THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT
Category: book launch
The #2 Bestseller!
THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT
Praise for MERDE À LA BELLE ÉPOQUE
“BLACK SCAT BOOKS has launched from the pits of lit this shameful little anthology, wonderfully translated and prefaced with futile brilliance by Doug Skinner. I was immediately disgusted and attracted by these turn-of-the-century French luminaries indulging in dirty little boy lyrics and lunatic stories, many of them in the scatological society that hung out at Le Chat Noir…” —Alain Arias-Misson, author of Theatre of Incest
“Incroyable!… Alfred (a fart man from way back) Jarry would surely relish this collection–one which combines force-feeding with delicate odoriferous leakage—something for every taste!” —Nile Southern, author of The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy
“These dirty little secrets are canonical secretions of literary genius. Fin de siecle Parisian scatology at its best.” —D. Harlan Wilson, author of Hitler: The Terminal Biography, Freud: The Penultimate Biography, and Douglass: The Lost Autobiography
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This hilarious scatological anthology features stories, a song, poems, a play, a rebus, and naughty jokes by period luminaries. Contributors include Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Edmond Haraucourt, Vincent Hyspa, Maurice Mac-Nab, and Erik Satie.
The collection has been tastefully compiled and effervescently translated from the French by Doug Skinner.
This limited edition includes notes on the translations and a brief biography of each contributor.
#2 on our Bestseller List— don’t settle for #1!
Merde à La Belle Époque
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 24
Perfect-bound chapbook, 48 pp.
Limited to 310 copies. – $12.50
*A discreet digital edition is also available ($7.50)
Happy Birthday, Rabelais!
Surrealism Lives!
We start the New Year off with a stunning collection of texts by Gisèle Prassinos—one of surrealism’s most gifted voices.
Prassinos was discovered at age 14 by André Breton who included her poetry in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir (1940). Breton commented: “The tone of Gisèle Prassinos is unique: all the poets are jealous of it.” Indeed, her haunting, childlike style remains unrivaled and her stories timeless.
Gisèle Prassinos reading her poems to the Surrealists (1934)
Photo © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris
Exquisitely translated from the French by Ellen Nations, this limited edition includes 20 transformative texts, plus eight original watercolor paintings by the artist Bruce Hutchinson.
That half the works in this collection were written when Prassinos was just fourteen and fifteen is evidence of how rare a prodigy she was. The surrealist’s sense of the word marvelous certainly applies to these strange creations.
Here is a taste of the text “Filial Devotion”…
He now found himself in the middle of a large lake where furniture made of mahogany, spruce and rosewood swam.Young girls in their panties gently fought each other by now and again blowing on their flushed arms.The man believed he recognized one of his daughters. But thinking it was only a hallucination, he retreated by swimming up to the adjoining door.There, he found himself in the presence of a very large and hairy stag.The stag’s eyes slowly became bigger and bigger as they gradually feasted on his whole egg-shaped face.
Only 85 copies are available for purchase.
OUT OF PRINT
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Ellen Nations, translator and photographer, grew up in Norway and has for many years made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her husband Opal Louis Nations. Together they published the experimental literature and art magazine Strange Faeces. In addition to her translations of Gisèle Prassinos, she has translated works by Alain Jouffroy, Paul Nougé, Raymond Radiguet, Joyce Mansour and others.
Bruce Hutchinson created the watercolor paintings in Surrealist Texts while in his mid-20s as part of his weekly correspondence with Opal and Ellen Nations. He wrote his letters on small pieces of paper with ink drawings on one side, original watercolors on the other. His artwork has appeared in many small press publications.
Doppelgängbangers—Live on Stage!
If you thought the Theatre of the Absurd was dead, think again—it’s alive & kicking in ‘S A BIRD by Eckhard Gerdes. This crazy, Patchenesque drama subverts expectations at every turn. It flips words upside down, turns them inside-out, and serves them up like waffles of Dada.
There’s a madcap cast of characters, too—complete with dead ringers—a sax player, pianist, a soprano and You (#’s 1, 2, 3).
We invite you to enjoy this jazzy, gender-bending battle of the saxes.
‘S A BIRD
A play by Eckhard Gerdes
Black Scat Classic Interim Edition No. 06
Perfect-bound, 68 pp., Limited to 100 copies.
$14
CLICK HERE to order.
A Gala Reading of CAPTAIN CAP
Doug Skinner read from (and signed copies of) his sparkling translation of Alphonse Allais’s Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks at the Jalopy Theater in Brooklyn tonight. By all accounts it was a delightful performance and Alphonse would have been proud—not to mention inebriated, as Captain Cap cocktails were on the house.
If you missed the performance, don’t miss the book which is available on Amazon here.
