OUT OF PRINT
This collection of seven titillating tales by the author of Aphrodite and The Songs of Bilitis, presents a sensual style with sublime erotic undertones. It includes the novella “Woman and Puppet” – a startling tale of obsessive love – which became the basis for Luis Buñuel’s film “That Obscure Object of Desire.”
“One night at the flat I sat in silent contemplation of two blue china cats that crouched upon a white table. I was wondering whether it would be better to pass the time smoking cigarettes or writing sonnets. Another idea was that it might be better to smoke the cigarettes and stare at the painting on the ceiling. Cigarette, sonnet, or stare? The most important thing at such an hour is to have a cigarette ready to hand and lip. It enshrouds all the most material things with scarves of cloud, fine and celestial. It adds something both to the lights and to the dark of the chamber, taking away the hard mathematics of the angles, and by means of a scented magical spell brings to the agitated human spirit a panacea and peace. It brings, too, the land of dreams.”
—Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs (1870 – 1925) was a French poet and writer renowned for lesbian and classical themes, as well as for explicit erotic works published posthumously. He was a gifted stylist whose pagan texts have a distinctly hypnotic power. In 1896, his first novel Aphrodite became
the most popular and best selling book of its day.
THE NEW PLEASURE & OTHER STORIES
by Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French and Adapted by G. F. Monkshood**
Classics of Passion series
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
224 pages, trade paper original
$14.95
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**pseudonym of William James Clarke
On July 4, 2012, we published Alphonse Allais’s MASKS in a limited edition of 50 copies—the first title in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series. The chapbook quickly sold out and, today, is a coveted collector’s item. Since we’ve received many requests to reprint the book, we’re pleased to announce a revised and expanded edition. Translated from the French, adapted and illustrated by Norman Conquest, this new volume also features a most Allaisian introduction & notes on the text by the great Doug Skinner. Originally published in France under the title Un drame bien parisien (1890), this darkly humorous tale is quintessential Allais—a pataphysical text admired by the Surrealists (André Breton included it in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir). It was also celebrated by the French group Oulipo, and has been the subject of scholarly studies by the writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, Francis Corblin, and others. 
blackscatbooks.com 