Category: Event

Back to the Future!

VIRGO

Part Oulipian exercise, these meticulous scrapings reveal the future in all its sublime absurdity. The author approached the horoscope in his morning newspaper as if it were a puzzle, like the crossword or sudoku. By scraping out the middle part, and joining the beginning and end, he received a hidden message.

Reading outside the lines here one discovers an alternative fate more interesting than the fluff dispensed by run-of-the-mill soothsayers. Indeed, these predictions are pithy, profound, and astonishingly accurate.

In HOROSCRAPES, Doug Skinner offers up 366 clever twists of fate—something for every sign—guaranteed to alter forever how we view the universe.

Who knows what the future holds?

Doug Skinner knows.

HOROSCRAPES

HOROSCRAPES
by Doug Skinner
ABSURDIST TEXTS  & DOCUMENTS NO. 31

$15
Perfect-bound paperback, 66 pp.

ASTROLOGY / WORDPLAY / HUMOR

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

 

And now for dessert . . .

EXCERPT

from SWEET AND VICIOUS / Copyright © 2014 by Suzanne Burns

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“Sweet and Vicious is an inspired exploration of Waldeinsamkeit and (post)romantic angst that turns the mundane into something beautiful and wild. Burns is a gifted writer.”
—D. Harlan Wilson

Black Scat Books is proud to present this innovative work of fiction by Suzanne Burns.

Sweet and Vicious is a provocative and relentlessly compelling new novel.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

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Suzanne Burns writes poetry and fiction in Bend, Oregon (and sometimes in Paris, France). She is the author of Siblings, Misfits and Other Heroes, and Love Songs for Las Vegas, among other books. Sweet and Vicious is her first novel.

Alphonse Allais —Hip! Hip! Hooray!!!

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ALPHONSE ALLAIS is the driving force (or should we say farce?) behind Black Scat Books. Allais 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.

We hope you’ll celebrate this special day with a festive drink and a few good books!

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CAP-COVER

 Hip! Hip! Allais!

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Poet Edith Doove reading a rare edition of Allais’s Captain Cap at Plymouth Arts Centre (UK).
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Black Scat Books will publish Ms. Doove’s collection Mince early next year.

 

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Rosheim Returns!

FISHSLICES

Black Scat Books is proud to bring you this long out of print collection of poetry by the founder and editor of the legendary avant-garde press, Obscure Publications.

Paul Rosheim founded Obscure Publications in 2000 and for ten years published an exquisite series of extremely limited edition chapbooks. OP boasted an astonishing roster of avant-garde writers from Europe and America. The list included books by Raymond Queneau, Eric Basso, Peter Ruric (Paul Cain), Harry Mathews, Tom Whalen, Terry Southern, Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, Harold Jaffe, Opal Louis Nations, Georges Perec, Barbara Wright and many others.

Rosheim launched his series with Fishslices and later issued an expanded second edition. This Black Scat Classic Interim Edition is a reprint of the latter volume and includes illustrations. The author also provides an extended introduction with a fascinating history of the press.

Although relatively few copies of Fishslices were produced, the little book soon gathered a reputation among those fortunate enough to have received a copy, and it has long been sought after by collectors.

We invite you to discover this unique little collection.

CLICK HERE to order a copy.

Go with the flow . . .

WALLOMSAC-cover

Black Scat Books is pleased to present David R. Slavitt‘s sublime, Nabokovian text WALLOOMSAC: A WEEK ON THE RIVER — number 28 in our flagship Absurdist Texts & Documents series. Mr. Slavitt, a writer, poet, and translator, has authored over 100 books. Under the pseudonym “Henry Suttion”  he wrote the bestselling novel The Exhibitionist which sold over 4 million copies. To list all his titles here would require a web site all its own.

WALLOOMSAC is an absurdist journey that on the surface appears to travel in one direction yet actually meanders in many. The mysterious itinerary contains one surprise after another as Slavitt’s dazzling river ripples with eddies and undercurrents. And what’s this about Thomas Crapper? Well, yes, he’s in the book, too, but don’t ask us to explain.

Poet and critic R. H. W. Dillard:

“David Slavitt has written a book about or for which it is impossible simply to write a blurb—a word, it might interest you to know, coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess. (Did you think of a purple cow, just then?) The text itself is indescribably (deliciously?) itself. Like the Waloomsac River, it just keeps rolling along, taking the reader irresponsibly with it—laughing out loud again and again and again; marveling at its rapid wit (white water?), the wide breadths of its erudition, the dangerous shallows of its overt and covert cheekiness; marking the vertiginous depths of its, yes, wisdom. To make a long blurb short, I haven’t had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up ‘til dawn one night in 1962 breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.”

Come take a swim… the water is fine.

WALLOOMSAC: A WEEK ON THE RIVER
David R. Slavitt
Absurdist Texts & Documents No. 28

Paper, perfect-bound; 88 pp. $20.00

CLICK HERE to order.

