Pelzer's books aren't funny, but they do entertain in a darker way. In Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting, James Kincaid argues that child sexual abuse became a cultural obsession in the '80s in part because the stories of abuse were enthralling, at once erotic and grotesque. Pelzer's memoirs lack sexual abuse—the only kind of savagery that's missing—but they appeal to a similar sense of voyeurism and transgression. A Child Called "It" and The Lost Boy are the most sickeningly violent book I've ever read: It's snuff literature.
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