Category: French literature

AN ‘ANTHUMOUS’ WORK BY ALPHONSE ALLAIS

The master absurdist is back in LOVES, DELIGHTS, & ORGANS (Amours, délices et orgues). This madcap collection of stories, fables, hoaxes and jokes is pataphysical fun for the literate layabout. This first English translation features 47 sublime textual specimens — PLUS six additional stories, a rousing introduction, and enlightening notes on the translation by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner. If you’ve yet to discover the bizarre world of Alphonse Allais, you’re in for a treat.

“Allais comes across as a very modern writer, and his work as an experimental enterprise which is exemplary in many ways… it is also quite possible to invoke such writers as Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges.”  —Jean-Marie Defays

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

   Alphonse Allais was born in the Northern port town of Honfleur, in Calvados, on October 20, 1854. He was, therefore, born in the same town as Erik Satie, and on the same day as Arthur Rimbaud. His father was a pharmacist, and sent young Alphonse to Paris to learn the family trade. Young Alphonse mostly cut his classes, and steeped himself in the absinthe-soaked delights of bohemian Montmartre.

   He joined the hard-drinking literary coterie the Hydropathes, accompanied the celebrated prankster Sapeck (Eugène Bataille) on his misadventures, submitted monochromatic pictures to the proto-Dada exhibitions of the Incohérents, and wrote squibs for various ephemeral papers. He became adept, in both word and deed, at the unique Parisian discipline of fumisme: a heady mix of hoaxing, provocation, and iconoclasm, all delivered with deadpan aplomb. Although he’d abandoned chemistry, his scientific credentials gave him a perspective (and persona) that set him apart from the more febrile poets around him. He was often likened to an English schoolmaster, with a placid demeanor that made his wild ideas all the more startling. [from the introduction by Doug Skinner]

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!

Step right up! The “Funhouse” issue is now available. It walks, it talks, it crawls on its belly like a reptile . . .

Featuring astounding art and fiction by  Mark Axelrod; Tom Barrett; David Berger;  Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Muriel Falak; Eckhard Gerdes; Richard Gessner; Alfred Jarry; Richard Kostelanetz; Amy Kurman; Mantis; Kate Meyer-Currey; Bob McNeil; Lillianne Milgrom; Lance Olsen; Paul Rosheim; Doug Skinner; Nile Southern;  and Jim Yoakum.

Ladies and gents, grab your copy now!

Notes from the editorial office

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED (19 April 2022)
We recently updated two of our New Urge titles with new cover designs by N. Conquest. These handsome paperback editions are available at the links below.

Peculiar Charms

Hidden Gems: The Best of The Pearl

A LIBERTINE CHAPBOOK ATOP THE MENU

A second edition of Denis Diderot‘s From Their Lips to His Ear (Pocket Erotica #6) is also available. It features a delicious illustration on the flyleaf. Diderot, of course, was the highly celebrated 18th century French philosopher & editor of the groundbreaking Encyclopédie. In 1748, in need of money, he wrote this scandalous and satiric libertine allegory — Les Bijoux Indiscrets —whose hero, a sultan, is in possession of a magic ring. This exquisite little edition has been edited by Lawrence Hamilton.

CLICK HERE to order the second edition.

If you missed the recent release of two titles by the great Pierre Louÿs, be sure to check out Lips of Bilitis and A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France

“Pierre Louÿs is one of the great and glorious erotomaniacs of the end of the nineteenth century.”
— André Pierre de Mandiargues

In 2016 we published The New Pleasure & other stories by Louÿs, which is currently out of print. Below, the cover (at left), and (at right) a provocative design which never appeared.

Meanwhile, the first English translation of Alphonse Allais‘s Loves, Delights, & Organs (translated from the French by Doug Skinner) is now available. This is the thirteenth volume in our unrivaled Alphonse Allais Collection.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…. the “funhouse” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW has rolled into town.

Grab it HERE.

MIND YOUR MANNERS

Pierre Louÿs wrote this scandalous and salacious satirical work in 1917, yet it wasn’t published until 1926, after his death. Originally titled Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l’usage des maisons d’éducation, it was the author’s first published erotic work—issued anonymously in Paris, with no date nor publisher’s imprint.

