The Grand Madcap Edition of CAPTAIN CAP has Launched!

October 8, 2013October 8, 2013Leave a comment

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.

ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

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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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ARE YOU IN THE UK? CLICK HERE TO ORDER

ARE YOU IN FRANCE? CLICK HERE TO ORDER

ARE YOU IN GERMANY? CLICK HERE TO ORDER

There’s no government, but at least there’s still Art…

October 1, 2013October 2, 2013Leave a comment

Pamper them with oils, swaddle them in the spoils of war. Watercolors, pastels, collage, découpage, gouache and the glory of riches. Feed their pointy little heads with the visions of well-heeled contemporary masters. Shower them with glitter from the gods. Smother them in dark museums and galleries. Clobber the slobbering blobs with sculpted urns, lash them with brushes dripping illusions. Give them the gift of fab, fame and fortune! Bestow upon them this Fun and Profitable Activity Book by one of Italy’s greatest living artists—Peppo Bianchessi.

RICH KIDS

CONTEMPORARY ART FOR RICH KIDS is a full color, illustrated guide to modern rat and the wonders of creation’s maze. Let the kiddies ogle, spit, guffaw and squirm as they learn and play. Remember: rich kids represent the future of the planet. These little amorphodytes are our future landlords & banksters; they are budding mobsters, jihadis, politicians, investors, meth-heads and speculators. They were born to remake the world spin in their own greedy image.

Spoil them now while there’s still time. Give them something to do. Or read it yourself. It’s the breakfast of Duchampions.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER this luxurious little book of dreams.
A Black $cat Scholastic Classic.

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ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Peppo Bianchessi is a multimedia artist from Italy. He is a “mittel-European”, a funny intellectual strongly influenced by Japanese culture. In Italy, Multimedia Artists have been around since the Renaissance and, before Apple Computers and multi-tasking, they were simply called Renaissance Men. When he was 20, Peppo went to the Venice Art Biennale for the first time. He was surprised to see that some of the so-called “young artists” were over 50. Recently he returned to Venice and discovered some teenagers were considered “young artists.” Peppo is now 45 years old and has never been a young artist. And it’s probably too early to consider him an Old Master, but he’s working on it. That is, to become old, not a Master. On many occasions he has tried to be a contemporary artist, but his timing was always wrong. Thus, he has accepted his real vocation: undermining the education of children (and adults) through funny and provocative books.

Contemporary Art For Rich Kids is his first book to be published in the United States.

All Hands on Deck! The Future Has Arrived!

September 22, 2013December 29, 2013Leave a comment

Ahoy mates! —the fourth and final volume in the Captain Cap Collection has arrived—more madcap tales by the great French absurdist, Alphonse Allais. His hard-drinking, philosophizing, womanizing, & pioneering Captain Cap sails again to some hilariously strange shores. The pun-filled text has been brilliantly translated (and profusely illustrated) by Doug Skinner—and includes a penetrating preface and extensive notes on the text.

If you’ve never heard of “crocodile bridges” or “smell-buoys”, then you simply must read this literary landmark—the first English translation of “…one of the great masterpieces of humorous literature.”—nooSFere Littérature.

Come on in, the water’s fine…

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY OF THIS LIMITED EDITION

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Volumes I – III are out of print..

TINTIN lives!

September 15, 2013September 15, 2013Leave a comment

Tintin Meets the Dragon Queen in The Return of the Maya to Manhattan is a staggering work of imagination by a major force in experimental fiction.

“The amazing palaces and pyramids that crown the skyscrapers of southern Manhattan dance fraternally with Central American jungle pyramids, the ancient Maya dance with modern intellectuals, the games of the masses and the debates of the elite, Bourbon princesses and ancestral Maya princesses, in a word a literary Apocalypse in a dance! At the start of this novel I heard resonances of the later Henry James, and in the sections on Tintin, Lewis Carroll…worthy literary companions, without a doubt! But I would like to add Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs, which does not however detract in the slightest from the originality of Arias-Misson’s style. The novel provides rare literary enjoyment and is a source of serious and enigmatic meditation.”
—Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, distinguished philosopher of Spain and novelist, author of Iluminaciones and Extravias, recently of En la red del tiempo.

The narrator and a select team of real-life friends, eminent Spanish philosopher, Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, German shamanic artist/poet, Carlfriedrich Claus, Dada erudite, Parisian Marc Dachy and the sophisticated American novelist, Walter Abish, along with assorted cartoon figures, Tintin and Captain Haddock, investigate bizarre sightings of historic Maya personages and the apparition of ghostly Maya pyramids in the streets of Manhattan. They discover that the bloodcurdling Dragon Queen and her marauding, illegitimate, campy son and S&M mate, Smoking Rabbit, who introduced bloody “axe” warfare in the Petén Peninsula in the seventh century, are pushing through the time-boundaries of ancient Tikal. The legends and exploits of the latter are bizarrely paralleled in the marital mayhem of the dysfunctional New York couple, Augustus and his (maternal) spouse. Their risky voyage into the past climaxes with the deadly Maya ball-game, pok-a-tok, in which the captain of the losing team—loses his head! And the narrator’s romance with a Maya princess is doomed.

