Top Ten Forthcoming Titles

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The Facetiae Erotica of Poggio
by Poggio Bracciolini. With hand-lettered cover & drawing by Jana Vukovic

Captain Cap (Vol. III): The Antifilter & Other Inventions
by Alphonse Allais. Translated from the French by Doug Skinner

Oulipo Pornobongo 2: Anthology of Erotic Wordplay
edited by Norman Conquest

Blink: Visual Antiphonies
by Farewell Debut

Hotel Ortolan
by Tom Whalen. With photographs by Michel Varisco

Embryo World & Others Stripped Bare
by Opal Louis Nations

Moo Nudes
by Monika Mori

Contemporary Art for Rich Kids
by Peppo Bianchessi

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks
by Alphonse Allais. Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
(Illustrated trade paper edition)

Tintin Meets The Dragon Queen in The Return of the Maya to Manhattan
a novel by Alain Arias-Misson

How to Write the Suicide Note

The following is an excerpt from Doktor Bey’s Suicide Guidebook, just published in a Black Scat Classic Interim Edition,  part of the Absurdist Texts & Documents series. Limited to 85 copies.

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THE SUICIDE NOTE

Here are ten tips to aid you in writing your suicide note, a particular often overlooked.

  1. Use of the first person is generally preferred.
  2. For maximum impact and credibility, always write in the past tense. (Example:: I was a failure in business.)
  3. If you are without family, friends, or even enemies, address the note “To Whom It May Concern.”
  4. When possible, use a typewriter. Far too many notes are indecipherable.
  5. Keep a carbon copy in your pocket, in case the original is misplaced.
  6. Do not concern yourself with the “beginning-middle-end” rule. Just concentrate on the end.
  7. Keep in mind that these are your last words. They should be commensurate with your social position.  They should reverberate in the reader’s mind!  Avoid such clichés as “Goodbye cruel world” and “To be or not to be . . .” Strive for the poetic.
  8. Self-pity, slang, and obscenity are acceptable.
  9. If artistically inclined, attach a self-portrait.
  10. Be brief. Nothing is more boring than a long goodbye.


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Doktor Bey's Suicide Guidebook

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY

New Issue!

3cover

IN THIS ISSUE: Alphonse Allais and François Caradec get high; Doug Skinner translates and reports; Carla Wilson interviews a faux Warhol; David Macpherson’s detective reveals the clues; Jim McMenamin turns on some screen gems; Nile Southern travels back to the future; Tom Whalen serves up a love story; Opal Nations strips the flesh off Embryo World; Erik Belgum offers up some poisons; Farewell Debut blinks visual antiphonies; Larry Fondation explores Harold Jaffe’s Revolutionary Brain. Plus a portfolio of drawings by the late Peter Hanssen.

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

The Idiot Hath Arrived!

No, not that idiot, this idiot…

How I Became an Idiot

Esteemed French drama critic (and the butt of derision at the cabaret Le Chat Noir), Francisque Sarcey reviewed the premiere of Alfred Jarry‘s Ubu Roi with this visionary verdict: ”…a filthy fraud which deserves nothing but the silence of contempt.”

Writer and humorist Alphonse Allais transformed Sarcey into an Ubuesque piñata in a series of wicked columns published under Sarcey’s name in the newspaper Le Chat Noir. 

Never before in English, this rare collection is introduced and translated from the French by Doug Skinner. Edition limited to 60 printed copies. #00 in our Black Scat Classics sub-series.

How I Became an Idiot reminds me of Félix Fénéon’s excellent Novels in Three Lines… the unexpected is suddenly present, and there is rudeness, as well as a savagery of attack that we simply can’t imagine anyone doing to any well-known columnist of today and getting away with it.”
—Jeff Bursey, author of Verbatim: A Novel
Prepare yourself for some nasty laughs.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT.

Eat Your BOAR!

BACKCOVER
Have you had your boar today?

That is—Terry Southern‘s HOT HEART OF BOAR & Other Tastes. It’s a tasteful smorgasbord of unpublished works by the master satirist—author of the novels Candy and The Magic Christian. and the screenwriter behind such classics of black humor as The Loved One and Dr. Strangelove. This new collection is perfect-bound, wrapped in a lovely cover, and seasoned to perfection with appropriately explicit visuals by Norman Conquest. The edition is limited to 125 copies and you can order a copy right here.

Get it while it’s hot!

