount of immersion, it is impossible to be detached-- but this is a man who never loses his head, a voracious reader who drops literary allusions with the frequency and obscurity of an Ezra Pound. Just because the parallels he's drawing have to do with dead teenagers as opposed to a world war doesn't make them less valid.
Peter Sotos may be tasteless. Peter Sotos may be prurient. But he is also effective. And he is necessary. ****
All hail the new Sotos.
Chicago's demented master of journalistic debauchery has returned with another look at what makes America's criminals so notoriously American, that underbelly of anticulture, epidemia, slime, drugs, free love, and contempt that few Americans are even aware exists, and those few know it because either they're involved or the name "Cabrini Green" rings a bell because they saw it in a Clive Barker film.
Some would have you believe that Sotos' work is pornography, a view that Creation seems to subscribe to; at least, "Peter Sotos Pornography" is emblazoned upon the back of both the last two Sotos works. It's certainly good for shock value. But is it really the case?
In the popular definition of the term, perhaps. Sotos reports on, and revels in, the prurient. He shows us what most of us would rather not see. In the two hundred twenty-two pages of Tick, we are handed the case of Girl X, which made a very brief splash in the newspapers and brought the name Cabrini Green back to the frontal lobes. We're given JonBenet Ramsey's autopsy report, as gruesomely amusing as it was. We're told the side of the Matthew Shepard killing that most news reporters refused to report-- that Shepard's killing was "most likely" drug-related and had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. It's tabloid journalism without the pictures and the necessity for self-censorship that one is required to follow if one wants to have one's work published in the Weekly World News.
But the court's definition of pornography is more stringent. Prurience is not the only requirement; the work must also serve no social purpose. This is the great paradox of obscenity law. It can be argued, and strongly, that any depiction of society's dank underbelly serves a social purpose, be that purpose reform or simply exposure. Whether we want to see the spectacle isn't the issue, and of course we're all aware that Americans, as a culture, will cause traffic jams by slowing down to look at particularly gruesome auto accidents. Couldn't you argue, in light of the cases of Girl X and JonBenet Ramsey, or the handful of other missing-child cases Sotos mentions, that keeping these things in the forefronts of the minds of parents is a public service? A social necessity, even?
Sure. And you'd be right.
Couldn't you argue, in light of Americans' appalling ignorance about HIV and AIDS, that a detailed understanding of its transmission is essential not only to every man who puts himself at risk, but every woman married to such a man?
Sure. And you'd be right.
If you wanted to strike out into the grey areas of the law, you could make the case that well-written personal experience is more likely to stick in the head than dry textbook relation. Who gets more listeners around the fire, the Ben Stein wannabe or the jolly old chap who makes up voices for each charater and punctuates with hand gestures?
Make no mistake, Sotos is a gifted writer. When he lapses into the rhythm and dictions of a third-grader, made-up words and all, he does so for a purpose. When he wants to be, which is most of the time, Sotos is precise, collected. Not detached-- after a certain amount of immersion, it is impossible to be detached-- but this is a man who never loses his head, a voracious reader who drops literary allusions with the frequency and obscurity of an Ezra Pound. Just because the parallels he's drawing have to do with dead teenagers as opposed to a world war doesn't make them less valid.
Peter Sotos may be tasteless. Peter Sotos may be prurient. But he is also effective. And he is necessary. ****
August 4, 2011
Why would he? How could he? Won't someone please think of the children?!
But Sotos is thinking of the children, he's thinking of dead and violated children and he's here to offer in a carefully structured, mostly first-person narrative, what it takes the sink so low that your only pleasures in life revolve around sex with the most lowly gutter-filth hookers, HIV-riddled glory-hole gays and poor little children.
What's the point? Well the point is that you're going to enjoy it. You're going to enjoy it for the same reason that you enjoy Most Evil, crimelibrary.com and the gawping, breathless prose of the tabloids. The only difference is that Sotos is never coy, never subtle and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. His words are like hammer-blows, referring back to the same cases over and over again while using the same ugly terminology over and again. This isn't a lack of vocabulary, this is pummeling you into a daze and letting you know that what's around the corner is...*drum roll*...more of the same.
He's also unblinking in his treatment of journalists, television presenters, victims and victims' families alike. Sotos doesn't think that being the parent of a raped and murdered child makes you an expert on raped and murdered children, he goes on to question why - after your little beauty queen has been butchered - would you parade the remnants of her around on national television and appear on and in everything as guest panellist whenever Geraldo or Maury Povich wants a rodeo clown for the latest round of public paedo-baiting?
He offers that maybe the neediness of the media for this kind of filth and their love of victims, actually acts as a surrogate for mothers and fathers who suddenly find that they need to be loved and needed since their little poppet was beaten, raped and strangled in nearby woodland.
On the media itself, Sotos is firm in saying that he is not trying to draw attention to their hypocrisy. The media does what it does. Sharks need to feed.
Yes, this book is vile and transgressive but is it pornography? No, not as much as The National Enquirers of this world, who offer up regular doses of sexcrime, with no other reason to do so other than to sell product.
