We are elated, delirious, tickled, thrilled, and ecstatic to announce the 16th volume in our acclaimed Alphonse Allais Collection. This first English translation of Allais’s Pour cause de fin de bail has been exquisitely prepared and introduced (with notes on the text) by master translator Doug Skinner.
This wickedly amusing collection contains fifty-three absurdist tales—packed with phantom limbs, floating brothels, tapeworms, ostrich shoes, and other remarkable things. It makes a jolly beach read, or to browse in your hammock whilst sipping a cool glass of lemonade—or better yet, a jug of absinthe.
So, if you haven’t already begun gathering your personal Allais collection—shame on you!—now is the time to start. Scroll down and you’ll find unadulterated links to each edition for convenient purchasing.
Here’s your chance to sample 14 titles in the Pocket Erotica Series, the seminal series of classic & contemporary erotic fiction.
This mouth-watering anthology includes:
Travels to Merryland. Anonymous From Their Lips to His Ear. Denis Diderot Priapeia. Anonymous A Judge Deceived. Marquis de Sade A Good Girl’s Home Companion. Lawrence Hamilton A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France. Pierre Louÿs Poems of Lust & Desire. Various Jean-Fucque. Louis Aragon / RJ Dent Eve’s Academy. Eurydice Eve A Dirty Story as You Like It. Kim Vodicka Escape Artists. Su Orwell Grand Hotel Vittoria. Nina Ansani The Obedience Room. Catherine D’Avis The Desire Box. Laure Favager
THE POCKET EROTICA READER A Connoisseur’s Sampler Edited by Norman Conquest New Urge Editions Paperback; 178 pp.; $14 ISBN 979-8-9908521-5-0
When a tsunami of smut floods the city of London, the Anti-Smut Brigade is at sixes and sevens. Scotland Yard yanks Sir Reginald Fuzz out of retirement, for he is their last best hope of saving the Empire.
Can the foremost moralist, expert on the perils of porno, and ex-chief of the Anti-Smut Brigade (par excellence), stem the tide of this degenerate invasion?
Or… will Great Britain go to hell in a handbasket like the Roman Empire?
Time is running out. Big Ben is ticking . . .
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FUZZ AGAINST SMUT
“Time Trip Incarnate! I thought my fingers (and brain) would explode—this classic Infernal Machine is reignited!… Magnificent!” —Nile Southern, author of The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy
“Fuzz Against Smut reanimates what has become an endangered subspecies of comedy: madcap, manic, wildly absurd, sublimely subversive humor. (As exemplified by – among others – the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, Lord Buckley, and Akbar del Piombo.) This is a zany, quirky and very funny book, an antic fable for our fractured times and a balm for weary minds.” —Gregory Stephenson, author of Alias Akbar del Piombo
“In 100 years, hipsters will take college classes on Terry Southern, Roland Topor, and Derek Pell. This book will be required reading. Playing the long game, Pastormerlo and Pell’s masterstroke does for smut what Trump did for infectious diseases.” —Paul Rosheim
“The original ‘Fuzz Against Junk’ text was funny and its images were engaging; this takeoff is even funnier, and more deeply and intricately illustrated. A topnotch homage.” – M. Kasper
“FUZZ is a wonderland of literary confusions that will enrich your soul.” —Doug Rice
Our biggest issue yet—169 pages—packed with prototypes, visual poetry, Belgian fiction, chronograms, Symbolist decadence, vintage surrealism & much more. Featuring an international cast of artists, poets, and writers, including: Frédéric Acquaviva; Terry J. Bradford; Apollo Camembert; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Lynn Crawford; Caroline Crépiat; Noël Devaulx; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Nico Kirschenbaum; John Kruse; Amy Kurman; Jean Lorrain; Emilia Loseva; Jean Muno; Opal Louis Nations; Clemente Palma; Claudio Parentela; Vojtěch Preissig; Vania Russo; Nelly Sanchez; Marcel Schneider; and Doug Skinner.
“I consider myself a polygyphist: a person who is fluent in graphic linguistics. Typoglyphics is the language of phonetic and hieroglyphic (among other glyphic) forms. As Norman Conquest…points out in the recent number of his niche zine TYPO, there is so much joy to be found in dead languages, the least of which is: The reader cannot find the typos. Since my living prose is riven with typos (prior to editing), I am anxious to become expert in what Conquest calls determinative hieroglyphics.”
CLICK HERE to continue reading Steven Heller‘s take on TYPO #5—The Goddess Issue.
