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Proxy: Pornography, 1991-2000
"Proxy is a large-format compendium of five out-of-print and much-sought-after books by Peter Sotos: "Tick, "Lazy, "Index, "Tool, and "Special. "Proxy also includes a new introduction by Sotos. Peter Sotos is one of the most controversial authors in America. A former member of the noise band Whitehouse, he has also appeared in such volumes as "Apocalypse Culture. He recently provided the afterword to Feral House's "The Gates Of Janus by "Moors Murderer" Ian Brady.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2005
19 people are currently reading
474 people want to read
About the author
Peter Sotos
36 books223 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 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 2, 2024
I read this book in the summer of 2022, the summer of the Uvalde massacre and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, because I wanted to understand the minds of child abusers and in turn the minds of those who abused me as a child. I feel like I've read the darkest diaries of the sweaty, bald guy with bifocals and a mustache who stared too long when I'd play with the other kids in the street. No book has ever drained and disturbed me like this one; none after this ever will. I don't recommend it to any casual reader. Anyone who takes pleasure in it can sod off. Those who seek to overcome trauma by poking at it with a rusty knife and getting inside the heads of the demons themselves will find a valuable "anatomy of hell," and it's a potent work of 90s hauntology for those who remember names like JonBenet Ramsey and Adam Walsh. Still, no way I can give something this depraved more than 1 star.
Edit: in just over two weeks, it will be a year since Uvalde shook me to the core and introduced me to a writer so brilliant at describing evil that he could be the Devil himself. I am writing a term paper on Peter Sotos, and having lost a professor to cancer, almost losing my mother to a heart attack, and having made serious but positive progress in therapy, I'm curious to revisit Proxy - I won't force myself to read it like last time, but will read casually when I have time. I promise to write an updated review when done.
Edit: in just over two weeks, it will be a year since Uvalde shook me to the core and introduced me to a writer so brilliant at describing evil that he could be the Devil himself. I am writing a term paper on Peter Sotos, and having lost a professor to cancer, almost losing my mother to a heart attack, and having made serious but positive progress in therapy, I'm curious to revisit Proxy - I won't force myself to read it like last time, but will read casually when I have time. I promise to write an updated review when done.
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January 10, 2008I'm not rating this book because it's simply impossible. The first three 'sections' are the part I own, apparently now out of print. It's true, Sotos' greatest crime is verisimilitude, and therefore the words in this book accomplish what many authors can never do. They terrorize, pick and tear at the psyche, revel in the abject horror of the worst realities of the human condition. It's a train wreck for sure, but one painted by a realist master. NOT FOR KIDS, THE WEAK-MINDED, OR YOUR MOM. Please, not you mom! Damn!
April 2, 2011
Perfectly weak reviews below.
Impossible to imagine a more generous collection of work within one binding. Two or three or four of the most sumptuously exquisite books of recent times.
You're dead emotionally if you don't swoon revel and drool reading this lord of pornography.
Impossible to imagine a more generous collection of work within one binding. Two or three or four of the most sumptuously exquisite books of recent times.
You're dead emotionally if you don't swoon revel and drool reading this lord of pornography.
July 17, 2008
ONLY FOR THE INSANE AND TWISTED, like me! This is a collection of some of his middle work, which is base and crude. Awesome! Seriously, NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.
June 3, 2022
Not for the faint of heart or mind, to put it mildly.
Disturbing and vile. True crime and fatal libido. My first foray into Sotos' writing after having listening to Whitehouse. As an exercise of mining your psyche, it's hard to think of books that'll warp you the way this collection might. Not even Sade or Bataille - where salacious approach feelz civilized compared to the violent honesty of Sotos' subject matter.
There is much to be discussed here, if ever you find someone with the gall and morbid curiosity to appreciate Sotos and talk it out loud. Queer culture's dangerous and diseased past - the bathhouse, the porn theater, the concrete assault. An unending truth of the tragic abduction and abuse of children - presented many times through excerpted/clipped documents from various cases. Screening questions of 'mental health' that actually prod at mental woundz.
Disturbing and vile. True crime and fatal libido. My first foray into Sotos' writing after having listening to Whitehouse. As an exercise of mining your psyche, it's hard to think of books that'll warp you the way this collection might. Not even Sade or Bataille - where salacious approach feelz civilized compared to the violent honesty of Sotos' subject matter.
There is much to be discussed here, if ever you find someone with the gall and morbid curiosity to appreciate Sotos and talk it out loud. Queer culture's dangerous and diseased past - the bathhouse, the porn theater, the concrete assault. An unending truth of the tragic abduction and abuse of children - presented many times through excerpted/clipped documents from various cases. Screening questions of 'mental health' that actually prod at mental woundz.
September 30, 2007
early hate, if it's actually that, from the King of Chicago ... unreadable, some tell me, but not as unlistenable as White House, the Sotos noise band
June 10, 2008
One of the saddest books I've ever read.
August 3, 2022
relentless and breathtakingly powerful (in an amoral sense of the word)
sotos will be a keystone in the study of late american culture a hundred, two hundred years from now; he is peerless
sotos will be a keystone in the study of late american culture a hundred, two hundred years from now; he is peerless
December 19, 2024
Jesus Christ.
November 19, 2020
"My choices have formed me. Formed around me. Infected me and reduced me."
Picture Guyotat's masturbatory writing technique, only that, instead of a pen, Peter Sotos must have wielded a sharpened screwdriver to carve down the unsavory pieces that make up this compendium. This is vile stuff and not for the weak or the easily offended.
Picture Guyotat's masturbatory writing technique, only that, instead of a pen, Peter Sotos must have wielded a sharpened screwdriver to carve down the unsavory pieces that make up this compendium. This is vile stuff and not for the weak or the easily offended.
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January 2, 2023It smells like a perfume -- a type of cologne. I shouldn't have read anything by Peter Sotos but I'm glad I did. All of his work smells like a certain perfume, this type of cologne: not really cheap, I don't think. But also not very expressive: it's a dampening smell, and a really very much muted itself. A muted and dampening scent.
I've read Proxy, Pure, Tool/Index/LAzy....
I've read Proxy, Pure, Tool/Index/LAzy....
March 6, 2023
Very much Transgressive and Shocking but everything under the shade of Sade it seems.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews