Words for Today via Alphonse Allais

Allais was going to Breuil with Gandillot, who had a trunk. Allais only had a shirt. “You can put it in my trunk,” says Gandillot. “What?” says Allais. “And I, do I ask you to put your trunk in my shirt?

Jules Renard

You’ll find more wit and wisdom in CAPTAIN CAP: HIS ADVENTURES, HIS IDEAS, HIS DRINKS by Alphonse Allais, translated from the French with an introduction & illustrations by Doug Skinner.

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Happy Summer Reading!

Summer-Solstice

Please consider these fine titles:

CAPTAIN CAP (VOL. II)  Alphonse Allais. Translated by Doug Skinner
THE MAN WHO WALKED ON AIR & OTHER TALES OF INNOCENCE Alain Arias-Misson
WASTED ENERGIES, BAFFLED THOUGHTS  G. Mackenzie Bacon
A CAMI SAMPLER. Pierre Henri Cami. Translated by John Crombie
THE NEGLECTED WORKS OF NORMAN CONQUEST
THE TWO LOVES OF NUNNY  Farewell Debut
THE OTHER SIDE: THE SHOCKING TRUTH BEHIND 100 CLASSIC PAINTINGS
C.S. Hibbard
KIRGHIZ STEPPES: ACCUMULATED VERBO-VISUALS  M. Kasper
THE WORKS & LIFE OF KOSTY RICHARDS: AN AMERICAN CAREER  Richard Kostelanetz
IT’S FUN TO BE RICH IN AMERICA Michael Leigh & Norman Conquest
THE COMPLETE UNABRIDGED LEXICON  Opal Louis Nations
NICKLE NOIR: THE ART OF JOHN NICKLE  John Nickle
DOKTOR BEY’S SUICIDE GUIDEBOOK  Derek Pell
HOW I BECAME AN IDIOT  Francisque Sarcey  (Alphonse Allais)
HOT HEART OF BOAR & OTHER TASTES  Terry Southern

BLACK SCAT REVIEW – Number One
BLACK SCAT REVIEW – Number Two
BLACK SCAT REVIEW  Number Three

Happy Summer!

In the wings, some special things (second edition)…

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Nearly 100 posts agoon August 18th, 2012 to be precisewe published a roundup of forthcoming books called In the wings, some special things”  There were only a few titles on our list back then, yet we were ambitious, eager, and inspired. Today, this little house has a bookshelf all its own. Moreover, we’re still putting our money on the printed word, despite the world’s panicky flight to digital.

There is (and must be) room for both eBooks and print.

Indeed, a few of our titlesas well as our magazine Black Scat Revieware available for Kindle and other digital platforms. But the emphasis remains on paperback editions to be held, squeezed, sniffed, licked, displayed and read.

Here are a few treats coming your way this summer.

The Facetiae Erotica of Poggio by Poggio Bracciolini.
Facetiae is a collection of humorous and indecent tales by Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), which was originally published in 1470. It features such stories as “Of a Fool, Who Thought His Wife Had Two Openings” and “Visio Francisci Philelphi,” the earliest recorded version of Carvel’s ring. This special Black Scat Classic edition includes a cover and illustrations by artist Jana Vukovic. Based in Belgrade, Serbia, Jana is well known for her unique, hand-lettered designs and book covers. Limited to just 69 copies, this edition is a must-have for one’s private library.

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Be prepared to sail away with two more volumes in our Captain Cap series by Alphonse Allais. Translated and illustrated by the great Doug Skinner, these amusing pun-filled tales featuring Allais’s legendary, hard-drinking captain have never before appeared in English. Leonardo Reviews in the UK called Volume I “…a little gem.”

So head to the shore and keep your eyes peeled for Captain Cap (Vol. III): The Antifilter & Other Inventions, and Captain Cap (Vol. IV): The Sanatorium of the Future.

