Featuring astounding art and fiction by Mark Axelrod; Tom Barrett; David Berger; Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Muriel Falak; Eckhard Gerdes; Richard Gessner; Alfred Jarry; Richard Kostelanetz; Amy Kurman; Mantis; Kate Meyer-Currey; Bob McNeil; Lillianne Milgrom; Lance Olsen; Paul Rosheim; Doug Skinner; Nile Southern; and Jim Yoakum.
Ladies and gents, grab your copy now!
BLACK SCAT REVIEW 23: Wordplay
Bask in the lilt & spew of vowels & consonants, the litter of letters lost & found, visual lipograms, puzzles, puns, and blazing wordplay from the KO Corral.
FEATURING: Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Kevin Brown, Norman Conquest, Brian Coughlan, John Crouse, S. C. Delaney, Paul Forrestal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Penelope Gerdes, Joseph Harms, Amy Kurman, Opal Louis Nations, Angelo Pastormerlo, Steve Patterson, Derek Pell, Agnès Potier, Raymond Queneau, Paul Rosheim, Gerard Sarnat, Doug Skinner, Michel Vachey, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson.
A special reprint edition of BLACK SCAT REVIEW #1 is now available.
Originally published in 2012, the issue sold out quickly and has long been out of print. It features John Crombie’s translation of “Like Mother” by Alphonse Allais; a hilarious accusatory text by the legendary Canadian absurdist Crad Kilodney; collage art from the UK by Michael Leigh; Elizabeth Archer’s revealing interview with British humorist Samantha Memi; experimental comic art by Florence Bocherel; a rare comic drama by Pierre Henri Cami translated by Doug Skinner; bizarre poems from Portugal’s Pedro Carolino; and astounding short fiction by Samantha Memi, Yuriy Tarnawsky and Tom Whalen. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The original cover photograph by S. N. Jacobson has been censored to allow its display on Amazon.)
BLACK SCAT REVIEW (Number One)
edited by Norman Conquest
paperback; illustrated; full color;
ISBN 979-8450666396
In Eckhard Gerdes’s fifteenth novel, two women friends — one from the city, the other from the suburbs — attend opening night of a cryptic new play: “Pissers’ Theatre.” Oddly enough, both the play and the theatre it’s being presented in have been designed to accommodate audience incontinence. Thus, the production pauses whenever someone needs to empty their bladder. This bizarre experiment plays havoc with the show’s continuity and leads our heroines into strange places — onstage and off.
“Gerdes’s Pissers’ Theatre shares Godot’s deft moments of humor and sad conclusions about existence. With no signposts in a literary void, lost travelers we remain, lost in a writer’s lost designs. This novel deserves to be translated into a theatrical piece someday soon.” —American Book Review
“The Pissers’ Theatre will keep you reading with its captivating storytelling and relatable characters. While it is a light read, there are many hidden metaphors and subtle satirical points… I highly recommend Eckhard Gerdes’ novel to all sophisticated readers (and theatergoers!). It would be a great vacation companion or the perfect novel to read on a rainy weekend.” — Windy City Reviews
THE PISSERS’ THEATRE
Eckhard Gerdes
Trade paperback; 112 pp., $12.95
ISBN 978-1-7357646-9-6
“You must travel… I can’t travel… I’ll travel”
We are all armchair travelers now. The question is: Where do we go?
If you’re looking for answers, let 28 imaginative writers & artists from around the globe take you places you’ve never been. Find your getaway in BLACK SCAT REVIEW 21 — The Travel Issue.
FEATURING: Alphonse Allais, Robert James Cross, Farewell Debut, S. C. Delaney, John Oliver Hodges, Rhys Hughes, Harold Jaffe, E.E. King, Olchar E. Lindsann, Charles J. March III, Carmelo Militano, Opal Louis Nations, Peter Payack, Persefone, Roger Pheuquewell, Agnès Potier, Collin J. Rae, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Charles de Rosières, Doug Skinner, Kristine Snodgrass, Ben Stoltzfus, Corinne Taunay, Ed Taylor, Michel Vachey, Tom Whalen, D. Harlan Wilson.
A special issue, featuring Mark Axelrod, Angela Buck, Peter Cherches, Catherine D’Avis, Farewell Debut, Eckhard Gerdes, Bob Heman, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Esteban Isnardi, Harold Jaffe, Alexander Krivitskiy, Olchar E. Lindsann, Joel Lipman, Laura Mazzenga, Jim McMenamin, Peter McAdam, Doug Rice, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Doug Skinner,Gregory Wallace, and Tom Whalen.
PLUS works in translation by
ALFRED JARRY, CHARLES CROS, THEOPHILE GAUTIER, JULES JOUY, PAUL VERLAINE, and LAURENT TAILHADE.
Sublime art & literature guaranteed.
BLACK SCAT REVIEW #18
edited by Norman Conquest
122 pp., trade paperback, $20
Available worldwide on Amazon
Watch for this extraordinary collection of works by the great Stefan Themerson who, with his wife, the artist Franciszka, founded the legendary Gaberbocchus Press (London, 1948-1979). A poet, publisher, novelist, filmmaker, composer and philosopher, Stefan Themerson was a giant force in the avant-garde of the 20th century. A magus, a magician, his books are filled with wisdom, absurd humor, and dazzling ideas. His unique vision is more relevant today than ever, and thanks to Paul Rosheim, Black Scat will be bringing you Critics and My Talking Dog: Selected Stories, Essays, Lectures & a Play.
