Jason E. Rolfe‘s mesmerizing new chapbook, THE PUPPET-PLAY OF DOCTOR GALL, is a shadowy existential drama — an absurdist murder-mystery set in Vienna in 1820, with a cast of curious characters: Franz Joseph Gall, The Stranger, Ernst Sieber, Tomas Hocheder, Madam Denebecq, and Count Sedlnitzky.
….than a barrel of Britannicas! — and a lot lighter, too.
Le Scat Noir Encyclopédie et Dictionnaire de la Pataphysique, des arts et du savoir humain, par une société d’hommes et de femmes de lettres contains all the knowledge you’ll ever need to have a successful life of the mind. Profusely illustrated, featuring entries by an international roster of distinguished experts from the arts, sciences, university and academia. It is also the first encyclopedia with cover text in French and entries in English. CLICK HERE to order your copy on Amazon.
“An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge.” —Diderot
“Today everyone wants to know everything – and preferably in alphabetical order.” —François Caradec
Le mot encyclopédie a été utilisé en français pour la première fois par Rabelais, mais ce n’est que lorsque Norman Conquest en a édité une qu’il a pris une dimension sublime.”—R. Queneau
Distinguished contributors from around the world include: Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Norman Conquest, Caroline Crépiat, René Descartes, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Tractor Inspector, Alfred Jarry, M. Kasper, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Librairie Larousse, Michael Leigh, Olchar E. Lindsann, Opal Louis Nations, Daren Elsa Nibelly, Dr. Novalis, Pata-No , Richard Peabody, Mercie Pedro, Derek Pell, Charlotte Porter, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Sourav Roy, Dr. I. L. Sandomir, Paulette Single, Doug Skinner, Maddy Smith, Linda Klieger Stillman, Corinne Taunay, Text Fixer, Kimberly Vodicka, Tom Whalen, Femke van der Wijk, Carla Wilson.
.
Just in time for Xmas — all the world’s knowledge in a single stocking stuffer!
Le Scat Noir Encyclopédie et Dictionnaire de la Pataphsique, des arts et du savoir humain, par une société d’hommes et de femmes de lettres (volume deux) has arrived. This sublime paperback encyclopedia packs everything you need for a successful life of the mind into a single volume. Over 100 pages! This profusely illustrated edition is a must-have for collectors of arcane facts, bizarre biographies, astounding science, impossible inventions, and cryptic definitions. You’ll find everything under the sun from Absentee to Zyborg.
Featuring over 40 distinguished experts from around the globe, including: Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Norman Conquest, Caroline Crépiat, René Descartes, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Tractor Inspector, Alfred Jarry, M. Kasper, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Librairie Larousse, Michael Leigh, Olchar E. Lindsann, Musée Patamécanique, Opal Louis Nations, Daren Elsa Nibelly, Dr. Novalis, Pata-No , Richard Peabody, Mercie Pedro, Derek Pell, Charlotte Porter, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Sourav Roy, Dr. I. L. Sandomir, Paulette Single, Doug Skinner, Maddy Smith, Linda Klieger Stillman, Corinne Taunay, Text Fixer, Kimberly Vodicka, Tom Whalen, Femke van der Wijk, Carla Wilson.
Order now and we’ll include this lovely back cover…
“…In Behn’s novels, women too can embrace the previously masculinized pleasures of power. In The Fair Jilt, the heroine Miranda pursues the most extreme forms of libertinism as she seduces a series of men, twice attempts to have murdered the sister who inconveniently limits her financial power, and demonstrates the conflation of sexual and religious subversion typical of both French and English Restoration libertinism as she tries to rape a priest.” —Tiffany Potter, Genre and Cultural Disruption: Libertinism and the Early English Novel
Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689) was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. The Fair Jilt is the first English novel ever written by a woman. A trailblazer, Behn broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. This edition is a must-have literary classic.
The Fair Jilt:
The Amours of Prince Tarquin & Miranda
Aphra Behn
New Urge Editions
paper; 100 pp., $12.95
ISBN: 979-8565118872
In honor of Donald Trump‘s historic election loss we’re bringing back an out-of-print classic from our Absurdist Texts & Documents series:
The thirteen poems penned by screenwriter/director Ed Wood during his lifetime will not to be found in the Ed Wood, Jr. Collection at Cornell University. Cornell is home to the original draft of Wood’s screenplay “Grave Robbers from Outer Space” (released in 1959 as “Plan 9 from Outer Space”), as well as his rare novels Killer in Drag (1965), Death of a Transvestite (1967), and others. There is not, however, a single shred of Wood’s poetry. The only evidence that “the world’s worst filmmaker” was also a poet of equivalent talent are several dozen rejection letters, including one from The New Yorker for a poem entitled “shreik” [sic].