Spring Fever hath sprung with the special “Goddess Issue” of TYPO—packed with an international cast of luminaries: Tim Newton Anderson; Tom Bradley; Anton Chekhov; Norman Conquest; Caroline Crépiat; R J Dent; Max Ernst; Eurydice Eve; Luc Fierens; Leonor Fini; Théophile Gautier; Harold Jaffe; Amy Kurman; Lo; Michael Maier; Dmitri Manin; Elena Marini; Lilianne Milgrom; Opal Louis Nations; Marty Newman; Claudio Parentela; Angeleaux Pastormerleaux; Paul Rosheim; Jasia Reichardt; Doug Skinner; Phil Demise Smith; Tabarin; Lono Taggers; Corinne Taunay; Shyam Thandar; Stefan Themerson; Konstantin Vaginov, and Gregory Wallace.
We invite you to double your treasure with this pair of backlist beauties.
CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES
Charles Cros was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography and sound recording, only to die young, poor, and alcoholic. Not incidentally, he also invented the comic monologue for the actor Coquelin Cadet. This edition collects all of Cros’s monologues—masterfully translated & introduced by Doug Skinner—and includes performance notes, plus two biographical essays by his friend and colleague Alphonse Allais.
UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES
Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets. This first English translation of their inspired collaboration of “Upside-Down Stories” satirized hot topics of the 1880s such as as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. These nutty gems will surprise & delight contemporary readers.
“THE SHEER PLAYFULNESS OF CERTAIN FANCIFUL PARTS OF CROS’S WORK MUST NOT LET US FORGET THAT IN THE CENTER OF SOME OF HIS FINEST POEMS, A REVOLVER IS AIMED AT US.”—ANDRÉ BRETON
This scandalous little work appeared in France under the title “Letter to La Présidente.”
Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a novelist and poet, one of the champions of Romanticism. In 1850, he and his friend Louis de Cormenin visited Italy, so he wrote his friends back home a letter about their adventures. The result was a rollicking “filthy letter,” packed with jokes, slang, obsolete words, literary allusions, puns, alliterations, neologisms, Spoonerisms, verses, outrageous metaphors, and Rabelaisian lists. It was published privately in 1890, and became a clandestine classic.
A FILTHY LETTER Théophile Gautier Translated from the French by Doug Skinner, with an introduction & notes on the text Pocket Erotica Series #28 74 pp., 4 x 6 inches; 979-8-9894330-7-0
We are proud to present this extraordinary blend of fiction, myth, dream and memory – filled with haunting literary pleasures.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR A FASHION DICTIONARY
“A Fashion Dictionary is a literary masterwork in which Gaurav Monga firmly and clearly displays his enviable talents, and marks him as a writer to be reckoned with. Make no mistake, the entries he has written are alive with story. Monga’s impressive ability to find and firmly entrench story in the terms, phrases and articles of clothing he references is a literary feat worth noting, and admiring.” —Jason E. Rolfe, author of Invisible Influences and The Puppet-Play of Doctor Gall
“A subtle and deft exploration not only of fashion but of everything fashion rubs up against: identity, selfhood, desire, death. Monga strikes a very delicate balance in this dictionary that both is and isn’t a dictionary, sliding from the descriptive to the narrative and back again, creating a pattern as elegant as a spider’s web draped quivering and fragile over the tips of one’s fingers.” —Brian Evenson
“What a little gem of a book for anyone who uses clothes or words, but especially for those who are used to reading and writing about fashion, as it offers a respite from the tired and familiar narratives of both academic fashion theory and fashion journalism. It manages to “make strange” the most familiar and mundane items like ankle socks, buttons and hair bands; it gives body, sensuality and a defiant flair to Pathani suits and Phirans; it endows neck ties with an eerie sensibility. Oscillating between fact and dream, real and imaginary spacetimes and histories, literary and fashion references, it perpetually keeps the reader on their toes and trains us to (sometimes anxiously) question the agencies and agendas of everyday objects whose close proximity to us usually allow them to remain unnoticed.” –Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, cultural sociologist
“Highly recommended!” —Seb Emina, READ ME
A Fashion Dictionary Gaurav Monga 151 pp., $14.95 ISBN 979-8989433032
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gaurav Monga is a writer and teacher originally from New Delhi. He is the author of Tears for Rahul Dutta (Philistine Press, 2012), Family Matters (Eibonvale Press, 2019), Ruins (Desirepath Publishers, 2019), Costumes of the Living (Snuggly Books, 2020), My Father, The Watchmaker (Hawakal Publishers, 2020), The English Teacher (Raphus Press, 2021) and Raju and Kishore (Raphus Press, 2022). His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including B O D Y, Fanzine, Dismantle and Vestoj. He is a regular contributor to Outlook India.