“Fusing cultural milieus continents and millennia apart, Alain Arias-Misson defies gravity as well as time and geography in this brilliant phantasmagorical novel. I was hanging on to my disorientation on every page of Augustus Sykey and his childhood cartoon sidekick Tintin’s thrilling odyssey through the ritual crimes and erotic depths of a Manhattan dreamscape.”

—William Niederkorn, writer, composer, artist, and man of the theatre

Trade paperback on sale now in the U.S. and Europe. Click here to order on Amazon

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About the Author

Alain Arias-Misson’s nomadic character has brought him to live and work in the U.S., Belgium, North Africa, Spain, Italy, France and Central America. He currently lives in Paris and Venice. He has published six novels and four art books, and his stories have appeared in many publications such as Partisan Review, Paris Review, Brooklyn Rail, Fiction International, and Evergreen Review. His “literal objects” have been shown in museums and galleries around the world and his “public poems” enacted in the streets of a score of cities. His novel, Theatre of Incest (Dalkey Press) is currently being published in France. His collection of stories, The Man Who Walked On Air & Other Tales of Innocence is also available from Black Scat Books.

Your room is waiting . . .

August 31, 2013September 13, 2013Leave a comment

“The maid who lives in the attic room above me can barely make it down the stairs any longer. She has been in my service for twenty years, so I can hardly dismiss her. But all night I hear the creak of her bedsprings as she tosses about, unable to sleep. The room is too small, her back bent from stooping. Her little mouse feet scutter about the floor nervously. She does not know where to go. I can call on her to do nothing. I imagine her growing younger in sleep, growing younger, until one day footsteps are heard on the attic stairs, and a small child enters my room and draws the curtain.”

So begins this haunting stay at the Hotel Ortolan. We are drawn in slowly, seduced by the poetic text. We are at turns frightened, amused, disoriented. We move through these rooms, these impossible spaces like captive guests. The hotel itself cannot possibly exist, and yet evidence lies before us in a series of evocative photographs by Michel Varisco.

We invite you to experience this surrealist collaboration.

Your room is waiting…

Hotel Ortolan
Text by Tom Whalen / photographs by Michel Varisco
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 19
Edition of 125 copies. $12.50

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

All Urges Go Haywire

August 24, 2013August 25, 2013Leave a comment

The new issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW is now available.

INSIDE:
Eurydice gets naked and dances on the body of America; Ryan Francis Kelly monkeys with words; Samantha Memi finds god; Doug Rice invents forgetting; Harold Jaffe takes aim at macho; Loren Kantor carves iconic faces; Pipa Anais Gaubert drinks wine in Berlin; Peter Cherches loses it in the pasta aisle; Frank Pulaski unveils an art-whore peep show; Alain Arias-Misson reinvents the comic book; Yuriy Tarnawsky lets his hair down; and Poggio Bracciolini dishes up some ancient (indecent) delights.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Happy BLINK Day!

August 22, 2013August 28, 2013Leave a comment

PHOTOGRAPH BY FAREWELL DEBUT

“A digital Rorschach exploration.” –Diana Scheunemann

Join the celebration here.

Eyes Wide Open

August 14, 2013August 26, 2013Leave a comment

blinkcover

Farewell Debut‘s astonishing new collection of images were all captured with an iPhone. She opens our eyes to strange, subterranean visions that vanish in a blink, but return to haunt.

PRAISE FOR BLINK

“A digital Rorschach exploration.” –Diana Scheunemann

“A real visual feast! If this is a farewell to Debut’s debut, I can’t wait to see what the next meal will be.” –Yuriy Tarnawsky, author of The Placebo Effect Trilogy

“The kaleidoscopic eccentricity in Farewell’s work seduces you into a visionary world of colour and form.” –Samantha Memi (UK)

“Her images are like memories snapping fire.” –Derek Pell

Surreal, eerie, absurd, BLINK is one artist’s response to a world drowning in snapshots.

Is it art? Anti-art? Anti-iPhone? Or a clarion call to rebel?

From the artist’s introduction:

…fine art is dead and we’re destined to listen to thin pop music while wearing The Bright Capri and The Crossing Waters Sandal in Tangerine. Or not.

Over 100 pages of unforgettable color photographs in a limited edition of 100 copies, perfect-bound, in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series.

Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

CLICK HERE to order a copy.

Classic Porn Reborn

July 16, 2013July 17, 2013Leave a comment

Black Scat Books is delighted to bring this ancient classic back into print in a perfect-bound edition designed for the modern connoisseur. Facetiae is a collection of humorous and indecent tales by Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), first 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 limited edition includes a hand-lettered cover by artist Jana Vukovic.

Over a hundred pages of lascivious mirth!

If you haven’t been collecting our Black Scat Classic Interim Editions, now is a good time to start.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

New Issue!

May 31, 2013Leave a comment

3cover

IN THIS ISSUE: Alphonse Allais and François Caradec get high; Doug Skinner translates and reports; Carla Wilson interviews a faux Warhol; David Macpherson’s detective reveals the clues; Jim McMenamin turns on some screen gems; Nile Southern travels back to the future; Tom Whalen serves up a love story; Opal Nations strips the flesh off Embryo World; Erik Belgum offers up some poisons; Farewell Debut blinks visual antiphonies; Larry Fondation explores Harold Jaffe’s Revolutionary Brain. Plus a portfolio of drawings by the late Peter Hanssen.

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE