Category: Fiction

In the wings, some special things (sixth edition)…

HOROSCRAPES

Black Scat’s Absurdist Texts & Documents series is divided into sets of six titles each. This year we’ll be closing out the fifth set with AN INCONVENIENT CORPSE by Jason E. Rolfe (#30) and HOROSCRAPES by Doug Skinner (#31). Both gems are imbued with the mischievous spirit of Alphonse Allais.

Indeed, we launched the series in the summer of 2012 with Allais’s story MASKS, and the great French absurdist remains the guiding light behind Black Scat Books–suitably sublime and obscure. You’ll find plenty of evidence in the just released trade paperback SELECTED PLAYS OF ALPHONSE ALLAIS.

Next month we’re publishing a novel by a talented young writer, 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.  Coming October 15th, just in time for Halloween.

Need we say more?

Artist Terri Lloyd  (THE LITTLE RED BOOK OF COMMIE PORN) returns with a new monstrosity that’s in preparation as we speak. For now, the nature of the book must remain under wraps to avoid causing  panic. We can only report that it’s another collaboration with Norman Conquest. (Clearly these two don’t know when to stop.)

The grand “utter nonsense” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW (#9) is going to be our biggest issue yet. Publication date TBA.

Looking ahead to 2015, you’ll discover books by Mark Axelrod, Eckhard Gerdes, Alain Arias-Misson, Farewell Debut, Carla M. Wilson, Doug Rice, Richard Kostelanetz, and other luminaries.

HAPPY FALL!

Oulipo Pornobongo 3. The doors are open. . .

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Pleased to announce the 29th volume in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series: OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3; ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY.

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Featuring constrained works by Maria Schurr, Tom La Farge, Paulo Brito, Lucy Selleck, Doug Skinner, Paul Forristal, Ellen Nations, and Norman Conquest.

A titillating anthology—provocative, funny, and uncommonly satisfying.

You can order a copy in print ($15) or the digital edition ($5.25) by clicking HERE.
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Let us seduce you…

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BLACK SCAT REVIEW #8. Featuring seductive works by Suzanne Burns, Doug Rice, Steven Teref, Kurt Cline, Charles Holdefer, Doug Skinner, Paulo Brito, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe, Tara Stillions Whitehead, Maria Morisot, Fox Harvard, Charlie Griggs, Monika Mori, and Tom Whalen. Titillating art, photography, poetry and fiction.

70 pages, full color, perfect-bound.

CLICK HERE to order either the print edition ($16) or the discreet digital edition ($5)

Go with the flow . . .

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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.

Summer Scatastic!

Here’s a look ahead at some of the goodies coming your way in the next few months.

In August we’re bringing you a major new novel by Tom Whalen, The Straw That Broke—a stunning work of speculative metafiction— filled with wordplay and literary hijinks. This is seminal post-cyberpunk fiction with wicked Oulipian twists, crafted by a master of experimental fiction.

On Labor Day, Mao Zedong’s clandestine Long March reaches its revolutionary climax in The Little Red Book of Commie Porn. A collaboration between California artists Terri Lloyd and Norman Conquest, this outrageously funny collection of satirical art & text is unlike anything we’ve ever published. Indeed, the book is nearly  impossible to describe and must be seen to be believed.

Another literary event you won’t want to miss: the first English translation of the Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais, compiled and translated by Doug Skinner. This special illustrated edition makes a nice companion volume to Allais’s Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks. This new collection includes 24 works: eight monologues, three one-act plays, plus short skits, dialogues, and burlesques. For fans of the absurd, this is a must-have.

For armchair travelers who enjoy going nowhere in wickedly clever fashion, there’s  David Slavitt’s absurdist chapbook Walloomsac: A Week on the River. It has already received advance praise from R. H. W. Dillard: “…I haven’t had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up ‘til dawn…breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.” This one’s a real treat.

Coming in September. we’re thrilled to be publishing Suzanne Burns’ experimental novel Sweet and Vicious. This new work by the gifted young author of Siblings and Misfits and other Heroes, is sure to enhance her reputation as one of the most innovative contemporary American writers.

And just in time for Halloween… the third volume of Oulipo Pornobongo: Anthology of Erotic Wordplay. The collection includes works by Maria Schurr, Paulo Brito, Tom La Farge, Lucy Selleck, Doug Skinner, Ellen Nations, Paul Forristal, and others.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss out on these and other forthcoming titles.

 

 

 

 

 

Word Champions!

Last Saturday’s BLACK SCAT AUTHORS PUNCHOUT at the Emily Harvey Foundation in NYC was packed. The bloodthirsty crowd was eager to see a K.O. but had to settle for wine. Nothing beats a night of fiction and fisticuffs and these  “Lit Bull” contenders were all victorious—Alain Arias-Misson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Karen Moller, and (in absentia) Frank Pulaski.

Karina Tarnawsky deserves high praise for presiding over the unruly crowd as MC.  Here are a few shots of the event.

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Alain Arias-Misson, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Karen Moller

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Yuriy Tarnawsky; Karina Tarnawsky (MC) Karen Moller, and Alain Arias-Misson

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Please don’t feed the . . .

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Female barbers attached to a pair of scissors that won’t stop, women who can’t conceal hard-earned wads of hundred dollar bills sticking up under their polka dot bikini bottoms, adulteresses who bludgeon their husbands to bloody deaths, Dostoyevskian prostitute virgins, compulsive seductresses who delight in torturing tall wimpy men, all shown in a blinding bright light on an absurdist stage. Are crocodiles capable of smiling if they can’t cry?

A dazzling new collection of absurdist “short shrift fictions” by Yuriy Tarnawsky, author of THE PLACEBO EFFECT TRILOGY.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CROCODILE SMILES:

“In case you have missed the voice of the rich, courageous, adventurous fiction writing of Yuriy Tarnawsky, this collection will be a great introduction. You will experience his unique ability to meld wicked humor and looming gravitas.One of the great under-recognized talents in the fiction of the 20th – 21st century.” —Steve Katz

“If Frankenstein had had the wit of Groucho Marx and the subtle plasticity of Magritte he might have written these magical and dangerous stories instead of Yuriy Tarnawsky.The master of short tails has struck again! Frightening, funny and baffling as ever!” —Alain Arias-Misson

“Yuriy Tarnawsky’s fictional world is one in which every object and every action is meaningful. Haircuts have meaning. Two refrigerators are alive with ominous activity. Kafka meets Sartre (implying hell is… other bugs!).  Sweet porridge can ‘assuage the victim’s suffering.’ The stories are perfectly envisioned, as if Tarnawsky had just landed on this earth with his sense of wonder still intact, looking at everything and trying to understand. Reading these stories is like learning to see all over again!” —Eckhard Gerdes

Order the trade paperback edition now.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Yuriy Tarnawsky has authored some three dozen books of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and translations in Ukrainian and English, most recently The Placebo Effect Trilogy—three volumes of interrelated mininovels—and Modus Tollens—a volume of Heuristic poetry. His affinity for animals is well exemplified not only in Crocodile Smiles but also in such books as the collection of stories Short Tails, in the second volume of the Trilogy, The Future of Giraffes, and most vividly in his best-known novel Three Blondes and Death. He was born in Ukraine but was raised and educated in the West. An engineer and linguist by training, he has worked as a computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing as well as professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture. He lives with his wife Karina in the New York City metropolitan area.

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Author photo: Oleh Holovackiy