Proxy: Pornography, 1991-2000

by Peter Sotos

"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.

Genres: Fiction, Dark, Horror, True Crime

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2005

About the author

Peter 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.

Reviews

[Josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Allen]

I'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!

[Rawful Ralph Archaic · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Michael X · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[katya]

i don’t feel as though i can assign this book a star rating as its contents are unable to be reduced to this scale. peter sotos is a disgusting creep but he is also a brilliant writer, which places his work at a strange threshold in the literary realm. sotos wretches up the absolute dregs of humanity, offering distilled evil in an outstretched palm— he does not allow you to look away from the sickness which is exactly why i find his work so compelling and necessary.

once you get past the initial shock value, you will find a strong emotional undercurrent beneath the graphic sexual violence. there is a profound sadness at the heart of proxy and perhaps sotos’ personal condition allows him to capture this in a unique way that is otherwise inaccessible to most artists.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the saddest books I've ever read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Jan Mehmedhović · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[bee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jesus Christ.

[Marco López · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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.

[Acacia]

It 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....

[Oppenheimer 656 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much Transgressive and Shocking but everything under the shade of Sade it seems.