Move over Mona Lisa, the subject of René Magritte’s classic painting Le fils de l’homme (1964) has been transformed into an iconic Everyman — forced to confront the forces of contemporary life.
Portuguese artist Paulo Brito reanimates the mysterious figure in a series of satirical collages you won’t soon forget.
The future of Dada is here!
“Every time I write about Doug Skinner’s translations of Alphonse Allais – the new one is I Am Sarcey – I say that Allais’s humor columns and so on ought to be period pieces, historical ephemera, but are better than that, are good. Still funny; still fun. This is my only idea about Allais, apparently. If anything this is even more the case with I Am Sarcey – more ephemeral yet not, but even more so.’
—Wuthering Expectations
CLICK HERE to read the complete review.
And then CLICK HERE and enjoy the book for yourself.
This collection of sporting tales mashes literary history and sports lore into a satirical inferno—skewering academic jargon and postmodern analysis with a razor-sharp, poison-tipped foil. Axelrod mischievously injects the ancients with steroids and offers statistics to prove how little we know about the origin of our favorite pastimes. Inside you’ll discover the “Baudelaire-Bird Connection or, How the Boston Celtics Got To Be That Way”; the obscure “Russian Sport of Face Slapping”; “Metaleptic Parabasis or, the Fine Art of High Jumping”; “Jai-Alai Machu Picchu,” and many other strange feats of Physical Lit-ness. Arm yourself with these tales and head to the nearest sports bar or poetry reading and laugh your ass off.
150 pp., trade paperback, $12.95
Black Scat author and translator Doug Skinner recently informed us about a book of poems he’s reading by Raoul Ponchon. One poem in particular struck his fancy as it’s about the conservative French drama critic Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899). The poem — “Our Uncle’s Aunt” — mocks Sarcey, saying his reviews were influenced by his elderly aunt. Lucien Boucher‘s illustration .is reproduced here.
arcey was the frequent butt of jokes by artists and writers in the pages of the bohemian journal Le Chat Noir. But it was the brilliant humorist Alphonse Allais who took the mockery to extremes and single-handedly transformed the critic into an Ubuesque piñata in a series of columns published under Sarcey’s name. This sustained journalistic prank has been preserved in I AM SARCEY by Alphonse Allais — compiled and translated by Doug Skinner.
This is one of the funniest books we’ve ever published — and that’s saying a lot. If you’re looking for a hilarious example of black humor, don’t miss it.
blackscatbooks.com 