Category: Event

MEMORY AND THE SPIRIT OF PLACE

“In HERE LIES MEMORY Doug Rice loves his characters wondrously, keenly, completely, and the result is a novel at once stunningly beautiful, brilliant, fierce, crazily imaginative, and acutely wise about how the ghosts that our memories and words invent are often the last things to leave us, no matter what, how some stay so deep in our skin they become as real as its color — especially those that can damage and mend us most.” —Lance Olsen, author of THEORIES OF FORGETTING

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HERE LIES MEMORY explores the place of memory in living, daily, scarred and sacred lives. Two Pittsburgh families struggle to survive trauma and love. A man wills himself to go blind, not to forget, but to remember in new ways. Another man drinks beer after beer until he can no longer drink away what he must face directly. This novel reveals what language and photographs do to memory, desire, and love, and what gentrification is doing to the souls of families and neighborhoods.

MORE ADVANCE PRAISE for Doug Rice’s stunning new novel:

“Covering all of the bases in this novel bent on conveying a deep love for the city and the people of Pittsburgh, Doug Rice ultimately makes our lives feel more dignified, loved, no matter if our local language and essence of being have become displaced. I’ve got no words for what Rice accomplishes. Just that, he beautifully brings to light everything in The ‘Burgh – and in places of the heart – that was done in the dark.” 
—Ricardo Cortez Cruz, author of STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

“How does memory write us? What fictions haunt our bodies and lives, and what truths do we construct to carry the weight of our selves? Doug Rice designs a brutally beautiful helix from dual narratives woven by and through love and loss. Between blindness and insight there live characters who, like all of us, story a way to go on in the face of buildings decaying, cities disappearing, hearts and bodies slipping toward ghost. Mother, sister, wife, grandfather, grandson, girl, boy…all identities move through desire, love, memory, and language in a place called Pittsburgh. Reading this book made my skin sing, my heart wail, a secular hymn of the body. “
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of THE SMALL BACKS OF CHILDREN

***Available now worldwide on Amazon***

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

 

A U T O B I O G R A P H Y OF A CHARACTER FROM FICTION

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Discover what happens when famous fictional characters surface in the life of a writer.

Alain Arias-Misson has produced an indecently literary novel about a thoroughly picaresque Character. Passages have been plagiarized from a score of great Modernists — from Kafka and Stendhal to Joyce, Austen and Proust, from Strindberg, Constant and Mann to Michaux, Sterne and Beckett, and are woven seamlessly, unidentified, into his “autobiography.” For the Character — a budding author — is the product of those authors whose novels he has been nourished on. Characters step out of their fiction to advise and interfere with his life and he appears on stage in theirs. Where le petit Marcel’s nocturnal terrors begin and the Character’s end, or how the Character’s boyhood lusts lead him into the Brussels labyrinth of ladies of the night and how he meets young Daedalus there, already sated in a lady’s embrace, is an open question. The autobiography ends at the age of twenty-one, when like most authors he has read his own most important authors — yet the rest of his life has already been plotted.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHARACTER FROM FICTION is an extraordinary work of Oulipian imagination.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

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self-portrait with toastABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alain Arias-Misson is another character from a fiction by Alain Arias-Misson. He was born in Brussels, grew up from age four in New York,  Greek Literature and philosophy at Harvard, led a nomadic life throughout Europe, North Africa and New York. Lives in Paris and Venice. This is his ninth novel. In Europe he is known for his Public Poems in a dozen cities, and also New York and L.A., as well as his 3D poetry which has been shown in hundreds of galleries and museums around the world. On the other hand, little is known of the author.

Other Black Scat Books by Alain Arias-Misson

Comic Book: A Novel

The Man Who Walked On Air & Other Tales of Innocence

Tintin Meets the Dragon Queen in The Return of the Maya to Manhattan

 

YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG, YOU’RE A HIGH FLYING FLAG…

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 JULY 4TH — BLACK SCAT BOOKS IS CELEBRATING  FOUR YEARS OF PUBLISHING SUBLIME ART AND  LITERATURE.

Let nonsense reign!

Others may hoist the stars and stripes, but around here we raise the Black Scat flag  in a pagan celebration of indie publishing. Fireworks are set to blow and light up the night. Today calls for sheer mischief and revelry—an orgy of DADA & Pataphysical calisthenics.

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE ARE ANGELS IN THIS WORLD

We’d like to thank Alain Arias-Misson, Peter Gambaccini,  Barbara LaPlaca-Hardy, and Carla M. Wilson for their generous support and devotion over the years—without their help Black Scat Books would never have made it to this ripe old age.

A word of special thanks  to writer/photographer Doug Rice who, when he learned we were faced with suspending publication due to an exorbitant price hike for ISBNs, stepped up and offered  funding to keep the good  ship afloat. We are eternally grateful .

And thanks to the readers who buy our books and keep the blood in our veins flowing.

HERE’S TO FOUR MORE YEARS—-Cheers!

 

Right ho! Let the games begin and the plot thicken!

