from CAPTAIN CAP: HIS ADVENTURES, HIS IDEAS, HIS DRINKS by Alphonse Allais, translated from the French by Doug Skinner.
Category: French literature
The Grand Madcap Edition of CAPTAIN CAP has Launched!
We’ve jumped the gun and released our mammoth deluxe trade paperback edition of Alphonse Allais’s CAPTAIN CAP: HIS ADVENTURES, HIS IDEAS, HIS DRINKS—translated by Doug Skinner. This is the complete & unabridged edition of the original 1902 French classic. 370 pages, including eight uncollected “Captain Cap” stories, plus a “Cappendix” of rare historical pictures.
The book is profusely illustrated with witty drawings by Doug Skinner, in addition to his extensive notes on the translation and swashbuckling introduction.
If you missed any of the limited edition capsized Captain Cap chapbooks in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series, you can get the whole kit and caboodle now, plus oodles more.
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ALPHONSE ALLAIS (1854-1905) was a peerless French humorist, celebrated posthumously by the Surrealists for his elegant style and disturbing imagination. In addition to composing absurdist texts for newspapers such as Le Chat Noir and Le Journal, he experimented with holorhymes, invented conceptual art, and created the earliest known example of a silent musical composition: Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man (1884). Truly ahead of his time (as well as ours), Allais is needed now more than ever. His mischievous work remains fresh, funny, and always surprising.
DOUG SKINNER has written numerous scores for theater and dance, particularly for actor/clown Bill Irwin (The Regard of Flight). His articles, cartoons, and translations have appeared in The Fortean Times, Fate, The Anomalist, Nickelodeon, Weirdo, Black Scat Review, and other periodicals. His translation of Isidore Isou’s Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara was published by Black Scat Books.
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ARE YOU IN THE UK? CLICK HERE TO ORDER
ARE YOU IN FRANCE? CLICK HERE TO ORDER
ARE YOU IN GERMANY? CLICK HERE TO ORDER
In the wings, some special things (third edition)…
Scat addicts (of which I’m one) will get their fix and kicks in the coming months. What would winter be without a stack of Scat on the bedside table? Bleak indeed. So cheer up & gear up… good reading is on the way.
On October 15th we’re releasing a limited edition of the play that may have influenced Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT. This deluxe edition of Balzac‘s 3-act comedy WAITING FOR GODEAU (Original title Mercodet) is translated from the French by Mark Axelrod. This launch is bound to make waves so circle the date in red.
In November, we’re publishing two Black Scat Classic Interim Editions.
First, a portfolio of cool nudes by the Austrian painter Monika Mori (known internationally as “Moo”). These dazzling abstract forms are at once playful, moody & seductive. Don’t miss MOO NUDES—a lush, erotic celebration of the female body.
Also in November, the legendary Opal Nations returns with some wicked (and we do mean wicked) visual black humor: EMBRYO WORLD. It’s sure to piss off the Right-to-Lifers and thrill the rest of us.
December, we raise the curtain on the Théâtre de l’Absurde—a limited edition of a hilarious little Patchenesque drama: ‘S A BIRD by Eckhard Gerdes. No spitting in the balcony.
Finally, for fans of Alphonse Allais, our sublime trade edition is AVAILABLE HERE.
Black Scat Does Balzac
Samuel Beckett’s classic absurdist play Waiting for Godot was first presented in Paris on January 5, 1953.
Flashback: Paris, 102 years earlier, where Honoré de Balzac ‘s comedy Mercadet had its inaugural performance at the Theatre du Gymnase-Dramatique on August 24, 1851.
Mercadet features a character named “Godeau” who never appears.
Hmm.
Beckett claimed he never read Balzac’s play.
We think not. Thus, next month, Black Scat Books is publishing Balzac’s three-act comedy—translated from the French by Mark Axelrod. This unique limited edition includes an unpublished letter from Samuel Beckett to the translator.
On October 15, 2013, you be the judge.
All Hands on Deck! The Future Has Arrived!
Ahoy mates! —the fourth and final volume in the Captain Cap Collection has arrived—more madcap tales by the great French absurdist, Alphonse Allais. His hard-drinking, philosophizing, womanizing, & pioneering Captain Cap sails again to some hilariously strange shores. The pun-filled text has been brilliantly translated (and profusely illustrated) by Doug Skinner—and includes a penetrating preface and extensive notes on the text.
If you’ve never heard of “crocodile bridges” or “smell-buoys”, then you simply must read this literary landmark—the first English translation of “…one of the great masterpieces of humorous literature.”—nooSFere Littérature.
Come on in, the water’s fine…
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A COPY OF THIS LIMITED EDITION
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Volumes I – III are out of print..
Some Are Reading . . . (part 2)
Nothing like a good book on a summer’s day.
Even better, reading a sublime paperback from Black Scat Books.
Better still, enjoying How I Became an Idiot by Francisque Sarcey (actually written by one Alphonse Allais), translated from the French by the venerable Doug Skinner. Mr. Skinner is seen here exhibiting his fine taste in summer reading matter while relaxing in the Hamptons. (NOTE: This photo was not taken in the Hamptons, but it could have been had Mr. Skinner gone there.)
How I Became an Idiot is filled with biting wit and scatological humor. It’s the perfect beach book, as long as it’s read upside down so the title cannot be detected. After all, no one wants to be mistaken for an idiot.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT
Captain Cap Rides Again!
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!
110 pages, perfect-bound. Limited to 125 copies. $21.50
CLICK HERE and climb aboard.
