Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey

Peter Sotos

Void Books releases its debut book, the sixth collection from America's foremost social critic, Peter Sotos. Now, don't get me wrong when I call this social criticism. This isn't along the lines of the feeble dreck spewed by such ineffectual screwheads as Noam Chomsky. No, this is social criticism from perhaps the only place it can be written with anything approaching validity: the gutter. As any reader of the last five books Sotos has published is well aware, he's seen it all from the underside. And he can't wait to tell you about it.

This is the book's main problem. No, not Sotos' aside to an interviewer that most of the critics want him to move on and cover other ground (to which his response is subdued, and really rather elegant), but that one does expect a book with a subtitle like The Annotated Lesley Anne Downey to have more to do with, well, Lesley Anne Downey. Sotos does address this in a kind of offhand way, mentioning towards the end of Part I that his whole world view is shaped by the dear departed Lesley; still, one thinks a truly obsessive personality would dwell on her a bit more than he actually does. Roughly a quarter to a third of the book's total pages are devoted to Downey. The rest can be related in the most offhand of ways, assuming you take Sotos' statement that she shapes his worldview at face value (something veteran readers are rightly wary of doing); otherwise, you can sit back and enjoy the usual ride, for the most part. Sotos is (and I rush to add this is not necessarily a bad ! thing) the Dame Barbara Cartland of cultural critics; the names may change, but the song remains the same.

But then, come to think of it, you can say that about Noam Chomsky, too. With a vengeance. Georges Bataille never really got off his subject much, either. Sotos just deals with a more, shall we say, narrow focus.

What makes Selfish, Little different (and worth having, which is quite important given the book's exorbitant cover price; more expensive than any four of his previous books combined) is the same thing that made Special or Tick different. With each book, Sotos reveals another piece of the full puzzle. I'm sure psychoanalysts read every word with breathless abandon, trying to piece together the twisted personality behind the misanthropic sadist. Selfish, Little contains what may be the most surprising revelation of all; Sotos is, in fact, human. (No, I'm not joking. Sometimes you have to wonder, in the same way one has to wonder about Rasputin or Sade.) There is a long passage where he discusses childhood photographs of a girl that, it can be inferred from the passage, Sotos has known since childhood. Did you ever think you would hear words coming off a page authored by Sotos of love? Familial-style protection? To the non-Sotos-inured reader, this may not seem like an earth-sh! attering revelation. To the few of us who have been around for the past decade or two, it's roughly akin to, for example, Tim LaHaye writing a tell-all autobiography in which he confesses to being the Green River Killer. (Honest, no wishful thinking at all was involved in the crafting of that sentence.)

At a reading in New York in April of 2004, Sotos mentioned to the audience that he has written several more books that are awaiting publication. Not surprising, given the prolificity of his output for a few years, and the three-year-drought ended with this tome. I wasn't there, but secondhand information points to some sort of obscenity controversy. As usual. Which also explains the sixty-five dollar tag on this one (though to their credit, Void did a fantastic job of making it LOOK like a sixty-five dollar limited edition, and as an added bonus had all pre-ordered copies signed by Sotos), presumably. Well, all the devoted reader of Sotosiana can do is hope that it all blows over and we get another rash of fifteen-dollar paperbacks from Creation Books (like the spate that came out in 2000). I don't know about any of the rest, but my wallet can't handle sixty-five bucks a pop and shipping indefinitely.

The discerning Sotos reader will want to pick this up. The Sotos neophyte should not only be scared off by the cover tag, but also by the knowledge that reading his earlier work first is a setup to this one, and reading this one first will deflate its shock value. Excellent as usual, but start with Total Abuse or Special.