As the force behind Obscure Publications, Rosheim (with the guidance of British art critic, and founder of the Themerson Archive Jasia Reichardt) published a number of limited edition chapbooks by Themerson. He is busy compiling this seminal introduction to Stefan’s texts. The book will also feature an introduction by noted art historian and artist Nick Wadley.
By the author of The Book with the Green Cover, smells like teen ‘pataphysics features signs of the phenomenon, oscillating pyramids, and luminous vapors. This unexpurgated edition is illustrated with ubu-dystopian charts, unpublished diagrams, newly discovered schemata, and rare illuminated photographs. Also included are Norman Conquest‘s groundbreaking philosophical experiments—triumphs as well as failures— which will inspire aspiring illuminati here and abroad.
Here at Black Scat we never sleep. As everyone heads off on vacation, you’ll find us huddled 
around our Macs, bringing sublime art and literature to print. There’s plenty of excitement ahead and we’re thrilled to announce these forthcoming releases.
Watch for a collection of works by the great Stefan Themerson who, with his wife, the artist Franciszka, founded the legendary Gaberbocchus Press (London, 1948-1979).
A poet, publisher, novelist, filmmaker, composer and philosopher, Stefan Themerson was a giant force in the avant-garde of the 20th century. A magus, a magician, his books are filled with wisdom, absurd humor, and dazzling ideas. His unique vision is more relevant today than ever, and thanks to Paul Rosheim, Black Scat will be bringing you Critics and My Talking Dog: Selected Stories, Essays, Lectures & a Play.
As the force behind Obscure Publications, Rosheim (with the guidance of British art critic, and founder of the Themerson Archive Jasia Reichardt) published a number of limited edition chapbooks by Themerson. He is busy compiling this seminal introduction to Stefan’s texts. The book will also feature an introduction by noted art historian and artist Nick Wadley.
This is destined to be a Scat classic.
Doug Skinner‘s delightfully absurd musical instruments appeared each month in the pages of our journal, Le Scat Noir. The artist has now rounded up all these drawings (along with previously unpublished specimens) for his forthcoming collection Instrumentarium. Even if you’re tone deaf, this book will have you humming along, clicking your fingers, tapping your feet and laughing out loud.
While you’re waiting, check out Skinner’s hilarious collection of comics, The Unknown Adjective and Other Stories. Originally published in 2014, it continues to be one of our most popular titles. But don’t take our word for it, look at these raves:
”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
“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
You can grab a copy on Amazon at this LINK.
Stay tuned for more details on these sublime Scat titles. We also have a few surprises in store, so be sure to subscribe to this blog in the right-hand column here and you won’t miss a gem.
Happy Summer!
Today is the day Debra Di Blasi‘s cutting-edge alternative fictions flash before our eyes. This provocative new collection reveals our secret lives on social media — exposes the code behind our narcissistic sexting & selfies with feral wit. Indeed, this book is a savage bible defining our digital existence, here & now. Today.
TODAY is the day of resurrection and death in the NEW AMERICA. TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER.
Debra Di Blasi’s TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER is a fierce and real-time live-stream pastiche that inhabits voices and points-of-view of our new “American” multitude. Terrifyingly sincere and aching with loss one moment, angry, cruel, even bigoted the next, Di Blasi’s anti-Whitmanian universe expands and collapses into every imaginable corner of what our world has become, to salvage true moments out of this white noise at the penetralia of our virtual hornet’s nest, in which bodies have somehow come alive, “crawled right out of the trashbin of history into the light of public office.” How it smokes and hums with danger! Readers beware: This hilarious and moving book is not a safe space.—Sam Witt, author of Little Domesday Clock
No one else writes about the current social climate with the badass gusto of Debra Di Blasi. No one! Politically incorrect, seriously playful, often shocking, incorrigible in all the right ways, self-indicting, yet devastatingly human, Di Blasi’s prose grabs contemporary culture by the throat and holds on in a dazzling stranglehold where the “I” of the shitstorm is “you.” -Aimee Parkison, author of Refrigerated Music far a Gleaming Woman
Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? Debra Di Blasi’s TODAY IS THE DAY THAT WILL MATTER gives us a compelling third option: It will end in a whir of pronouncements, gossip, apologies, braggadocio, and the rest of the nonstop human noise we call culture. In 138 very short fictions ranging from the TV show “Chopped” to a pig farm, a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room and the fantasies of a college professor, Di Blasi’s compressed prose and linguistic play result in a jack-in-the-box kind of release found in good poetry. This is a writer in full control of language, from regional idiom to scientific jargon. “I wish to speak of things that are not I” says a character in one story, even as the character in another acts out the wish for permeability “I stuck my finger inside. Something bled. I’m sure it was you.” Despite our desire to escape the metaphysical and environmental catastrophes we’ve long wrought by now flirting with the concept of a human-robot future, Di Blasi reminds us elegantly and ferociously exactly where our human actions have placed us. -Leslie McGrath, author of Feminists Are Passing from Our Lives
Today Is the Day That Will Matter: An Oral History of the New America: #AlternativeFictions
by Debra Di Blasi
Trade paperback, 150 pages, $12.95
NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ON AMAZON — CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON BEFORE IT’S CENSORED.
blackscatbooks.com 