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We can’t think of a better way to kick off the summer than with  the launch of this delightful comic novel by the great P. G. Wodehouse.  Originally published in America in 1919, A Damsel in Distress is vintage Wodehouse—a whimsical romance filled with amusing twists and turns and a cast of memorable characters. The novel was adapted into a Hollywood musical starring Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns, and Gracie Allen.

This handsome Black Scat trade paperback edition features original illustrations by artist Allen Forrest.

We invite you to stretch out in the hammock with a chilled cocktail and this unforgettable farce.

A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
by P.G. Wodehouse
with illustrations by Allen Forrest

$14.95
Trade paperback; 334 pages
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
ISBN-13: 978-0692724491
OUT OF PRINT

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pg2Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 – 1975) was one of the most popular humorists of the twentieth century. The author of nearly 100 books, he is best known as the creator of the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves series and the novels and stories set at Blandings Castle. In the words of Evelyn Waugh, “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.” Indeed, in the wondrous land of Wodehouse a faux pas often constitutes a crisis and the farce of human foibles rules the realm. The master’s intricately designed plots are peppered with potholes for his characters to stumble over, the street signs have all been mischievously switched and identities mistaken – yet all roads lead to a happy end.

Tome of Thrones

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HAPPY MAY DAY!

Black Scat Books is flushed with pride to announce the launch of PISSOIRS, BIDETS, CRAPPERS & THRONES by Adrienne Auvray. This coffee table chapbook for the john features sublime, full color photographs taken by Ms. Auvray on her travels around the globe.

FEATURING SUMPTUOUS SPREADS FROM THE WORLD’S GREATEST HEADS

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The author has devoted her professional career to the documentation and philosophical interpretation of toilets. A student of photographer Thomas P. Ünterbottem, she completed her dissertation at the esteemed Ünterbottem Academy in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1992. Her work has appeared in field journals such as The Lounge, WC-Time, and Heads-Up, and she has served as the Chair of the International Society of Toilets for the last five years.

This collection of provocative photographs is not merely a visual divertissement, but provides a visionary subtext and philosophical approach to life itself. Indeed,  this pictorial exploration and  explication d’image reveals our common humanity at its most fundamental.

After all, life is just a bowl.

Now available in both print and digital editions for collectors,  connoisseurs,  and the scatologically curious.

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

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

The New Pleasure

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OUT OF PRINT

This collection of seven titillating tales by the author of Aphrodite and The Songs of  Bilitis, presents a sensual style with sublime erotic undertones. It includes the novella “Woman and Puppet” – a startling tale of obsessive love – which became the basis for Luis Buñuel’s film “That Obscure Object of Desire.”

“One night at the flat I sat in silent contemplation of two blue china cats that crouched upon a white table. I was wondering whether it would be better to pass the time smoking cigarettes or writing sonnets. Another idea was that it might be better to smoke the cigarettes and stare at the painting on the ceiling. Cigarette, sonnet, or stare? The most important thing at such an hour is to have a cigarette ready to hand and lip. It enshrouds all the most material things with scarves of cloud, fine and celestial. It adds something both to the lights and to the dark of the chamber, taking away the hard mathematics of the angles, and by means of a scented magical spell brings to the agitated human spirit a panacea and peace. It brings, too, the land of dreams.”
—Pierre Louÿs

Pierre Louÿs (1870 – 1925) was a French poet and writer renowned for lesbian and classical themes, as well as for explicit erotic works published posthumously. He was a gifted stylist whose pagan texts have a distinctly hypnotic power. In 1896, his first novel Aphrodite became
the most popular and best selling book of its day.

THE NEW PLEASURE & OTHER STORIES
by Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French and Adapted by G. F. Monkshood**
Classics of Passion series
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
224 pages, trade paper original
$14.95

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**pseudonym  of William James Clarke

It’s beddie-bye time!

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A new book by Doug Skinner is always cause for celebration, but this collection of 40 short stories calls for a month-long festival of merrymaking.

In SLEEPYTIME CEMETERY you’ll discover a world of ostensibly human specimens behaving in peculiar and unpredictable ways. However, they are often recognizable in a manner we dare not admit. Skinner’s dark humor is deceptively playful and childlike, and that makes our bursts of laughter all the more disturbing.

These wickedly funny tales are guaranteed to disconcert and astonish.

Pick up your copy on Amazon here.

$14.95
Trade paperback; 208 pages
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
ISBN-13: 978-0692633908

 

 CLICK HERE and read a free excerpt.

DOUG SKINNER has contributed to Fate, Fortean Times, Nickelodeon, Weirdo, Black Scat Review and other periodicals. His translation of G. B. Nazari’s THREE DREAMS was published by Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks in Glasgow. Black Scat Books has published many of his translations from the French, including SELECTED PLAYS OF ALPHONSE ALLAIS and THE ZOMBIE OF GREAT PERU by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, as well as a collection of his drawings, THE UNKNOWN ADJECTIVE & OTHER STORIES, and a deluxe compendium: THE DOUG SKINNER DOSSIER.

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.

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