In Eckhard Gerdes’s fifteenth novel, two women friends — one from the city, the other from the suburbs — attend opening night of a cryptic new play: “Pissers’ Theatre.” Oddly enough, both the play and the theatre it’s being presented in have been designed to accommodate audience incontinence. Thus, the production pauses whenever someone needs to empty their bladder. This bizarre experiment plays havoc with the show’s continuity and leads our heroines into strange places — onstage and off.
THE PISSERS’ THEATRE Eckhard Gerdes Trade paperback; 112 pp., $12.95 ISBN 978-1-7357646-9-6
July 4th marks our 9th year of publishing. To celebrate the occasion we’ve released a special deluxe hardcover edition of our very first title, ALPHONSE ALLAIS’S MASKS — adapted and illustrated by Norman Conquest, with an introduction and notes on the text by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner.
This revised, expanded edition features three additional chapters and over 60 color illustrations.
Join the celebration and order your copy of this collectable edition here.
ALPHONSE ALLAIS’S MASKS Adapted & Illustrated by Norman Conquest With a Introduction & Notes on the Text by Doug Skinner DELUXE SPECIAL EDITION hardcover; 6×9 inches; 82 pp., illustrated ISBN 13 978-1-7357646-6-5 / $26
Rhys Hughessaddles up & blasts his way across the vast plains — kickin’ up trouble in this hog-wild collection of Western Weirdness. Using various forms (short stories, a play, lonesome poems — even a garsh-dang essay!), he roasts the genre & serves up some hearty, avant-garde grub — fresh as a dew-dappled Texas rose.
“Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet’s literature. He’s as tricky as his own characters. He toys with convention. He makes the metaphysical political, the personal incredible and the comic hints at subtle pain.” — MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“A dazzling disintegration of the reality principle. Raises the bar on profundity and sets a comic standard for the tragic limits of our human experience. Like Beckett on nitrous oxide. Like Kafka with a brighter sense of humour.” — A.A. ATTANASIO
“If Hughes ever stops writing fiction I will shoot him.” — JEFF VANDERMEER
“If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.”— SAMUEL R. DELANY
WEIRDLY OUT WEST Rhys Hughes Absurdist Texts & Documents (No. 42) paperback; 141 pp., $14 ISBN 978-1-7357646-1-0
This fourth volume in our sizzling international anthology series makes delicious bedside reading. Featuring 17 gifted writers whose intimate stories excite, unsettle, amuse and transport. Here is innovative feminist fiction that explores the boundaries of female sexuality in all its myriad forms.
THE NEW URGE READER 4includes fiction byJeanette Bradley, Karina Bush, Debra Di Blasi, Dana Duren, Eurydice, Petra Anne Hawk, Elna Holst, E. E. King, Amy Kurman, Hélène Lavelle, Lilianne Milgrom, Grace Murray, Su Orwell, Giorgia Pavlidou, Marina Rubin, Kim Vodicka, andE. H. Warrington.
THE NEW URGE READER 4 Erotic Fiction by New Women Writers Edited by Grace Murray New Urge / Black Scat Books Paperback, 131 pp., $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-7356159-5-0
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“…These stories run the gamut, they are confessional, confided, whispered, shouted, and sung. Some are delightful, some disruptive and some disturbing, yet they are connected not for the simple fact that they excite our sexuality, but in the way that they address so many of our senses. Psychologically and physically, we are moved by sex in multitudinous ways, and these tales will engage the heart, body, and mind by the same breathtaking and heartrending measure.” —from the introduction by Grace Murray
Never before in the annals of art forgery has there been a case like this.
TRUE CRIME: The People vs. Rrose Sélavy, compiled by Karl Waldmann, features unpublished transcripts, exhibits, color illustrations, and shocking new evidence. Fact and fiction are forged together in this seminal work of DADA excavation.
This is an expanded, “rectified readymade edition” of the original, out of print chapbook published in 2016.
TRUE CRIME: The People vs. Rrose Sélavy Rectified Readymade Edition Absurdist Texts & Documents #32 Color illustrations, 44 pages; $14
The incomparable humorist is in his prime here, spinning out dark fantasies on cycling in Ancient Rome, the taste of tears, the economic advantages of germ warfare, God’s dislike of Christmas, and the proper chemicals for a chaperone’s chamberpot. The intrepid Captain Cap pitches his bizarre inventions over cocktails, and Allais sends back notes from his travels to North America and Southern France. At 65 stories, this collection is Allais’s largest—PLUS two extra stories by Allais and two by Octave Mirbeau, on the pressing issue of ambulatory vegetables.
We’re tickled and thrilled to bring you the 12th title in our Alphonse Allais Collection: 2 + 2 = 5 —translated, with an introduction and notes on the text, by the absurdly gifted Doug Skinner.
Alphonse is in his prime here, spinning out dark fantasies on cycling in Ancient Rome, the taste of tears, the economic advantages of germ warfare, God’s dislike of Christmas, and the proper chemicals for a chaperone’s chamberpot. The intrepid Captain Cap pitches his bizarre inventions over cocktails, and Allais sends back notes from his travels to North America and Southern France. At 65 stories, this collection is the humorist’s largest—PLUS two extra stories by Allais and two by Octave Mirbeau, on the pressing issue of ambulatory vegetables. What does it all add up to? . . . Hilarity!
2 + 2 = 5 Alphonse Allais Translated from the French by Doug Skinner Original cover painting by Lilianne Milgrom Trade paperback; 289 pp., $14.95
About the Author ALPHONSE ALLAIS (1854-1905) was a peerless French humorist, celebrated posthumously by the Surrealists for his elegant style and disturbing imagination. In addition to composing absurdist texts for newspapers such as Le Chat Noir and Le Journal, he experimented with holorhymes, invented conceptual art, and created the earliest known example of a silent musical composition: Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man (1884). Truly ahead of his time (as well as our own), Allais is needed now more than ever. His mischievous work remains fresh, funny, and always surprising.
The 41st volume in our seminal Absurdist Texts & Documents series has arrived: PATENTS PENDING by Derek Pell and Doug Skinner, with an Afterword by Alphonse Allais. An illustrated compendium of ingenious inventions so ahead of their time they may never be available to the public – not in this world, nor the next. Discover pataphysical gizmos such as the OUIJA BILLBOARD, HELIUM BOMB, IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE FRAME, TROMPE L’OEIL MAGIC KIT, and many others. For now, these inspired concepts are but speculative prototypes – strange dreams haunting the drawing board of destiny – but thanks to this book you may study and savor them, and imagine a future far brighter than the present.
PATENTS PENDING Derek Pell & Doug Skinner with an Afterword by Alphonse Allais Absurdist Texts & Documents No. 41 paperback; illustrated, 112 pp., $14 ISBN-13 : 978-1735615936
