Your room is waiting . . .

hotel


“The maid who lives in the attic room above me can barely make it down the stairs any longer. She has been in my service for twenty years, so I can hardly dismiss her. But all night I hear the creak of her bedsprings as she tosses about, unable to sleep. The room is too small, her back bent from stooping. Her little mouse feet scutter about the floor nervously. She does not know where to go. I can call on her to do nothing. I imagine her growing younger in sleep, growing younger, until one day footsteps are heard on the attic stairs, and  a small child enters my room and draws the curtain.”

So begins this haunting stay at the Hotel Ortolan. We are drawn in slowly, seduced by the poetic text. We are at turns frightened, amused, disoriented. We move through these rooms, these impossible spaces like captive guests. The hotel itself cannot possibly exist, and yet evidence lies before us in a series of evocative photographs by Michel Varisco.

We invite you to experience this surrealist collaboration.

Your room is waiting…

Hotel Ortolan
Text by Tom Whalen /  photographs by Michel Varisco
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 19
Edition of 125 copies.  $12.50

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

All Urges Go Haywire

BSR4

The new issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW is now available.

INSIDE:
Eurydice gets naked and dances on the body of America; Ryan Francis Kelly monkeys with words; Samantha Memi finds god; Doug Rice invents forgetting; Harold Jaffe takes aim at macho; Loren Kantor carves iconic faces; Pipa Anais Gaubert drinks wine in Berlin; Peter Cherches loses it in the pasta aisle; Frank Pulaski unveils an art-whore peep show; Alain Arias-Misson reinvents the comic book; Yuriy Tarnawsky lets his hair down; and Poggio Bracciolini dishes up some ancient (indecent) delights.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Captain Cap Rides Again!

illustration by Doug Skinner

Hang on to your caps, folks, the Captain is back in a capsized edition designed to tease—Volume III in our hilarious 4-volume series.

Captain Cap: The Antifilter & Other Inventions by Alphonse Allais, translated and illustrated by Doug Skinner. This literary landmark is the first publication in English featuring Allais’s hilarious, booze-cruising captain of the high seas—the unthinkably unsinkable Captain Cap.

Over 100, profusely illustrated pages, The Antifilter is packed with strange, pataphysical inventions, quirky cons, cocktails, wordplay and absurd pranks. In short, it’s a feast for landlubbers and lover’s of French lit & humor.

DISCOVER:

  • a new way to give microbes what they deserve
  • a successful ascension, without a craft
  • a machine that travels 234 kilometers an hour
  • the secret of a truly modern house
  • the art of shoeing horses on the Australian pampas
  • a strange theory on the formation of coal

 and much, much more!

cc

110 pages, perfect-bound. Limited to 125 copies. $21.50

CLICK HERE and climb aboard.

Classic Porn Reborn

poggio_sml

Black Scat Books is delighted to bring this ancient classic back into print in a perfect-bound edition designed for the modern connoisseur. Facetiae is a collection of humorous and indecent tales by Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), first published in 1470. It features such stories as “Of a Fool, Who Thought His Wife Had Two Openings” and “Visio Francisci Philelphi,” the earliest recorded version of Carvel’s ring. This limited edition includes a hand-lettered cover by artist Jana Vukovic.

Over a hundred pages of lascivious mirth!

If you haven’t been collecting our Black Scat Classic Interim Editions, now is a good time to start.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Top Ten Forthcoming Titles

poggio_cover

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.

note

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.


*  *  *  *

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