Is there any Merit to be had with writers like Peter Sotos? I tried reading his infamous Pure zine series...

Is there any Merit to be had with writers like Peter Sotos? I tried reading his infamous Pure zine series, and its just him praising the work of killers/rapists/pedophiles in great detail.

Its literally just Marquis De Sade mixed in with true-crime. I understand that Sotos is trying to neutralize how victims int he media are seen as "angels" who have never done any wrong.

Just seems like a lot of effort to look as grimy as possible without having to resort to reading a Deadite Press book.

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With Sotos, you have to keep in mind that Pure is essentially juvenilia written when he was fresh out of art school. It's obviously important within the context of his life due to his arrest and everything, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired and lacks the kind of intense self-loathing and regret that makes his later stuff more poignant. I don't think he truly came into his own until the rapid-fire period when he put out Index, Lazy, and Tick.

As for "merit", to me, it's not exactly about the critiques he levels or the bizarre art critic stance he takes, but more that his writings immerse you in his everyday world to an extent that is both extremely uncomfortable and unlike anything I've ever experienced in another author's work.

where the degenerates at

yeah i guess he does a good job making you feel seedy and dark just reading his stuff, hes unlike any other writer i know

Never got around to this does he talk about William Bonin at all?

People who were active in this kind of work around the rise of European noise and industrial tended to have "noble" intentions behind it, such as bringing to light the most horrific realities that nobody wants to know about and presenting it as bluntly as possible. I don't know that this is Sotos' purpose, as I don't know his work all that well aside from his association with Whitehouse and similar acts of the time mentioned above. Whatever their intention however, it also has value as art because people appreciate the aesthetics of this kind of presentation. Think of it like a true crime magazine. That's the "healthy" way to appreciate this aesthetic in the public eye, but it's all the same.

>People who were active in this kind of work around the rise of European noise and industrial tended to have "noble" intentions behind it
They only said this later on. If you read the early interviews with for example SPK you would find out that they exploited these depraved things purely because they had an interest in it. This counts especially for Sotos (writing about and collecting CP), Coil (had enemas on stage and had a notoriously dangerously hedonistic lifestyle including orgies and heavy drug use), TG (cut eachother open on stage, fuck eachother on stage, drank and ate eachothers puke, piss and shit), SPK (cut open dead animals on stage like the heads of cows and pigs and used doctors tapes of people being cut open as background images).

tl;dr: they did it because they liked it.

Pretty much. I recall Sotos mocking that attitude in one of the issues of Parasite, that highlighting fucked up, horrific behavior was somehow special in and of itself. I wish some of the interviews with him questioned him a bit more on what got him into writing but I think he said he started doing Pure because it was something that he wanted to read, but it didn't exist, and so he took it upon himself.

I think the DIY subcultural ethos is what made such a project conceivable. Today we are so saturated with information we can't imagine being so far from what appeals to the masses

I think the best thing you can do about such "writers" is ignore them. Don't become outraged or try and critique their style or perspective, just let them rot in irrelevance until they grow up. There are mature ways of saying certain things, and it isn't by shocking people into reading your work and offering little nuggets of truth or whatever amid all the shit.

I think it's a mistake to see Sotos as trying to shock people into reading him. For starters, that's pretty unlikely motivation to spend nearly four decades writing material that repeatedly causes you legal problems, alienates the handful of publishers who might be interested in you in the first place, and only reaches the hands of people who are generally only fans of your work to start with because the publication runs are barely in the hundreds. Since he's been writing, you don't think Geraldo Rivera or Nancy Grace would've loved to have a convicted possessor of child pornography come onto their show to raise shit? If it's your intention to shock the masses, you need publicity and that's something he's never made an effort at. And other than that, it wasn't until comparatively recently that you could even "accidentally" find his work. You didn't stumble across stuff like PURE, you went looking for it, and maybe you found it. I've repeatedly heard that he was furious that some of his work was uploaded to the internet for anyone who wanted it, and so I highly doubt he intended for teenagers to start sharing Buyer's Market and scans of PURE around to offend their internet pals and people who weren't "meant" to find it.

I don't want to sound like I'm apologizing for him either, but I think it's extremely lazy to claim that a literally-who nearing 60 years-old is playing literary shock rock and needs to "grow up".

not op but i'll repeat, what's the merit in reading such stuff?

The same as watching a horror movie

Fair enough lad, I wasn't aware of the context.

then why is he writing instead of filming it?

What? What does that matter? Because he's interested in writing perhaps? My point is that the enjoyment of this kind of material is pretty much the same thing as enjoying the suffering that characters go through in horror or drama movies, or "adaptations" of real events, or documentaries. It's only criticized when it gets too real for the sensitive ones to handle and loses its cinema in exchange for raw atmosphere.

That's entirely up to you, but I touched on it above. It's a completely unique synthesis of autobiography, masturbatory fiction in the lineage of Sade and Genet, and the lowest of the low of sleazy tabloid publication and true crime reportage. It's a perspective utterly removed from my own and I value that.

sorry if i'm making you mad so i'll rephrase

...what "literary" merit is there in his writing?

just assume i don't watch horror films :)

Didn't want to sound like a cunt btw, I think your take is accurate on a lot of "transgressive" writers but not all of them.

Who do all the acronyms represent, user? Genuinely no idea who SPK, TG etc. are supposed to be

Again, the same as in other media with similar subject matter. The medium in question doesn't necessarily matter at the base value of art. Experiencing an atmosphere. You read books for an experience don't you?

SPK is SPK, TG is Throbbing Gristle.

youtube.com/watch?v=pwLj2K124Mg

Also, I'm not upset, so I don't want you to think the way I'm writing is hostile or anything. I was confused as to why you were specific about literary merit because I think of the merit of art in more general terms.

We all know rape/crime is bad ....my question i guess was what else is he adding to that 'horrific' reality of humanity using his art? but i think you answered it

There is also more to it for some fans that just what I said. There's a lot on his writings on the ineffectiveness of anti sex offender legislation, the subjective nature of what constitutes "pornography", and the way the media unconsciously shapes the personalities of its subjects. That just isn't the primary draw to me though because I'm sure I could find much more academic works on those subjects if I desired.