She’s baaaacccck….

The  perfect  treat for Halloween.

FIRST PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH!

A zombie rises from the grave of French literature to stalk the earth once more! This bizarre novel – written in 1697 – marks the first mention of the word “zombie” in world literature. It is a wicked tale of lascivious lust and lunatic desires, a strange concoction of prose and verse, set in the sexual and racial hothouse of colonial Guadeloupe. Our narrator has his eye on the beautiful Creole Countess, who goes barefoot and serves her guests tadpoles. When she offers him sex in exchange for magical powers, he tricks her into thinking she’s an invisible zombie; slapstick, humiliation, and confusion follow. Includes a preface by the avant-garde magus: Guillaume Apollinaire.

CLICK HERE to order.

 

Skinner in the UK

Six of the videos Doug Skinner and Michael Smith made back in the ’90s will be screened in London, as part of the series TBCTV, curated by Mel Brimfield. Screenings are from 11:00 to 6:00, Friday Oct. 5, in the Lancaster Rooms of the very large and historic Somerset House. It’s free; also on the program are splendid videos by Brian Dewan and Michael Robinson. If you’re on that side of the pond (or plan to be), don’t miss it. More info HERE

 

Mr. Skinner is the author of more Black Scat books than we can count—most recently THE SNOWMAN THREE DOORS DOWN ; as well as his translation: CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES.

Doug Skinner attempting to read a Black Scat classic

Take DaDa Wherever You Go!

New Kindle Edition!

We’ve just released a eBook edition of the DADA classic WHAT A LIFE! Now you can take DADA wherever you go.

On August 17 1911—seven years before Max Ernst took up scissors and paste to create his early Dada art—WHAT A LIFE! was published in London by Methuen & Co. The authors, Edward Verrall Lucas (a travel writer) and George Morrow (an illustrator and regular contributor to PUNCH), produced their satirical autobiography using illustrations cut from the pages of Whiteley’s General Catalogue. This inspired act of artistic vandalism was a precursor to many works of avant-garde art and satire. CLICK HERE TO ORDER

THE CROS FLIES!

CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES

It’s back to cool with the great French monologist,  humorist, poet, and inventor—in a trenchant translation by Doug Skinner.

***FIRST PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH!***

Born in1842, Charles Cros was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography and sound recording, only to die young, poor, and alcoholic. Not incidentally, he also invented the comic monologue for the actor Coquelin Cadet. In these strikingly spontaneous and modern sketches, he introduces a gallery of fools and obsessives—The Clean Man, The Fencing Master, The Capitalist, The Friend of the Family—all nattering away, assaulting the audience with trivia, and blithely unaware of their own failings.

This edition collects all 22 of Cros’s monologues—masterfully translated & introduced by Doug Skinner—and includes performance notes by Coquelin, plus two biographical essays by his friend and colleague Alphonse Allais.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The sheer playfulness of certain fanciful parts of Cros’s work must not let us forget that in the center of some of his finest poems, a revolver is aimed at us.”—André Breton

TODAY!!

Today is the day Debra Di Blasi‘s cutting-edge alternative fictions flash before our eyes. This provocative new collection reveals our secret lives on social media — exposes the code behind our narcissistic sexting & selfies with feral wit. Indeed, this book is a savage bible defining our digital existence, here & now. Today.

TODAY is the day of resurrection and death in the NEW AMERICA. TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DEBRA DI BLASI:

Debra Di Blasi’s TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER is a fierce and real-time live-stream pastiche that inhabits voices and points-of-view of our new “American” multitude. Terrifyingly sincere and aching with loss one moment, angry, cruel, even bigoted the next, Di Blasi’s anti-Whitmanian universe expands and collapses into every imaginable corner of what our world has become, to salvage true moments out of this white noise at the penetralia of our virtual hornet’s nest, in which bodies have somehow come alive, “crawled right out of the trashbin of history into the light of public office.”  How it smokes and hums with danger! Readers beware: This hilarious and moving book is not a safe space.—Sam Witt, author of Little Domesday Clock

No one else writes about the current social climate with the badass gusto of Debra Di Blasi. No one! Politically incorrect, seriously playful, often shocking, incorrigible in all the right ways, self-indicting, yet devastatingly human, Di Blasi’s prose grabs contemporary culture by the throat and holds on in a dazzling stranglehold where the “I” of the shitstorm is “you.” -Aimee Parkison, author of Refrigerated Music far a Gleaming Woman

Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? Debra Di Blasi’s TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER gives us a compelling third option: It will end in a whir of pronouncements, gossip, apologies, braggadocio, and the rest of the nonstop human noise we call culture. In 138 very short fictions ranging from the TV show “Chopped” to a pig farm, a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room and the fantasies of a college professor, Di Blasi’s compressed prose and linguistic play result in a jack-in-the-box kind of release found in good poetry. This is a writer in full control of language, from regional idiom to scientific jargon. “I wish to speak of things that are not I” says a character in one story, even as the character in another acts out the wish for permeability “I stuck my finger inside. Something bled. I’m sure it was you.” Despite our desire to escape the metaphysical and envi­ronmental catastrophes we’ve long wrought by now flirting with the concept of a human-robot future, Di Blasi reminds us elegantly and fero­ciously exactly where our human actions have placed us. -Leslie McGrath, author of Feminists Are Passing from Our Lives

Today Is the Day That Will Matter: An Oral History of the New America: #AlternativeFictions
by Debra Di Blasi
Trade paperback, 150 pages, $12.95

NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ON AMAZON  — CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON BEFORE IT’S CENSORED.

THANK YOU!

WE’RE PLEASED TO REPORT THAT OUR SUMMER JAMBOREE WAS A GREAT SUCCESS. WE SALUTE ALL THE GENEROUS SUPPORTERS WHO DONATED TO THE FUNDRAISING DRIVE.

FOR THOSE UNABLE TO PARTICIPATE, THE BEST WAY TO SUPPORT THIS SMALL PRESS IS TO READ OUR BOOKS. PLEASE CONSIDER PURCHASING A TITLE OR TWO FOR YOUR SUMMER READING.

LOTS OF EXCITING NEW TITLES TO CHOOSE FROM.