According to Wood’s second (?) wife, the poet renounced his efforts as “pure crap” in 1968, and buried these thirteen unpublished works at the La Brea Tar Pits in California. A few days later, she attempted to retrieve the pages, but they had vanished from their unmarked grave. Wood subsequently coined the term “poesy-snatchers” to explain what had happened to his missing body of work.
Nearly 30 years later the poems were discovered inside an abandoned flying saucer that landed in Lodi, New Jersey. In 1996, the poems were published privately in a limited edition by a small press in Coronado, California under the title Selected Poems — despite the fact that the book represents Wood’s total poetic output.
Black Scat is proud to bring these lost odes back from the dead in a glowing, unexpurgated chapbook. We have erred on the side of caution and retained the original title for—who knows?—perhaps the bard will revisit our planet and dump some more gems.
Click here to read the rave review by John Pietaro in SENSITIVE SKIN magazine.
AWAY with silks, away with lawn,
I’ll have no scenes or curtains drawn;
Give me my mistress as she is,
Dress’d in her nak’d simplicities:
For as my heart e’en so mine eye
Is won with flesh, not drapery.
—Robert Herrick
A lusty anthology featuring titillating odes by an array of libertine poets of the XVII and XVIII centuries (Robert Herrick, John Donne, William Congreve, Thomas Campion, et al.) The works include gentle celebrations of the female sex; witty & whimsical whispers designed to seduce; and urgent pleas of—in the words of André Breton—L’amour fou. In this surreal realm of ribald eros, Virginity is a lost cause and Sexual Pleasure reigns supreme.
Our edition is profusely illustrated —from maidenhead to toe!—with works by more than a dozen artists, including Édouard-Henri Avril, Vivant Denon, Amandine Doré, and Thomas Rowlandson. As volume 8 in the popular Pocket Erotica series, POEMS OF LUST & DESIRE makes a delicious stocking-stuffer for all the libertines on your holiday list.
illustration by André Collot
POEMS OF LUST & DESIRE
by Libertine Poets of the XVII and XVIII Centuries
Pocket Erotica [№ 8 ]
Illustrated; 110 pp., $12
ISBN 978-1-7356159-8-1
“A harsh, hilarious, scurrilous, and scatological satire.”
—Ed Simon, JSTOR Daily
Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was considered one of the greatest English satirists — a nimble wit and scribbler of sublime wordplay, parodies & pornographic puns.
Hailed by Graham Greene and Ezra Pound, Wilmot is perhaps best known for his outrageous libertine satires, including this wickedly funny Restoration drama.
Originally titled The Farce of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, DEBAUCH-O-RAMA is an absurdist “closet drama” – written to be read aloud and not performed. It consists of five acts in raunchy rhyming couplets and a madcap cast of characters:
CAST
Let the curtain rise and the laughter begin!
DEBAUCH-O-RAMA
A Restoration Closet Drama
by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
Pocket Erotica [№ 11 ]
65 pp.; paper, perfect bound; 4 x 6 inches; $10
ISBN 978-1-7357646-2-7
Two complete works in one volume by the French “Prince of Poets,” Paul Verlaine. This is the first contemporary English translation, and includes illustrations by Paul-Émile Bécat.
“The two books of poetry translated and presented here are complete, just as Verlaine wrote them – sustained efforts holding to a theme, the same theme: the love between a man and a woman. But it’s not just any love, it’s physical love, as well as emotional love. They are songs lauding sex between a man and a woman. They are refreshingly honest and very modern. Chansons pour elle (Songs for Her) was published in 1891. Odes en son honneur (Odes in Her Honor), in 1893. ” — from the introduction by Richard Robinson.
Songs for Her and Odes in Her Honor
Paul Verlaine
With illustrations by Paul-Émile Bécat
Translated from the French by Richard Robinson
Pocket Erotica [№ 9 ]
paper; 88 pp., $10
ISBN: 978-1-7356159-9-8
SOLD OUT
It’s back to school with #7 in our Pocket Erotica series…another extended excerpt (over 170 pages!) from Nicolas Chorier‘s libertine novel, L’Academie des dames, translated from the French by Amandine Lévêque. This sublime edition includes the continuing dialogue between Tullie and her innocent cousin, Octavie, whom she has been charged with initiating into the world of sexual pleasure. It seems Octavie has more to learn about the Facts of Life, and Tullie is a most inspiring teacher. “Think about this, my dear Octavie: that if you want to live happily & content in the state of marriage, as you currently do, you must believe that there is nothing that is not permitted, & that all things are forbidden.”
Further Studies: The School of Women
Nicolas Chorier
Translated from the French by Amandine Lévêque
Pocket Erotica [№ 7 ]; $12
ISBN: 978-1-7356159-7-4
SOLD OUT
