SURPRISE PARTY!
Boy Meets Girl
We don’t have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities. —Kathy Acker
After (mis)reading Don Quixote, a boy transforms himself into “Janey Smith,” a character he glimpsed in Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School. The unnamed Catholic narrator wanders the streets of Pittsburgh, slipping in and out of gender roles, seducing men and women — erasing his sense of his own flesh. Sex and gender are joined in Janey—a dream—who becomes an atheist of desire, on a quest to become an imperceptible shadow.
Doug Rice (author of Here Lies Memory) channels Kathy Acker in this elegiac prose poem which will haunt the reader like a strange, erotic dream.
JANEY QUIXOTE
Doug Rice
Pocket Erotica No. 18
New Urge Editions
67 pp., $10; paper
ISBN: 978-1-7373711-8-2
Doug Rice is the author of When Love Was, Here Lies Memory, An Erotics of Seeing, Das Heilige Buch der Stille, Faraway, So Close, Between Appear and Disappear, Dream Memoirs of a Fabulist, Blood of Mugwump, and other books of fiction, photographs, and memoir. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Zyzzyva, Gargoyle, Discourse, and Fiction International. He was a Literary Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2012-2014. He is the publisher of Nobodaddies Press, which will be reappearing in 2022.
Also Available
A TREAT FOR HALLOWEEN
There is a veritable army of zombie books out there but nothing remotely like this one. This obscure novel — THE ZOMBIE OF GREAT PERU — is a masterpiece of avant-garde weirdness — written by one Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, “the Casanova of the 17th century,” as an act of literary revenge. It is not simply vengeful, but it’s the first work in world literature to use the word “zombie” and stands as an early example of bizarre black humor. This outrageous relic—unearthed & translated from the French by the incomparable Doug Skinner—is the novel’s first appearance in English and features a preface by the great Guillaume Apollinaire.
In the wings some special things…
The Lighter Side of Sade
Did the notorious author of Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom have a sense of humor?
Indeed he did, and this short story shows a side of the author few have seen. Here is a witty, libertine tale, free of flagellation and sexual perversion. Instead, it reveals a husband’s adultery and a wife’s clever “retaliation.”
This is a decidedly feminist text and it punctures the double standard still infecting relations between men and women.
Translated from the French by R J Dent.
Comte Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade
Customers in the UK can order the book here
Naughty but Nice
“Now if you are bold enough to get one I’m sure it will afford a considerable amount of excitement and pleasure, and cannot have any danger; and whoever obtains it can, after trying it, tell the others how she likes it; and as it can be mutually used it may afford all of us pleasure. I confess I should have got one before now if I had known how to go about it. So girls, who’ll bell the cat?”
The latest title in the Pocket Erotica series has been adapted by Lawrence Hamilton from a Victorian underground novel. A Good Girl’s Home Companion recounts the adventures of three inquisitive young women who discover the joys of friendship and sharing.
“A witty and titillating tale.”
COLLECT THEM ALL
A Dirty Story as You Like It
We’re pleased to present the 14th title in our Pocket Erotica series — a must-have edition for fans of Oulipo and innovative literature.
Oulipo’s interactive concept of “tree literature” was first implemented by Raymond Queneau in his short story “Un conte à votre façon” (A Story as You Like It). In this wickedly clever (and very funny) variation, Kim Vodicka follows in Queneau’s hallowed footsteps with a do-it-yourself text that’s guaranteed to satisfy all-comers.
In A Dirty Story as You Like It, the reader chooses from multiple plots, navigates the course to a satisfying climax, or changes direction whenever the urge strikes. Do all roads lead to ecstasy? Who knows, who cares, because getting there is half the fun.
A DIRTY STORY AS YOU LIKE IT
Kim Vodicka
Pocket Erotica #14
paperback; 40 pp.; $10
ISBN 978-1-73711-1-3
A B O U T T H E. A U T H O R
Kim Vodicka is the spokesbitch of a degeneration, “a softer-spoken, more genteel Lydia Lunch,” according to The Houston Press. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections—most recently, The Elvis Machine (CLASH Books, 2020) and Dear Ted (Really Serious Literature, forthcoming 2022). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including a poetic comic book, a 7” vinyl EP of sound poems, and a book of poetry illustrated by various artists local to Memphis. Additionally, she is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recipient of artist grants from PEN America, Poets & Writers, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Authors League Fund. Her poems, prose, and visual art have been featured in The Thought Erotic, The New Urge Reader 4, SPREAD, Harbinger Asylum, Forbidden Futures, Best American Experimental Writing, and many others. For the past decade, she has toured the nation performing spoken word with rock’n’roll accompaniment in venues both illustrious and disreputable, including the legendary Sun Studio. Originally from South Louisiana, she lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her beloved cat, Lula.
