Predicate

I think Peter Sotos' best work is when it's more subtle and creeps up on you long after you've read it. The most recent one Predicate is a good example of this. A much more experimental idea considering what Sotos writes about. Here the main subject is Thomas Hamilton and his mass shooting of a school in Scotland ten years ago. Hamilton was presumably someone with an unhealthy fixation on his male students -- as a physical ed teacher. I've had so-much disgust for my past PE teachers and their tireless BS, although at least I'm glad I didn't skip out or else I would've been more sickly than I am now, to give them credit. In my high school though, I don't think the PE teachers were abusive like Hamilton was although scandalously one of the vice-principals got arrested for fiddling with a minor after moving to another Catholic school. (No I wasn't a victim, although I was myself coming to terms with my own homosexuality anyhow...)

Going back to the story, there's really nothing to work with concerning Hamilton, as no-one's really sure if he was debauched towards teenage boys or not, as it's mostly speculation. If he was he might have been too scared to act on it, one thing's for sure...

But Sotos is good at expanding on even as skimpy a subject as Hamilton. A great deal of it isn't directly about him, but mostly does correlate. Especially the part where he devises an idea for a gay-porn series in tribute to Matthew Cecchi, that doesn't hit home at first but when you give it more thought is absolutely horrifying. As is the conclusion, which I'm not going to spoil for everyone but is a disturbing revelation with a truth that Sotos' hysterical detractors will find hard to accept, yet should IMO... And you do get some more introspection into Sotos' own turbulant family life, sexual frustration and more of how his own transgressive interests developed the way they did. Just now I was reading about how William Bennett of Whitehouse was inspired by his parents' constant fighting. Siouxsie Sioux in Word magazine admitted she was molested as a child and talked of how she devised her persona and music as a way of dealing with parental mistrust and personal pain via an alternate reality. Lydia Lunch has been open about her abusive childhood and I think there's evidence DAF De Sade's debauchery was a product of childhood trauma itself.

So even if I'm speculating here, I adamantly think Sotos' work has a right to exist. The same way mainstream writers not as debauched as De Sade see importance in his written works. And it doesn't look like Sotos will be going away soon whether anyone likes it or not...