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Our world is drowning in a deluge of iPhone snapshotsbillions of mirrors reflecting the detritus of daily life… evidence of the fast food we consume, the parade of strangers and passersby, the microscopic gestures pointing to the enshrinement of Self.

QUESTION: what happens when an artist arms herself with an iPhone?

ANSWER: Blink: Visual Antiphonies by Farewell Debut

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photograph by farewell debut

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Happy Summer Reading!

Awesome Love-Like Relationships

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We know you think we’re awesome and love Black Scat Books, but do you like us? I mean really-really like us?

Well now you can prove it. We’ve just launched an awesome page over on farcebook, so please take a moment and “like” us.

Just click here and show us how awesome you are.

It would truly be awesome if all the bloggers on WordPress (who inform us daily how awesome our posts are) actually purchased some of our books. Awesome! Yes, believe it or not, we receive WP email notifications 24/7 from fundamentalists, work-at-home moms, video game entrepreneurs, auto-body parts manufacturers, big game hunters, radio talk-show hosts, et. al. Considering the nature of what we publish, that’s pretty awesome in itself.

Anyhoo… as awesome as these posts may be, our books are far more awesome—trust me.

Since we’re acutely aware of this particular post’s innate awesomeness (heck, we wrote it), there’s no need to remind us…just like us on farcebook and buy a book.

Then we’ll let you know how awesome you are.

Promise.

Book Worship

rkOn Monday 25 March, 7 pm. at McNally-Jackson, 52 Prince Street, between Lafayette and Mulberry Streets, Richard Kostelanetz will present over one dozen recent books rarely, if ever, seen before, most of them extending his earlier achievements at the intersection of literature and book-art, many of them produced with the seductive new technology of “on-demand printing” and thus reasonably priced, at least for now.

Among them are Epiphanies, two vols., 1000 pages, one story to a book page, culminating thirty years of work with resonant single-sentence climax moments in otherwise nonexistent fictions, a typographical feast for a monumental project, 8½” x 11”.

Conceptual Fictions, an extended essay with examples about the framing of implicit narratives.

Visual Fictions, collecting pages designed more than a decade ago for hisOpenings and Complete Stories, along with his Leonardo and Me.

Verbal Fictions, various formally alternative narratives that are not visually enhanced.

Vocal Shorts, an expanded edition of his texts designed for live performance for various numbers of players.

Openings Short Fictions, in the tradition of Epiphaniesthe initial sentences of otherwise nonexistent stories.

Reflections on Loving and Relationships, his aphorisms continuously on right-hand pages against drawings of men and women made by the prominent choreographer Frances Alenikoff.

Furtherest Fictions, which reprints, revised, an earlier collection of his exploration of radically alternative narrative well beyond what every other fictioner is doing.

A Universe of Sentences, a continuous selection of lines by others worth remembering, the whole representing a universe of experience.

1001 Stories Enumerated, single-sentence fictions that, unlike Openings andEpiphanies, are meant to be complete in themselves.

Erotic Minimal Fictions, a variety of prose alternatives constituting the apex of avant-garde erotica.

Fields/Arenas/Pitches/Turfs, which completes the publication of geometric poems—with four, eight, and sixteen words to a large book page–begun thirty years ago.

1-99: A Book, another Kostelanetz narrative, in the tradition of Exhaustive Parallel Intervals (1979), composed only of numerals.

Ghostories, which are fictions created by boldfacing certain letters within a single word (e.g., address).

Homophones: Stories, where narratives are composed from two or sometimes more words that sound alike if spelled differently.

To & Fro &, where the reader’s discovery of narratives depend upon turning the book’s pages.

Ops & Clos, where opening and closings words, each pair with its own typography, are interspersed amidst each other.

English, Really English, in which he collects English words that seem incredible—over five thousand of them alphabetically in several perfectbound volumes.

What I Didn’t Do, which epitomizes intellectual nonhistory as Kostelanetz’s record of proposals that were never supported.

