“Who is fresh? Allais!”—Paul Verlaine

Summer reading, fresh as a sea breeze  and multicolored,  too.  Yes,  there are only two colors, but what lovely colors they are. Besides, this is no time to nitpick when  a new collection by Alphonse Allais —France’s greatest humorist—awaits you. Translated to perfection by the great  Doug Skinner, this edition is packed with 44 odd and hilarious texts by the master absurdist—plus 5 extra stories culled from the pages of Le Journal. That’s over 260 pages! — guaranteed to keep you laughing all summer long.

PINK AND APPLE-GREEN is a colorful addition to Allais’s “anthumous works.”

FIRST english TRANSLATION — AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ON AMAZON 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

In the Wings, Some Special Things For Spring & Beyond

from LE SCAT NOIR BEDSIDE NONSENSE

As we hunker down in our shelter here in Northern California, we remain busily preparing books to help you endure these terrible times. Alas, the crunch has hit everyone and small, independent bookstores  and presses are struggling to stay alive. Please consider ordering a title or two from our list  here. You can also donate to Black Scat via  this direct PayPal link  which will help us to keep bringing out titles such as the forthcoming works below. Thanks for your support.

“The only book in the English language to rival Tolstoy.”—George Steiner

We recently released two collections of provocative literary essays by British author John Cowper Powys: Powys on Books and Sensations  and Visions Visions Visions. This fall, we’re publishing  the first volume—(over 450 pages!)—of Powys’s extraordinary two-volume novel, Wolf Solent (1929). Eccentric and mystical, this  literary masterpiece was hailed by Henry Miller as “utterly bewitching.”  V. S. Pritchett called it “…a stupendous and rather glorious book… beautiful and strange as an electric storm.” Margaret Drabble said:“Powys’s work is full of paradoxes and surprises.” We’re proud to present this trio of titles in handsome uniform trade paper editions designed by artist Norman Conquest.

 

Nonsense in all its merry Infestations… from euphonic poesy to madcap cacophony

Coming in June, Le Scat Noir Bedside Nonsense is just what the doctor ordered for quarantined readers—a heady dose of innovative silliness and offbeat amusements. Edited by Norman Conquest, the anthology is #39 in our Absurdist Texts & Documents   series—packed with art & texts by Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Ken Brown, Caroline Crépiat, Haley Dahl, Ryan Forsythe, Paul Forristal, Penelope Goddard, Simon Hanes, Rhys Hughes, Alexei Kalinchuk, KKUURRTT, Rick Krieger, David Moscovich, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim,  Thaddeus Rutkowski, Terry Southern, Yuriy Tarnawsky,  Tom Whalen, Carla M. Wilson, and other characters.

A CLASSIC OF EROTIC LITERATURE IN A SPANKING NEW TRANSLATION

Thérèse Finds Happiness by the Marquis d’Argens is the 18th century  precursor  to  the 1967 French novel Emmanuelle. This libertine classic’s potent erotic episodes are interspersed with discourses on a philosophy of pleasure contrasted with  pervasive religious hypocrisy. The novel is noteworthy for its antipathy to the sexual repression of women during “The Age of Enlightenment.” It also happens to be extraordinarily humorous.

Richard Robinson has produced an exquisite new translation of Thérèse philosophe for the  contemporary reader. Thérèse Finds Happiness will be available later this year under our New Urge imprint. 

Also forthcoming from New Urge Editions:  contemporary novels by Jessy Reine and Tom Bussmann. Watch this space for other surprises.

from LE SCAT NOIR BEDSIDE NONSENSE

In case you missed it…

…now’s the time for a dose of Alphonse Allais.

MASKS  is quintessential Allais — a pataphysical text admired by the Surrealists (André Breton included it in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir). It was celebrated by the French group Oulipo, and has been the subject of scholarly studies by the writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, Francis Corblin, and others. Originally published in France under the title “Un drame bien parisien,” this Black Scat chapbook third edition has been adapted and illustrated by artist Norman Conquest, and includes an introduction and notes on the text by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner. CLICK HERE to order on Amazon.

Stay home and read it in good health.

ECSTASY… NOW MORE THAN EVER

Amid the pain of pandemic, we hope this issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW provides some welcome relief while sheltering in place.

In Plato’s Dialogue Phaedrus, ecstasy is characterized as divine madness or divine possession, and is considered to be a gift to humanity from the gods. However, we may choose to channel our erotic energies into sexual pleasure or the cultivation and worship of erotic beauty. A transcendent state expressed in poetry, a text, or images. This issue is devoted to the fleeting power of ecstasy in its myriad forms, subtle, unequivocal, or unabashedly palpable.

Contributors include: Peter Ruric, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Eurydice, Catherine D’Avis, Galya Kerns, Doug Skinner, Tom Whalen, Bob McNeil, Nicole Scherer, Tom Bussmann, Paul Rosheim, William Minor, Norman Conquest, Adam Matson, Dynamic Wang, Alexandr Ivanov, Jim McMenamin, Rhys Hughes, Amy Kurman, and Emiliano Vittoriosi.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE!

It’s time to stock up for the long days ahead.

Click the covers to order on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember: read out the crisis, books don’t sneeze.

 

Visionary Essays

We’re excited to bring you this collection of visionary literary essays by British novelist, philosopher, lecturer, and critic, John Cowper Powys—a companion volume to our recent release of Powys on Books and Sensations. This uniform  trade paper edition features Powys’s “literary devotions” and critical essays on Rabelais, Dante, Shakespeare, El Greco, Milton, Charles Lamb, Dickens, Goethe, Matthew Arnold, Shelley, Keats, Nietzsche, Thomas Hardy, Walter Pater, Dostoyevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman.

Originally published in 1915 as Visions and Revisions, this collection stood apart from critical writing at the time and added to Powys reputation. An eccentric genius, he is best known for his mystical novels, including the extraordinary Wolf Solent which we’re preparing for publication later this year.

“Powys is still ‘the master’ to me. His words, even today, have the power of bewitching me.” —Henry Miller

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

Free Zine!

VP.png

The second issue of VIRAL PIRATE is hot off the virtual press—84 pages featuring nearly 100 photos of female vampires.

This electronic edition is  free for followers of this blog.

If you haven’t signed up yet, simply add your email address in the column at right, and we’ll keep you  up to date on all our books.

To receive a download link to the “Vampire Grrrls” issue of VP, send us an email and include the words “free zine” in the subject line.

blackscatbooks (AT) icloud (DOT) com 

LIT SENSATIONS

“English literature, like English history, teems with inspired dreamers and eccentrics: Bunyan, Blake, Hazlitt, Tolkien, and others, but none is quite as much of an all-rounder as Powys. He is as spiritual as Bunyan, as fantastical as Blake, as down-to-earth as Hazlitt, and every bit as much a fabulist as Tolkien. He is a unique necromancer of literature. He comforts and discomfits in equal measure. The word weird might have been invented just for him.” —Roger Boylan

This provocative collection features ILLUMINATING essays on some of the world’s greatest writers—Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, Anatole France, Paul Verlaine, Remy de Gourmont, William Blake, Byron, Emily Brontë, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde.

Powys on Books and Sensations
JOHN COWPER POWYS
TRADE PAPERBACK, 342 PP., $14.95

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FEMME WITH FANGS

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever.”

This classic Gothic horror novel preceded Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 25 years and was its inspiration. Carmilla is the first vampire story to feature a lesbian vampire. “Chilling and subtly erotic.”

 

CARMILLA
by Joseph Le Fanu
New Urge Editions (NU-119)
paperback, 180 pp., $12.95

CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON