Category: book

A coffee table chapbook for the john . . .

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Adrienne Auvray has devoted her professional career to the documentation and philosophical interpretation of toilets. This pictorial exploration and  explication d’image reveals our common humanity at its most fundamental.

This is the penultimate coffee table chapbook.

PISSOIRS, BIDETS, CRAPPERS & THRONES
by Adrienne Auvray
with an introduction by Thomas P. Unterbottem
5.25″ x 8.25″ – perfect-bound paper, 64 pp., illustrated
with full color photographs
Price: $15  paper /  $6 digital edition

PHOTOGRAPHY / PHILOSOPHY / TOILETS

On sale May 1st.

Think Pink! — Pink Buddha Has Landed!

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In 2009, artist Terri Lloyd’s iconic Pink Buddha landed at Ground Zero, i.e., the L.A. art scene, and has been making absurdist mischief ever since. One never knows in what form the imperturbable PB will materialize. It has been sighted in guerrilla theater performances, on YouTube, Facebook, in small press art-lit mags, in commie porn chapbooks, posters, paintings, and other subterranean venues. Now, finally, Black Scat Books proudly presents a deluxe collection – a full color trade paperback edition – devoted to Pink Buddha’s inspirational (and educational!) mantras.

pbrWHEN I GROW UP is destined to win the hearts and minds of art connoisseurs and rabid consumers the world over.

 

 

 

WHEN I GROW UP AND OTHER MANTRAS
by Terri Lloyd

74 pages; full color, large format (8.5 x 11 inches) collector’s edition. $24.95
ISBN: 978-0692633915

This title is out of print.

Important Notice from the Publisher

BLACK SCAT REVIEW #14 — The “Pure Lust” Issue  — was originally released on March 9, 2016 and was available for sale in the United States and Europe on Amazon. That is, until March 25 when – without warning or explanation – the printer, Createspace (owned by Amazon), blocked sales of the issue and listed it as “suppressed.”

On Amazon’s sales page the “buy now” button was removed and the issue listed as “Out of Print—Limited Availability.” Adding to the absurdity, a preview of the suppressed issue’s contents remained visible via Amazon’s “Look inside” feature.

Despite repeated attempts by the publisher to ascertain the reason behind this unwarranted act of censorship, Createspace has not responded. Customers who attempted to purchase the issue complained to Amazon directly, yet received no satisfactory response. One customer who managed to order a copy before the purchase button was removed was informed by a sales representative: “…I am personally following this issue. Once we get more information, I’ll write back and let you know… In an effort to compensate for this delay, I’ve upgraded the shipping method for this order to One-day shipping, at no extra charge.”

It is still not clear if the magazine will, in fact, ever be shipped.

new coverToday, using an alternative printer (MagCloud), we’re releasing the complete and unexpurgated issue. Only modifications to formatting and the cover’s color have been made. The ISBN & barcode for the original release have been removed.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO BUY A PRINT OR DIGITAL EDITION and find out what they didn’t want you to see.

SUPPORT YOUR FREE PRESS!

 

 

Ready for Sleepytime? Here’s a free sample…

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Next month, Black Scat will publish Doug Skinner‘s much anticipated collection of short stories, SLEEPYTIME CEMETERY. This event will certainly have Skinner’s growing cult following dancing on the grave of 21st century Literature. So, too, should fans of absurdist fiction and dark humor prepare to rejoice.

For those who have yet to encounter Mr. Skinner’s peculiar creations, we offer here a FREE story from the book.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF

RAP SHEET Raves!

MISSING MYSTERIES: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF NONEXISTENT MYSTERIES by Derek Pell has just been reviewed by the influential RAP SHEET blog.

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Classics Both “Lost” and Reinterpreted

Several times over the past few years, I’ve mentioned that Northern California artist, photographer, and author Derek Pell was creating a pictorial collection of 100 “missing mysteries,” mischievous covers he created for whodunit and thriller novels that never actually existed…   CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW

The Game is Afoot!

“Pell’s satire doesn’t lack for sharp edges. His twisted humor is sure to appeal to crime-fiction lovers.” —THE RAP SHEET

Black Scat proudly presents Derek Pell’s  MISSING MYSTERIES — the most baffling and hilarious reference book ever published. This  special collector’s edition features a complete history of nonexistent mysteries (1840 – 2015) in one deluxe, large format paperback.

Packed with pulp, crimes, dicks, dames, thugs, puns, gumshoes and stoolies. Loaded with laughs, maps, gaffs, noir, conundrums, puzzles & quizzes. 196 pages crammed with over 100 full-color cover reproductions, plus startling excerpts, scathing reviews, outlandish blurbs and mysterious synopses.

PROMO-FINAL
[click on cover for larger view]

In the words of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block: “Derek Pell is quite mad, in rather a brilliant way.”

Novelist Robert Coover has called Pell “…a wordplay master and a parodist of great wit and cunning,”  and MISSING MYSTERIES offers further evidence.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER DIRECT FROM OUR PRINTER  / CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

Three Plays by D. Harlan Wilson

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Black Scat Books is proud to add D. Harlan Wilson to its list of luminaries. This is the renegade author’s first collection of plays, and it’s guaranteed to provoke  standing ovations — or perhaps we should say “fistfights in the orchestra” as Jarry’s Ubu Roi did so long, long ago.

Over the last two decades, D. Harlan Wilson has established himself as a writer of avant-garde fiction that has been called many names, ranging from speculative, literary and postmodern to irreal, bizarro, absurdist and “splatter-schtick.” Some say he defies categorization and is a genre unto himself. In THREE PLAYS, Wilson subverts traditional forms of stagecraft, unmans the helm of narrative, and exposes the nightmares that distinguish everyday life in urban and suburban America. Channeling Samuel Beckett and Jon Fosse in one scene, Russell Edson and Alfred Jarry in the next, he subjects actors as much as audiences and readers to mindless violence and torrid irrationality under the auspices of literary theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy and science. These plays belong more to an ultramodern zoo than a modern-day theater. In “The Triangulated Diner,” a Camero fishtails across the stage and runs over actors as jungle animals attack the audience. An elephant is hung onstage by a crane for stomping on the head of an abusive handler in “The Dark Hypotenuse.” “Primacy” finds a husband and wife struggling to write the perfect obituary, ideally one that includes wuxia death matches and flying holy men . . . This collection describes a microcosm that is at once uncanny and familiar, weird and ordinary, comedic and horrific. Wilson puts the human condition on trial and challenges us to view theatrics in a different light.

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The official publication date is March 15th, but ADVANCE COPIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon. CLICK HERE to order.

THREE PLAYS BY D. HARLAN WILSON
Trade paperback; 160 pages; $12.95
ISBN-13: 978-0692631539

Cover photograph by Lodiza LePore / DESIGN BY NORMAN CONQUEST

Alphonse Allais’s Absurd “Affair”!

TBA

Adapted to film four times, “L’Affaire Blaireau” has remained popular and in print in France since its original appearance in 1899. This is its first publication in English. It is humorist Alphonse Allais’s only novel and, in the words of translator Doug Skinner: “It isn’t quite as wild or cruel as his early stories, but I find it delicious anyway. Summer in the provinces, the shrewd but impressionable Blaireau, futile political squabbles, a ridiculous but charming love story, what more could one want? And innocence is rewarded!”

Here’s a taste from Chapter I:

excerpt

THE BLAIREAU AFFAIR is a rare find to be savored by the author’s growing circle of fans in America.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY ON AMAZON

About the author:
ALPHONSE ALLAIS (1854 – 1905) began his career in Paris during the Belle Epoque. He was particularly active at the legendary cabaret Le Chat Noir, where he wrote for and edited the weekly paper. He quickly became known for his deadpan wit and inexhaustible imagination. Among other things, he also exhibited some of the first monochromatic pictures (such as his all-white “First Communion of Chlorotic Girls in the Snow” in 1883) and composed the first silent piece of music: “Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man” (1884).

He was a crucial influence on Alfred Jarry, as well as on the Surrealists: Breton included him in his ANTHOLOGY OF BLACK HUMOR, and Duchamp was reading him on the day he died. Allais’s fascination with wordplay, puns, and holorhymes led Oulipo to call him an “anticipatory plagiarist”; the Pataphysical College dubbed him their “Patacessor.” His books have remained in print in France, and the Académie Alphonse Allais has awarded a literary prize in his honor since 1954.