The Mouse That Soared…

“An intriguing blend of SF, philosophy, and word play . . . Giddy fun!” —Rudy Rucker

STRAW-FOR-SCAT

“Call it science fiction or meta-fiction or cyber fiction . . . wonderfully funny, often exciting, always baffling, and occasionally even profound. It’s the Moby-Dick of mice!”   —R.H.W. Dillard

“Pollinates post-cyber-punk with headier poetry than the genre has yet known.”    —Andrei Codrescu

“Allusive, punning, intricately plotted and exponentially self-referential . . . science fiction which ultimately explores the science of fiction or, more aptly, the art of narrative.”  —Brad Richard, American Letters & Commentary

“Storytelling which is subtly, wickedly funny.”     —The Times-Picayune

Bulwer Zetford’s work-in-progress The Cosmic Messenger is about to take a strange turn, and the multiverse with it, when Roithamer of Relix “beads” once again and brings swirling into Zetford’s Kaduza M-mon processor the Encyclopedia Mouse, the one creature who can save the multiverse. Tale twines tale as the mouse battles his Doppelgänger in cyberspace, Heidegger in his Black Forest hut, and a hyper-crazed Roithamer. Death is everywhere, but the mouse, birling (if only barely) in his Binding Nexus Drive, is determined to narrate the universes away from their demise.

Dive into August with a stunning work of speculative metafiction. This is seminal post-cyberpunk with wicked Oulipian twists, crafted by a master of innovative fiction.

THE STRAW THAT BROKE
A novel by Tom Whalen
6” x 9”, trade paperback original. 172 pp.
$14.95  /  ISBN -13 978-0692259436

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tom-whalenTOM WHALEN is a novelist, short story writer, poet and critic who has written for Agni, Asymptote, Bookforum, Chicago Review, Fiction International, Film Quarterly, the Washington Post and other publications. His books include Dolls, Elongated Figures, The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan, and the novels Roithamer’s Universe and The President in Her Towers, which John Warner in the Chicago Tribune called a “mash-up of Kingsley Amis and Italo Calvino. A strange, surreal and wonderful novel.”  Whalen currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany, where he teaches film at the State Academy of Art and Design.

The Terrible Twos!

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JULY 4TH — Black Scat Books is celebrating two years of publishing sublime art and literature. In just 24 months we’ve published over 60 titles.

Since July 4th, 2012, we’ve had the honor to publish many innovative artists and writers from around the world, including Alphonse Allais (France), Alain Arias-Misson (France),  Mark Axelrod, G. Mackenzie Bacon, Honoré de Balzac (France), Allan Bealy, Eleanor Bennett (UK), Peppo Bianchessi (Italy), Poggio Bracciolini (Italy), Pierre Henri Cami (France), Pedro Carolino (Portugal), Norman Conquest, John Crombie (Paris), Farewell Debut, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Judson Hamilton, C.S. Hibbard (UK), Isidore Isou (France), Harold Jaffe, M. Kasper, Ievgen Kharuk (Ukraine),  Richard Kostelanetz, Michael Leigh (UK), Samantha Memi (UK), Monika Mori (Austria),  Ellen Nations, Opal Louis Nations, John Nickle, Derek Pell, Gisèle Prassinos (France), Frank Pulaski, Doug Skinner, Terry Southern, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Michel Varisco, Jana Vukovic (Serbia), Tom Whalen, and Ed Wood.

And in the seven issues of our magazine (Black Scat Review) we’ve published many others. All these men and women are what make this little indie publishing house truly unique. After all, without them Black Scat Books would be nothing but blank pages.

A special thank you goes to all of our readers who have kept this ship afloat during troubled times. Without you…well, there wouldn’t even be a blank page.

Finally, for those who have yet to discover the joy of Scat, may we suggest these recent titles. They’re guaranteed to add some fireworks to your bookshelves.

 

THE UNKNOWN ADJECTIVE AND OTHER STORIES by Doug Skinner

CROCODILE SMILES: SHORT SHRIFT FICTIONS by Yuriy Tarnawsky

WOMEN THAT DON’T EXIST by Frank Pulaski

THE DERANGEMENT OF JULES TORQUEMAL by Robert Wexelblatt

REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS

‘S A BIRD by Eckhard Gerdes

SURREALIST TEXTS by Gisèle Prassinos

The special  “LIT NOIR” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW

 

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

Even more fun than fireworks!

Witty and ingenious comics from the exceptionally-talented writer, musician, performer, ventriloquist, and cartoonist Doug Skinner. It’s exciting to finally have these little-seen strips available in one beautiful book. You may be reminded of Voltaire or Ernie Bushmiller while reading these meticulously drawn stories featuring utterly hapless characters, but Mr. Skinner has a style all his own.

  —R. Sikoryak (Masterpiece Comics)

PARTY

“Mr. Skinner knows many terrible, terrible secrets about us. We are once again fortunate that he chooses to share them so deftly and so altruistically.” —Mark Newgarden

What is the truth behind the “Unknown Adjective”?

Will Walter and Benny find the elusive batworm? What really goes on out in “Cowboy Country”? And can Dr. Docket find a cure for all that ails Mr. Pert? You’ll discover the answers to these and other burning questions in this profusely illustrated collection of comics and picture stories from the brilliant (albeit peculiar) mind of Doug Skinner. Take a look inside and see for yourself. Your daily dilemmas will soon seem inconsequential, and the laughter you hear may turn out to be your own.

BLACK SCAT BOOKS proudly presents Doug Skinner‘s curious comics in a large format (10 x 8 x 0.3 inches) trade paperback edition, featuring over 100 pages of wicked strips designed to disrupt “normal” thought patterns.

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CLICK HERE for a peek….

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