Sorry, I was a little rude myself back there. Anyway, though the two writers are compared a lot, I don't see that much of a comparison between their works (well, other than all the gay sex of course). After all, Burroughs' output was mostly fiction, whereas Sotos' stuff is mostly nonfiction (though I'm sure there's a lot of "bullshitting" going on). Also, Burroughs work seems to often incorporate elements of the cosmic/spiritual/occult, while Sotos' work is entirely on the atheist side of things (also Burroughs seems to have been, if not an animal lover, at least kind towards animlas, while Sotos appears to get off on the idea of animals being slaughtered). Come to think of it, however, both do seem to share a sort of disgust for the human body, so I suppose that's one point of comparison. But Burroughs, aside from his cynicism, struck me as someone who wished the world was a better place, while Sotos seems to revel in the fact that we do not live in a utopia.
I never did post a review of the new Sotos book that came out a few months back, "Predicate". Maybe that's because I never finished reading it (it was really boring). I don't know, maybe I'm just not the fan I was when I first started this thread. Perhaps it's because the ugly extremes of humanity just don't interest me as much as they used to, back when I started this thread. And it's not like Sotos' books are something you can (or would even want to) go back to again and again, like you can with, say, a good work of fiction. Really, once you read one of his books once, there's not much of a need to read it again. And so much of his books blur together because he writes about the same damn topics again and again that boredom eventually settles in. And, I hate to drag morals into this, but I'm a little uncomfortable giving money to a guy who claims that he enjoys seeing cats get killed, or that he gets off on the idea of people slowly dying from AIDS. I guess that's the biggest difference between Sotos and I, in that I just can't understand why anyone would find human suffering sexually arousing. Having said all that, I still do have a huge interest in his "Pure" fanzine, if only because it's such an artifact of the 80's underground and the shitstorm it created upon publication. |
