Comfort and Critique by Peter Sotos

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$45 | 256 pages | 5.75" x 8.25" | privately issued without ISBN number | limited numbered edition of 325 copies bound in linen boards and signed by the author | 2 book limit per customer

In this unsettling new book, cult author Peter Sotos recounts the abduction and murder of 8-year-old Sarah Payne, a crime that stunned England and spawned an aftermath of reactionary outcry and violent protest. Through news bites and tabloid clippings reassembled in reverse chronology, Sotos examines the media apotheosis of Payne's parents in the wake of her disappearance, scrutinizes the hidden motives of reporters and citizens driven to hysterical excess by grief, vengeance, and opportunism, and illumines the insatiable lusts that govern the actions of sexual predators. Punctuated by philosophical overtures and self-deprecating quips, Comfort and Critique is a brutal meditation on fantasy and desire set against a backdrop of media banter and illicit back room activity in bars and underground sex clubs. Supplemented by over 100 photos, this volume is possibly Sotos' most revealing and multi-faceted work yet.

Peter Sotos is the author of six books. PROXY, a compendium of his out-of-print writings, is currently available from Creation Books. He lives in Chicago.

The Sluts by Dennis Cooper
with illustrations by Todd James

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$50 | 296 pages | 6.125" x 9.25" | privately issued without ISBN number | limited edition of 550 signed and numbered copies

This first hardcover edition of The Sluts is bound in 3-piece linen, printed in 2 colors on archival-quality Mohawk Superfine paper, and strictly limited to 550 numbered copies signed by Dennis Cooper and Todd James.

Written between 1994 and 2002, The Sluts is a black sheep cousin to Dennis Cooper's internationally acclaimed George Miles Cycle. Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.

Dennis Cooper is the author of The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer (1989), Frisk (1991), Try (1994), Guide (1997), and Period (2000). The George Miles Cycle is published by Grove Press, and has been translated into sixteen languages. His other books include My Loose Thread, The Dream Police: Selected Poems '69-'93, Jerk (w/ Nayland Blake), Horror Hospital Unplugged (w/Keith Mayerson), and Wrong. Dennis, a multi-media project including a new novella by Cooper and a CD compilation of songs created in tribute to his work, will be released in 2005 by Versus Press/Substandard Records. Cooper is a Contributing Editor of Artforum and Editor-in-Chief of Little House on the Bowery, a line of books by adventurous new fiction writers, which are published under the auspices of Akashic Press. His eighth novel, God Jr., will be published by Grove Press in August 2005. He lives in Los Angeles.

Todd James belongs to a small, influential group of artists who acquired the earliest elements of their visual languages painting New York City subway cars, and in doing so altered an entire generation's perception of urban letterforms. James' work has been shown at the Venice Bienalle, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Tate Museum in Liverpool, the Parco Gallery in Japan, and in the STREET MARKET show at Deitch Projects in New York City.

 

Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Ann Downey by Peter Sotos

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$15 | 192 pages | 7" x 10" | privately issued without ISBN number | limited paperback edition of 1000 copies

This limited paperback edition is printed on archival-quality Mohawk Superfine paper with new cover art and a three-color title page.

In this unnerving new book, cult author Peter Sotos delves into the abject details - at once revolting and salacious - of the brutal murder of Lesley Ann Downey, the ten-year-old victim of "Moors Murderers" Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. With frank, inimitable prose and self-deprecating wit, Sotos interweaves numerous accounts - culled from tabloids, memoirs, and television specials - of the sensational crime and its devastating aftermath with analogous excerpts from recent headlines, explicit erotic fantasies, and graphic descriptions of degrading, often-anonymous carnal encounters. Sotos persistently seeks the truth where others are afraid to look, and discovers an implicit pornography in the public lamentations of Downey's grieving mother, media coverage of lurid sex crimes, and journalistic forays into the private lives of sex offenders. Replete with autobiographic tales of sexual excess, telling interviews, and thoughtful musings on crime, art, and pornography, Selfish, Little is a surreal "smorgasbord of unabashed vulgarity" that is the author's most candid book yet.

Peter Sotos, labeled "the most visceral pornographic writer since de Sade," is the author of five previous books - Total Abuse, Special, Lazy, Tick, and Index - and a contributor to the Apocalypse Culture series from Feral House. His new book, Comfort and Critique: The Art of Sarah Payne, will be published by Void in May 2005. Also forthcoming in 2005 is Proxy, a compendium of out-of-print writings along with a new CD by Sotos with Steve Albini, both from Creation Books. And in 2006, Creation will release Predicate, Sotos' controversial study of Thomas Hamilton. Peter Sotos lives in Chicago.

Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Ann Downey by Peter Sotos

- First cloth edition

- Signed by Peter Sotos

- Very limited quantity remaining

- Order the cloth edition of Selfish, Little

$60 | 192 pages | 7.25" x 10.25" | privately issued without ISBN number | limited cloth edition of 1000 copies

Bound in hand-silkscreened linen boards with a pasted paper spine label and printed on archival-quality Mohawk Superfine paper with a three-color title page.