TS

Dinner is served!

boar-relase

Fresh from the oven comes HOT HEART OF BOAR—piping hot and throbbing—in a limited edition of 125 copies. The collection features rare, unpublished texts, including an excerpt from The Hunters of Karinhalla bloody brilliant uproduced screenplay (emphasis on “bloody”). There’s also a private letter to William Burroughs; a vomiting priest; “K.Y. Madness,” and more. In addition to the author’s culinary delights, you’ll find illuminating introductory notes by Nile Southern, as well as tastefully explicit illustrations by Norman Conquest.

In short, it’s is a full-boar feast for famished fans of black humor.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Book Worship

rkOn Monday 25 March, 7 pm. at McNally-Jackson, 52 Prince Street, between Lafayette and Mulberry Streets, Richard Kostelanetz will present over one dozen recent books rarely, if ever, seen before, most of them extending his earlier achievements at the intersection of literature and book-art, many of them produced with the seductive new technology of “on-demand printing” and thus reasonably priced, at least for now.

Among them are Epiphanies, two vols., 1000 pages, one story to a book page, culminating thirty years of work with resonant single-sentence climax moments in otherwise nonexistent fictions, a typographical feast for a monumental project, 8½” x 11”.

Conceptual Fictions, an extended essay with examples about the framing of implicit narratives.

Visual Fictions, collecting pages designed more than a decade ago for hisOpenings and Complete Stories, along with his Leonardo and Me.

Verbal Fictions, various formally alternative narratives that are not visually enhanced.

Vocal Shorts, an expanded edition of his texts designed for live performance for various numbers of players.

Openings Short Fictions, in the tradition of Epiphaniesthe initial sentences of otherwise nonexistent stories.

Reflections on Loving and Relationships, his aphorisms continuously on right-hand pages against drawings of men and women made by the prominent choreographer Frances Alenikoff.

Furtherest Fictions, which reprints, revised, an earlier collection of his exploration of radically alternative narrative well beyond what every other fictioner is doing.

A Universe of Sentences, a continuous selection of lines by others worth remembering, the whole representing a universe of experience.

1001 Stories Enumerated, single-sentence fictions that, unlike Openings andEpiphanies, are meant to be complete in themselves.

Erotic Minimal Fictions, a variety of prose alternatives constituting the apex of avant-garde erotica.

Fields/Arenas/Pitches/Turfs, which completes the publication of geometric poems—with four, eight, and sixteen words to a large book page–begun thirty years ago.

1-99: A Book, another Kostelanetz narrative, in the tradition of Exhaustive Parallel Intervals (1979), composed only of numerals.

Ghostories, which are fictions created by boldfacing certain letters within a single word (e.g., address).

Homophones: Stories, where narratives are composed from two or sometimes more words that sound alike if spelled differently.

To & Fro &, where the reader’s discovery of narratives depend upon turning the book’s pages.

Ops & Clos, where opening and closings words, each pair with its own typography, are interspersed amidst each other.

English, Really English, in which he collects English words that seem incredible—over five thousand of them alphabetically in several perfectbound volumes.

What I Didn’t Do, which epitomizes intellectual nonhistory as Kostelanetz’s record of proposals that were never supported.

A Book of Eyes, photocopied and velobound, which explores the richly various ways that the single letter between H and J appears in contemporary typography

His presentation may also include such slightly older books as Skeptical Essays (Autonomedia), his latest collection of mostly severe criticism; Three Poems (NY Quarterly), where his experiments with three strains of one-word poetry appear interspersed; Micro Fictions (Archae), a limited-edition hardback with 900 pages of Louis Bury’s imaginatively designed narratives all three words and less; the reprint of his classic anthology of alternative expositions, Essaying Essays (AC Books); and maybe some others.

In May, Black Scat will publish Richard’s new book The Works & Life of Kosty Richards: An American Career in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series (#15)—thus adding to this vast library of experimental fiction.

Southern Discomfort…

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A yummy treat (for those with strong stomachs) is coming soon in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series…a new collection of strange  “tastes” from the late master chef Terry Southern:

HOT HEART OF BOAR & Other Tastes

We’ll be serving it fresh—piping hot and throbbing—in a limited edition of only 125 copies. First come, first served.

The book features rare unpublished texts, including an excerpt from The Hunters of Karinhalla screenplay that, sadly, was never filmed. It’s a bloody masterpiece, and we do mean bloody. There’s also a private letter to William Burroughs; a vomiting priest; “K.Y. Madness,” and more.

In addition to the author’s culinary delights, you’ll find illuminating introductory notes by Nile Southern, as well as tastefully explicit illustrations by Norman Conquest.

In short, it’s a full-boar feast for famished fans of black humor.

Prepare to dig in.