But Sotos is thinking of the children, he's thinking of dead and violated children and he's here to offer in a carefully structured, mostly first-person narrative, what it takes the sink so low that your only pleasures in life revolve around sex with the most lowly gutter-filth hookers, HIV-riddled glory-hole gays and poor little children.
What's the point? Well the point is that you're going to enjoy it. You're going to enjoy it for the same reason that you enjoy Most Evil, crimelibrary.com and the gawping, breathless prose of the tabloids. The only difference is that Sotos is never coy, never subtle and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. His words are like hammer-blows, referring back to the same cases over and over again while using the same ugly terminology over and again. This isn't a lack of vocabulary, this is pummeling you into a daze and letting you know that what's around the corner is...*drum roll*...more of the same.
He's also unblinking in his treatment of journalists, television presenters, victims and victims' families alike. Sotos doesn't think that being the parent of a raped and murdered child makes you an expert on raped and murdered children, he goes on to question why - after your little beauty queen has been butchered - would you parade the remnants of her around on national television and appear on and in everything as guest panellist whenever Geraldo or Maury Povich wants a rodeo clown for the latest round of public paedo-baiting?
He offers that maybe the neediness of the media for this kind of filth and their love of victims, actually acts as a surrogate for mothers and fathers who suddenly find that they need to be loved and needed since their little poppet was beaten, raped and strangled in nearby woodland.
On the media itself, Sotos is firm in saying that he is not trying to draw attention to their hypocrisy. The media does what it does. Sharks need to feed.
Yes, this book is vile and transgressive but is it pornography? No, not as much as The National Enquirers of this world, who offer up regular doses of sexcrime, with no other reason to do so other than to sell product.
August 21, 2025
I was initially not going to rate this because I was knowingly going into something for morbid curiosity & background research rather than enjoyment. I knew I would be reading about child sexual assault, but reviews of Sotos’ work suggest that despite handling the subject matter profanely, he’s a talented & engaging writer.
Maybe in his later work but sure as hell not in Tick. The entire book follows this format:
1. Question from a psychology book like do you watch pornography or how has your past affected your sex life?
2. Small italicized paragraph about a real life sex crime.
3. Two pages of Sotos explicitly describing a fictionalized (or not, I don’t know, but unrelated to the paragraph prior) sex crime in the most edgelord way you can imagine.
For 100 pages. Michael Gira this is not.
It’s crass and boring and was a thorough waste of time and if you stumble upon the lore from an interest in extreme art, just watch Plagued by Visions on YouTube and skip the source material.
Maybe in his later work but sure as hell not in Tick. The entire book follows this format:
1. Question from a psychology book like do you watch pornography or how has your past affected your sex life?
2. Small italicized paragraph about a real life sex crime.
3. Two pages of Sotos explicitly describing a fictionalized (or not, I don’t know, but unrelated to the paragraph prior) sex crime in the most edgelord way you can imagine.
For 100 pages. Michael Gira this is not.
It’s crass and boring and was a thorough waste of time and if you stumble upon the lore from an interest in extreme art, just watch Plagued by Visions on YouTube and skip the source material.
January 12, 2013
brutal honest raw sickening but I couldn't put it down. Will stay with me for years definitely not for the faint hearted.
April 1, 2012
Self-hating, self-destructive, friendless, emotionally isolated, unable to empathize with others--those are the narrating voices in Sotos's book, the voices indifferent toward, uncaring or incredulous of regarding the pain of others--"others" defined as men, women, and children of sex crimes. From the book's last paragraph: "It is possible that there is some great form of inexplicable grief that allows or cores these ruptured mothers and fathers to give out their old home movies and personal photographs. Something must have gone wrong. Something unfair. A terrible crack in the plan. And there must be some relief found in crying and sharing and growing up to know it. I just haven't made it yet. Creeps like me don't get it. But. For now. They simply must be telling the truth." This is the narrative of sociopathology.
Read
August 1, 2020Profoundly disgusting, but that was the point wasn’t it? I was recommended this book on account of my studies in Bataille and reading some of Sotos’s critique of D’Agata in Desistance. It’s closest comparison is probably to some of the more depraved short stories written by M. Gira in the Consumer. Reading this made me feel genuinely ill. And yet—I finished the book. It’s not particularly long, but it’s incredibly overwhelming. I think beyond the mere shock factor/power electronics sample/special interests forum aspect of his writing, there is a critique of the Western fascination with depravity while hiding behind the artifice of the social contract. How sick is a society that compels it’s victims to sit and narrate their own abuse for the sake of true crime documentaries?
I can’t effectively rate this one way or another given who Sotos is, but I feel like a worse person for having read this.
I can’t effectively rate this one way or another given who Sotos is, but I feel like a worse person for having read this.
March 7, 2021
I hated this but I can’t give it fewer than 3 stars? So it goes.
October 14, 2025
Utterly disturbing.
August 9, 2014
I would recommend people read Peter Sotos simply because there is no other literary voice like his out there on the planet. However, there is no mistaking the fact that this is, in the strictest sense (of a very loose word), pornography. It is not for anyone under 18, and it will make you feel icky.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews