THE BOOK WITH THE GREEN COVER. A collection of Norman Conquest‘s verbo-visual vices, including posters, charts, mock book & magazine covers, rectified readymades, typographic diversions, found novels, and other detritus. Illustrated with color plates and silverware.
Absurdist Texts & Documents #36
“A harsh, hilarious, scurrilous, and scatological satire.”
—Ed Simon, JSTOR Daily
Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was considered one of the greatest English satirists — a nimble wit and scribbler of sublime wordplay, parodies & pornographic puns.
Hailed by Graham Greene and Ezra Pound, Wilmot is perhaps best known for his outrageous libertine satires, including this wickedly funny Restoration drama.
Originally titled The Farce of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, DEBAUCH-O-RAMA is an absurdist “closet drama” – written to be read aloud and not performed. It consists of five acts in raunchy rhyming couplets and a madcap cast of characters:
CAST
Let the curtain rise and the laughter begin!
DEBAUCH-O-RAMA
A Restoration Closet Drama
by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
Pocket Erotica [№ 11 ]
65 pp.; paper, perfect bound; 4 x 6 inches; $10
ISBN 978-1-7357646-2-7
“This witty and seductive translation will make libertines of us all. Connoisseurs of high-literary pornography will cherish Thérèse Finds Happiness.”
—Catherine D’Avis, author of Angel of Everything
“…arouses the erogenous zones as well as one’s funny bone. Bravo Thérèse!”
—Amandine Lévêque
“Potent and playful, Thérèse Finds Happiness offers up sexual ecstasy, libertine philosophy, and amusing satirical scenes. The translation adds a contemporary edge to the text, and the tale’s ‘happy ending’ is a tour de force.”
—Lawrence Hamilton
The Pope’s Mustard-Maker (Le Moutardier du pape) was the last work that Alfred Jarry finished, a few months before his death in 1907. It is a bawdy three-act farce loosely based on the medieval legend of Pope Joan, with a huge cast and lively songs bubbling with rhymes and wordplay.
Readers who know Jarry only from Ubu or his novels may be surprised that he wrote operettas, but his are fully Jarryesque, with his usual gusto for smutty jokes, legend, folklore, puns, wild invention, and popular theater. In his hands, Pope Joan becomes Jane, who runs off with her lover and disguises herself as pope. How will she pass inspection on the slotted chair? What will she do when her husband shows up? And has there ever been another production number celebrating the spiritual virtues of enemas?
This is the first translation of this major work; it also includes an introduction and notes by the translator, Doug Skinner.
All hail The Pope’s Mustard-Maker!
Balzac’s WAITING FOR GODEAU was just named #1 on Amazon’s New Releases in French Dramas & Plays. Congratulations to translator Mark Axelrod.
Go Godeau!
CLICK HERE to order a copy
“It is upon this one comedy that Balzac can lay any claims as a dramatic artist.”
—The New York Times
If you missed the limited edition published in 2013, the wait is over. Mark Axelrod’s translation of this obscure comedy by Balzac is now available worldwide on Amazon in a handsome paperback edition.
Originally presented under the title Mercadet or The Good Businessman, this play in three acts appears to have inspired the creation of the unseen character in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Indeed, 102 years before Godot ‘s debut, Mercadet opened at the Theatre du Gymnase-Dramatique in Paris and—curiously enough—featured a character named “Godeau” who never appears on stage.
A comic coincidence? One of life’s little absurdities?
The translator met and corresponded with Beckett, and in WAITING FOR GODEAU we present an unpublished letter from Beckett in which the burning question is answered.
Or is it?
You be the judge.
WAITING FOR GODEAU
by Honore de Balzac
Translated from the French by Mark Axelrod
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
trade paperback; 154 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0692738108
$12.95
blackscatbooks.com 