<< Photographs by Farewell Debut. >>
A Foetal Treat is Born!
In 2012, Opal Louis Nations gave new meaning to the word “definition” with The Complete Unabridged Lexicon—a classic reference of lexical eccentricity. Today, the distinguished author and artist gives new meaning to the word “personhood” with his masterpiece of speculative collage and text—Embryo World & Others Stripped Bare.
This lavishly illustrated Black Scat Classic Interim Edition (#05) unveils a future ripe with dark foetal visions—at once feral and sublime—fresh from the fertile womb of Opal Nations.
A visit to Embryo World at this moment of conception transports one to unborn umbilical galaxies where amorphodytes commune and drool, where past is both present and future.
Is it sacrilege or ‘pataphysics? Dada or prenatal hallucination?
Enter Embryo World and discover the naked truth—the flesh & blood & skin & bone of human destiny.
In full foetal color. Limited to 125 copies. OUT OF PRINT
Good Nudes!
We’re celebrating the release of MOO NUDES in this full color, limited Black Scat Classic Interim Edition.
This provocative collection of nude studies by Austrian painter Monika Mori—known internationally as “Moo”—was created with mixed media on stretched canvas and watercolors. Playful, moody, seductive, and aloof, the figures are animated by the dazzling colors of Ms. Mori’s palette, which bring to life these abstract forms. Moo Nudes is a slyly erotic celebration of the female body.
This edition is limited to 125 copies. SOLD OUT
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Monika Mori (known internationally as the artist MOO) was born in 1960 in Moedling, Austria, and studied Fine Art with Prof. Anneliese Beschorner. She amplified her scope as an artist by formal training and workshops in Spain, Germany and Florida. Since 2008, her work has been exhibited worldwide and is included in major and private collections.
In 2012, Black Scat Books published a collection of her work titled Shattered Rainbow. This volume represents her interaction with materials and colors in varied techniques. Studies of the female body are applied in mixed media technique on canvas with soft pastels, acrylics and oil. Her powerful watercolor paintings on artist
paper celebrate erotic femininity and the eternal enigma of women.
Ms. Mori currently lives in Maria Enzersdorf, Austria.
The Wait is Over!
“It is upon this one comedy that Balzac can lay any claims as a dramatic artist.”
—The New York Times
The literary event of the season has arrived—Mark Axelrod’s sublime translation of this obscure (but highly influential) comedy by Honoré de Balzac.
Originally presented under the title Mercodet or The Good Businessman, this play in three acts was perhaps the inspiration for the unseen character in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
102 years before Godot ‘s debut, Mercodet opened at the Theatre du Gymnase-Dramatique in Paris on August 24, 1851. Curiously enough, it featured a character named “Godeau” who never appears.
A comic coincidence? One of life’s little absurdities? Translator Mark Axelrod was determined to find out.
He met and corresponded with Beckett. And in Waiting for Godeau we present a rare, unpublished letter from Beckett in which the burning question is answered.
Or is it?
You be the judge.
Waiting for Godeau
by Honoré de Balzac
Translated from the French by Mark Axelrod
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 22
138 pp. Edition limited to 250 copies
$25.00
Play Dough
From Italy with love comes Peppo Bianchessi‘s CONTEMPORARY ART FOR RICH KIDS—a richly illustrated activity book. It’s a whirlwind tour of contemporary art and lucre, designed for those born with horns, forked tongues, and silver spoons in their mouths. It’s crammed to the till with fun and games, and guaranteed to be profitable—at least for the author. The flaming full color will dazzle your eyeballs. A surprise on every page!
The Grand Madcap Edition of CAPTAIN CAP has Launched!
We’ve jumped the gun and released our mammoth deluxe trade paperback edition of Alphonse Allais’s CAPTAIN CAP: HIS ADVENTURES, HIS IDEAS, HIS DRINKS—translated by Doug Skinner. This is the complete & unabridged edition of the original 1902 French classic. 370 pages, including eight uncollected “Captain Cap” stories, plus a “Cappendix” of rare historical pictures.
The book is profusely illustrated with witty drawings by Doug Skinner, in addition to his extensive notes on the translation and swashbuckling introduction.
If you missed any of the limited edition capsized Captain Cap chapbooks in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series, you can get the whole kit and caboodle now, plus oodles more.
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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 ours), Allais is needed now more than ever. His mischievous work remains fresh, funny, and always surprising.
DOUG SKINNER has written numerous scores for theater and dance, particularly for actor/clown Bill Irwin (The Regard of Flight). His articles, cartoons, and translations have appeared in The Fortean Times, Fate, The Anomalist, Nickelodeon, Weirdo, Black Scat Review, and other periodicals. His translation of Isidore Isou’s Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara was published by Black Scat Books.
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