Time for Your Dose of Existential Humor
When Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev steps in front of a trolleybus and is killed, he immediately regrets not looking both ways before crossing the street. It’s one of many deaths Daniil faces in these eighteen absurdist tales. From a mind that wanders too far at lunch, and a madcap chase through St. Petersburg, to a clock that stops time whenever it’s observed, these stories trace not only the lives and deaths of the hero, but the author’s impossible nostalgia for a time, a city and a writer he never knew. Filled with existential humor, this masterful collection explores the thinly-veiled boundary between sense and nonsense.
“The Many Lives and Countless Deaths of Daniil Ivanovich is an absurdist gem in which Jason E. Rolfe channels the best essences of Gogol and Dosto evsky while authenticating his own unique voice. Uncanny, whimsical, and smart, these interstitial stories and vignettes reminded me that literature isn’t dead yet after all.” —D. Harlan Wilson, author of Outré and The Psychotic Dr. Schreber
“Whether you find this funny or frustrating, I would recommend a few sips of this book from day to day. Taken all at once, it can induce mental chaos, but taken one story at a time, it can promise wide smiles. Jason E. Rolfe might be the most specialized of specialist writers, but he deserves a wide, non-specialized readership.” —Mark Fuller Dillon, author of Ice and Autumn Glass
THE MANY LIVES AND COUNTLESS DEATHS OF DANIIL IVANOVICH
by Jason E. Rolfe
with a Postscript by Paul Rosheim
Trade paperback, 112 pp., $14
ISBN 978-1-7373711-2-0
Available on Amazon in North America, Europe, and Australia
Also available from Black Scat Books:
LEAVE IT TO EVE
“If I ever wondered why, this was the answer that kept me glued to my task. Their flesh was the humble instrument on which I sang praises to God. For God was love, and God was transgression.”
Every girl deserves a good mentor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born on Lesbos, Greece, Eurydice is a feminist writer, artist, multi-modal scholar, and podcaster. She is the author of Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier (Simon & Schuster, New York, London, Sydney, Singapore, 2000 & Touchstone 2001), f/32: The Second Coming (Virago Press, London: 1993), f/32 Revisited (Richard Kasak Books. New York: 1994), f/32 (Fiction Collective II. Normal, IL: 1991), two chapbooks (Labyrinth, and Gymnostithi, a book of poems in Greek), and dozens of investigative articles for Spin magazine. Her essays, articles, reviews have appeared in magazines like Harper’s and Newsweek, and literary journals. She was an investigative staff writer for Spin magazine and the sex advice columnist for Gear magazine. Her art has been featured in numerous shows in Europe and the U.S. and is in private collections and public museums. In 2010 she had a ten year retrospective in Miami Beach during Art Basel. Her podcast, Speak Sex w Eve, is available on every audio platform.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN . . .
A special reprint edition of BLACK SCAT REVIEW #1 is now available.
Originally published in 2012, the issue sold out quickly and has long been out of print. It features John Crombie’s translation of “Like Mother” by Alphonse Allais; a hilarious accusatory text by the legendary Canadian absurdist Crad Kilodney; collage art from the UK by Michael Leigh; Elizabeth Archer’s revealing interview with British humorist Samantha Memi; experimental comic art by Florence Bocherel; a rare comic drama by Pierre Henri Cami translated by Doug Skinner; bizarre poems from Portugal’s Pedro Carolino; and astounding short fiction by Samantha Memi, Yuriy Tarnawsky and Tom Whalen. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The original cover photograph by S. N. Jacobson has been censored to allow its display on Amazon.)
BLACK SCAT REVIEW (Number One)
edited by Norman Conquest
paperback; illustrated; full color;
ISBN 979-8450666396
