Art & Creativity Quote by Peter Sotos

There is a deadpan sting in Sotos pointing out that books printed in bigger runs than his are easier to find: it frames scarcity as both absurd accident and quiet verdict. The line reads like a logistical complaint, but the subtext is reputational gravity. Sotos has spent decades writing work that dares institutions to touch it; here, the “hard to find” status becomes a kind of afterimage of taboo. It’s not just that distribution fails - it’s that distribution is the culture’s immune system.

The phrasing does a lot of work. “Selfish, Little” (a title that already sounds like an accusation) sits in the sentence like an infected node: small, private, and, in practice, quarantined. Then the pivot: publishers “wanted” to publish him. That verb matters. It suggests demand, curiosity, even appetite - undercut by the passive, bureaucratic nightmare of being “stuck in limbo.” Limbo is a perfect word for censorship in 21st-century publishing: not the bonfire, not the ban, just an endless holding pattern where no single person has to admit they’re afraid.

“New distribution ideas and legal issues and fears” lands like a list of modern excuses dressed up as pragmatism. He yokes innovation (“distribution ideas”) to liability (“legal issues”) to the real driver (“fears”), implying they’re interchangeable cover stories. The final clause, “blown away,” is both hopeful and contemptuous: fear as something flimsy, like dust, yet stubborn enough to gum up an entire supply chain. The intent isn’t to plead innocence. It’s to expose how culture manages its discomfort: by burying the book without ever saying it’s buried.