“Waiter — another Alphonse Allais — on the double!”

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Black Scat Books is proud to serve up the master absurdist’s inaugural collection,  containing his hand-picked favorites from the pages of Le Chat Noir, the bohemian journal that amused and scandalized Paris. Here you’ll find Allais in the first flush of his comic genius, spinning out elegant and hilarious gems of black humor on suicide, murder, obsession, and adultery. You will meet the philosophical cuckold, the young lady in love with a pig, the inventor of the Tumultoscope, and Ferdinand, the most resourceful duck in literature. Among the highlights is Allais’s most famous story, “A Thoroughly Parisian Drama,” a favorite of André Breton and Umberto Eco. This is the book’s first publication in English, and features seven additional stories from Le Chat Noir, as well as a sublime introduction, notes on the text, and drawings by Doug Skinner.

Belly laughs guaranteed.

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Hip! Hip! Allais! He Never Ages!

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Alphonse Allais (1854-1905) was France’s greatest humorist. His elegance, scientific curiosity, preoccupation with language and logic, wordplay and flashes of cruelty inspired Alfred Jarry, as well as succeeding generations of Surrealists, Pataphysicians, and Oulipians. Celebrate the master’s birthday with mirth, mischief, and cocktails!

And one of his sublime books translated by Doug Skinner, from Black Scat, of course.

The Blaireau Affair

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks

Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais

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The Squadron’s Umbrella

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Boo!

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SLEEPYTIME CEMETERY: 40 STORIES by Doug Skinner
Discover a world of ostensibly human specimens behaving in peculiar and unpredictable ways. However, they are often recognizable in a manner we dare not admit. Skinner’s dark humor is deceptively playful and childlike, and that makes our bursts of laughter all the more disturbing.

$14.95 /  trade paperback; 208 pp.

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THE ZOMBIE OF GREAT PERU by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois. Translated by Doug Skinner
A zombie rises from the grave of French literature to stalk the earth once more! This bizarre novel – written in 1697 – marks the first mention of the word “zombie” in world literature. It is a wicked tale of lascivious lust and lunatic desires. Includes a preface by Guillaume Apollinaire.

$10.95 / trade paperback; 146 pp.

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LSN “SPECIAL INFECTION ISSUE” NOW AVAILABLE!

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Due to the raging Ubu Trump shitstorm, we have rushed publication of the “SPECIAL INFECTION ISSUE” of Le Scat Noir.

Number 216 features a cast of luminaries: Alphonse Allais, Samuele Bastianello, Paulo Brito, Colin Dodds, Allen Forrest, Eckhard Gerdes, Derek Pell, Alice Pulaski, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Erik Satie, and Doug Skinner.

Includes the complete, uncensored transcript of Norman Conquest‘s “Ubu Raw: As You Like It.”

The journal is free for all.

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FREE FOR ALL!

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Amid the intensity of our ongoing fundraising drive, it’s always nice to be able to offer our readers something free, such as the current issue of Le Scat Noir. Number 215 features works by Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Paul Kavanagh, Jason E. Rolfe , and Doug Skinner.

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FUN & GAMES & OULIPIAN FICTION

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As the summer heats up, Black Scat offers two treats—a grand anthology and a stunning new novel by Alain Arias-Misson.

Pucker up your lipograms, OULIPO PORNOBONGO has arrived. The three limited edition volumes of this “Anthology of Erotic Wordplay” are out of print and scarce. Now the complete set has been compiled into this juicy paperback edition—Illustrated in shocking full color. Discover inspired works of constrained ecstasy by Alphonse Allais, Alain Arias-Misson, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Rusty Cuffs, Farewell Debut, Tom La Farge, Larry Fondation, Paul Forristal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Roger Leatherwood, D.S. Macpherson, Samantha Memi, Ellen Nations, Opal Louis Nations, Andy O’Clancy, Lance Olsen, Derek Pell, Shane Roeschlein, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Maria Schurr, Lucy Selleck, Kebob G. Shoon, Doug Skinner, Tara Stillions Whitehead, and Giovanni Zuniga. OULIPO PORNOBONGO is a veritable orgy of art, text, and Oulipian mischief.   CLICK TO ORDER

Discover what happens when famous fictional characters surface in the life of a writer. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHARACTER FROM FICTION is an extraordinary work of Oulipian imagination. Alain Arias-Misson has produced an indecently literary novel about a thoroughly picaresque Character. Passages have been plagiarized from a score of great Modernists — from Kafka and Stendhal to Joyce, Austen and Proust, from Strindberg, Constant and Mann to Michaux, Sterne and Beckett, and are woven seamlessly, unidentified, into his “autobiography.” For the Character — a budding author — is the product of those authors whose novels he has been nourished on. Characters step out of their fiction to advise and interfere with his life and he appears on stage in theirs. Where ‘le petit Marcel’s’ nocturnal terrors begin and the Character’s end, or how the Character’s boyhood lusts lead him into the Brussels labyrinth of ladies of the night and how he meets young Daedalus there, already sated in a lady’s embrace, is an open question. The autobiography ends at the age of twenty-one, when like most authors he has read his own most important authors — yet the rest of his life has already been plotted.
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Let the games begin!

Mondo Bongo!

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A robust romp through the fields of potential literature, OULIPO PORNOBONGO: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY presents passionate works of constrained ecstasy by 28 innovative artists and writers from around the world—from Allais to Zuniga. Prepare to be perplexed, seduced, & titillated by the bongo beat.  168 pages, illustrated in full color.

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