A Book of Eyes, photocopied and velobound, which explores the richly various ways that the single letter between H and J appears in contemporary typography

His presentation may also include such slightly older books as Skeptical Essays (Autonomedia), his latest collection of mostly severe criticism; Three Poems (NY Quarterly), where his experiments with three strains of one-word poetry appear interspersed; Micro Fictions (Archae), a limited-edition hardback with 900 pages of Louis Bury’s imaginatively designed narratives all three words and less; the reprint of his classic anthology of alternative expositions, Essaying Essays (AC Books); and maybe some others.

In May, Black Scat will publish Richard’s new book The Works & Life of Kosty Richards: An American Career in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series (#15)—thus adding to this vast library of experimental fiction.

Live from New York…

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Literary legends Yuriy Tarnawsky (left) and Alain Arias-Misson at the Emily Harris Gallery reception last night. It was a glittering & festive evening marking Alain’s return visit to the Big Apple for a series of readings & performances (see previous post here). He holds in his hand a spanking new copy of his fiction collection, THE MAN WHO WALKED ON AIR & OTHER TALES OF INNOCENCE, published by Black Scat Books.

<<UPDATE—MARCH 16>>

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Alain Arias-Misson reading from his new collection of erotic “tales of innocence” to a packed crowd at the Ukrainian Institute of America. Everyone’s talking about The Man Who Walked On Air.  You can catch Alain tonight at the White Box for an “Avant-Garde Variety Show”‏—don’t miss It.   329 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002 | Tel: 212-714-2347.

Tzara in London

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Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara by Isidore Isou,  (translated by Doug Skinner) was on display recently in London at an exhibition of DADA, LETTRISM, FLUXUS, FUTURISM, SOUND & CONCRETE POETRY, curated by Frédéric Acquaviva. Alas, we were not there for the festivities, but hear that the book was quite popular with attendees.

There are only a few copies remaining in Scat’s limited edition, so if you haven’t nabbed one  … now’s the time. CLICK HERE

tzara2photos courtesy of Frédéric Acquaviva

Word-Freaks of the World, Unite!

Lexicon

A new year, a new imprint: Black Scat Scholastic Classics (“A Wealth of Knowledge at Your Fingertips”), our premiere educational reference series.

We’re pleased to announce the first volume in the series—The Complete Unabridged Lexicon by Opal Louis Nations. Excerpts from this seminal (albeit eccentric) dictionary have appeared over the years in obscure little magazines and avant-garde broadsides, but now Black Scat Books unleashes the entire unexpurgated edition in a deluxe 128-page trade paperback.  OUT OF PRINT

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As for the OED…it’s time to toss that dusty dinosaur in the dumpster and make room for this contemporary masterpiece which, according to The Brighton Daily Herald “…gives new meaning to the word definition.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Opal Louis Nationsphoto by Ellen Nations

Opal Louis Nations was born in Brighton, England. During the mid-1960s he worked as lead vocalist in London clubs with the late Alexis Korner’s Band, and later his own group, The Frays. He helped popularize American soul-based R&B and gospel music in Great Britain. After brief periods with various London R&B bands, he turned his back on singing and began a career as an experimental fiction writer. His textual work, sometimes strange, sometimes humorous in nature, appeared in over 200 small press magazines around the world. He is the author of over 30 books of fiction, including The Strange Case of Inspector Loophole (Véhicule Press), Stabbed to Death with Artificial Respiration (Coach House Press), and Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen of Good Society (Obscure Publications), as well as drawings and collage. As an editor, he brought to the public’s attention fresh young poets and writers, both in the publication of books and through his literary magazine periodical, Strange Faeces. Nations currently spends his time interviewing gospel performers, writing articles on a regular basis for Blues & Rhythm, Soul Bag, and Dr. Jazz magazines (to name a few), conducting music research and compiling CD reissues for English and U.S. record companies.