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
Category: drama
Standing Room Only
The play’s the thing….
We proudly raise the curtain on this new collection by Eckhard Gerdes—three plays in a variety of styles which challenge preconceptions and subvert complacency.
Who knew that novelist Eckhard Gerdes was also a playwright? Members of the audience who saw the absurdist play ’S a Bird first performed at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago in 1994 did, and they almost died laughing in the process. The children of King-Edison Elementary School in Macon, Georgia, did when they argued about who would get to play which character in Clockwise in their school production in 2000. And a few dozen close friends of Eckhard Gerdes did when they read the script of The Death of Anton Webern, a play that has until now never been published or performed. These three plays offered here are very different from one another, but all show that distinctive voice and personality for which the writing of Eckhard Gerdes has become known. Enjoy these glimpses into the mind of one of America’s most innovative novelists as he depicts the drama and absurdity of human relationships.
“A writer clearly impatient with the currently devalued conventions of modern writing. His work is a fresh wind!” —Michael Moorcock
THREE PLAYS BY ECKHARD GERDES
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
trade paperback; 132 pages
$12.95
Three Plays by D. Harlan Wilson
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.
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
Theatre of the Absurd—Opening Night!
“Witkiewicz takes up and continues the vein of dream and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the dramatists of the absurd—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Arrabal—of the late nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties.” -Martin Esslin
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (pen name: Witkacy) was desperate to get out of revolutionary St. Petersburg after the Bolsheviks seized power. Back in Poland, eager to make money and a name for himself, Witkacy began to write plays in a style that he called “Pure Form,” which foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd. By the time that he wrote VAHAZAR (1921), Witkacy had achieved a dreamlike dramaturgy: centered on the paranoid and crazed despot, Vahazar, and spiraling outwards through an anthill society of automatons, religious cults, and quack scientific and social theories, this play is about being trapped in nothingness.
This translation of the play by Celina Wieniewska was commissioned by Stefan Themerson in 1967, and later announced as a forthcoming title by the legendary Gaberbocchus Press. Somehow the project was sidetracked and has never appeared until this Black Scat Books publication. Paul Rosheim, publisher of Obscure Publications and scholar of Themersonia, provides a sublime introduction with biographical information about Witkacy and the story of this translation. The book also includes an appendix featuring Franciszka Themerson’s “Vahazar: A Few Suggestions for Design.”
“…Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz and myself, the three musketeers of the Polish avant-garde.” —Witold Gombrowicz
Available now on Amazon in the U.S. and Europe.
Click here to order this masterpiece of the absurd.
In the wings, some special things (eighth edition)…
On the 4th of July, Black Scat Books celebrated three years of publishing. In that short span of time we’ve released nearly 100 titles, which may make us seem bigger than we are. We’re still a small, independent press that barely scrapes by each month. Word of mouth is very important to us as that’s how most of our readers discover us, i.e., a friend whispers in their ear. We invite you to pass the good word along. And if you aren’t following this blog, please enter your email address on this page and subscribe— that way you’ll always know what’s waiting in the wings.
Remember, good lit happens here.
Kiss that Gideon goodbye!
Holy cow!—it’s the gospel according to Doug Skinner—featuring articles, short stories, verses, columns, literary essays, alphabets, metrical translations, monologues, talks, cartoons, rounds, lipogrammatic smut, a puppet show, a ventriloquism routine, and a one-act play!
THE DOUG SKINNER DOSSIER is destined to be in every motel room across the land. This divine illustrated edition features over 240 pages of wit, wisdom, and profundity. It fairly overflows with inspirational black humor and some rather dangerous (albeit gloomy) ideas that might not be suitable for nuclear family get-togethers. But — swear to god — it’s a hell of a good book!
CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON
Here’s a peek at the contents:
Want to try before you buy? Download a FREE excerpt here.
The Inner Skinner
Coming this summer….a blessed compendium featuring articles, short stories, verses, columns, literary essays, alphabets, metrical translations, monologues, talks, cartoons, rounds, lipogrammatic smut, a puppet show, a ventriloquism routine, and a one-act play. 248 pages of pure, unadulterated Skinner. Holy cow!
Watch this space,
Zombies R Us
Time to walk (or is it rock?) with the Robot Zombies of Angkor Wat.
Wat’s new? Why, this new experimental soundtrack mix from Midnight Grindhouse by the one and only DrG Supreme. Man, this audio is cool and ear-ie, so don those headphones, crank up the decibels and trance on over to our Scat Trax page.
Give Different . . .
To order, click on a title in the list below.
CAPTAIN CAP: HIS ADVENTURES, HIS IDEAS, HIS DRINKS. Alphonse Allais. Translated by Doug Skinner
SELECTED PLAYS OF ALPHONSE ALLAIS. Alphonse Allais. Translated by Doug Skinner
TINTIN MEETS THE DRAGON QUEEN in THE RETURN OF THE MAYA TO MANHATTAN.
Alain Arias-Misson
WAITING FOR GODEAU. Honoré de Balzac. Translated by Mark Axelrod
SWEET AND VICIOUS. Suzanne Burns
DON’T WORRY, IT’S NOT ABOUT HATS. Norman Conquest
THE NEGLECTED WORKS OF NORMAN CONQUEST. Norman Conquest
REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS. Norman Conquest
‘S A BIRD. a play by Eckhard Gerdes
THE SUGAR NUMBERS. Judson Hamilton
THE COMPLETE UNABRIDGED LEXICON. Opal Louis Nations
SURREALIST TEXTS. Gisèle Prassinos
WOMEN THAT DON’T EXIST. Frank Pulaski
AN INCONVENIENT CORPSE. Jason E. Rolfe
FISHSLICES. Paul Rosheim
THE UNKNOWN ADJECTIVE AND OTHER STORIES. Doug Skinner
HOROSCRAPES. Doug Skinner
WALLOOMSAC; A WEEK ON THE RIVER. David R. Slavitt
CROCODILE SMILES. Yuriy Tarnawsky
OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY. Various
THE DERANGEMENT OF JULES TORQUEMAL. Robert Wexelblatt
THE STRAW THAT BROKE. Tom Whalen
BLACK SCAT REVIEW – No. 7 – Lit Noir
BLACK SCAT REVIEW – No. 8 – Seduction
BLACK SCAT REVIEW – No. 9/10 – Double Issue – Utter Nonsense
blackscatbooks.com 