A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France parodies the educational handbooks of the day, as well as popular guides to etiquette. But unlike the author’s elegantly sensual ouvre, including Les Chansons de Bilitis and Aphrodite: mœurs antiques, this is Louÿs’ most radical and subversive book — aimed directly at middle-class puritanism, mocking the hypocrisy and complacency of the Belle Époque. It attacks religion and social norms with equal vigor— a sharp slap in the face of censors and prudes.

It’s also very funny.

A HANDBOOK OF MANNERS FOR THE GOOD GIRLS OF FRANCE
Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French by Lono Taggers
Paperback; 70 pp., illustrated; $12
Pocket Erotica #23 / New Urge
ISBN 13 978-1-7379430-6-8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pierre Louÿs, poet and novelist, was born in Belgium but spent his life in France. He is best known for his erotic works, many with sapphic and classical themes. His most popular titles include Aphrodite: mœurs antiques; Trois Filles de leur mère; Le Trophée de vulves légendaires; Poésies érotiques; La Femme et le pantin; and Les Chansons de Bilitis. His contributions to French erotic literature remain unequaled.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

Originally published in 1894 under the title Les Chansons de Bilitis, this provocative collection of poetry was purportedly translated from the Ancient Greek but was, in fact, the product of the imagination of French poet Pierre Louÿs. 

A faux contemporary of the poet Sappho, Bilitis offers the modern reader these seductive, sensual, and unashamed celebrations of female sexuality. 

A beautiful book for the bedside.

LIPS OF BILITIS
Pierre Louÿs
Translated by Lono Taggers
Illustrations by Willy Pogány
Paperback; 186 pp., $14
New Urge Editions / Black Scat Books
ISBN 978-1-7379430-5-1

Watch Out! — Here Comes Jean-Fucque!

A Born-Again Surrealist Classic

Inspired by Louis Aragon’s obscure surrealist text, this new adaptation by R J Dent proudly presents… [insert drumroll] the one and only, Jean-Fucque Le Cocque, a large, disembodied penis and his Parisian adventures — his satisfactory encounters with female passengers on the Metro, his small room in a hotel frequented by prostitutes, and his reason for buying a hat. (Mon dieu!)

Merci beaucoup!

P L A Y T I M E

Cover boy: Raymond Queneau

BLACK SCAT REVIEW 23: Wordplay
Bask in the lilt & spew of vowels & consonants, the litter of letters lost & found, visual lipograms, puzzles, puns, and blazing wordplay from the KO Corral.

FEATURING: Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Kevin Brown, Norman Conquest, Brian Coughlan, John Crouse, S. C. Delaney, Paul Forrestal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Penelope Gerdes, Joseph Harms, Amy Kurman, Opal Louis Nations, Angelo Pastormerlo, Steve Patterson, Derek Pell, Agnès Potier, Raymond Queneau, Paul Rosheim, Gerard Sarnat, Doug Skinner, Michel Vachey, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson.

BANNED IN FRANCE

Charles Baudelaire’s decadent erotic poems caused a scandal when they first appeared in 1857. Both author and publisher were prosecuted for unveiling works that were “an insult to public decency,” and six poems in the collection were suppressed. These so-called indecent works (banned in France until 1949) were: Lesbos; Condemned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta; Lethe; To One Who Is Too Happy; Jewels; and The Metamorphosis of the Vampire— and all are included in this Pocket Erotica edition,
plus 20 more.

Selected Erotic Poems
Charles Baudelaire
Translated from the French by R J Dent
Pocket Erotica No. 21, New Urge Editions
paper chapbook; 64 pp., $12
ISBN 978-1737943037

Charles Baudelaire by Nadar



SADE STRIKES AGAIN!

The merry Marquis de Sade is back with another witty chapbook in our Pocket Erotica series. The Self-Made Cuckold, translated from the French by RJ Dent, follows in the footsteps of the author’s Retaliation (Pocket Erotica #17), a similarly rare work sans the notorious content he is known for. Indeed, both titles contain no savage orgies nor flagellation. These little gems are —by comparison to The 120 Days of Sodom—libertine light and amusingly smutty. There are also strains of feminism running through both books.

For those who have never encountered de Sade, it should be pointed out that he was a gifted stylist whose sentences were exquisitely crafted. Here is how The Self-Made Cuckold begins:

One of the greatest deficiencies of ill-bred people is that they constantly utter a host of indiscretion, slanders or defamations on everyone that breathes, very often in the presence of people they do not really know. One cannot imagine the number of problems that this sort of idle chatter causes: what honest man can stand by and hear evil spoken about someone he cares for without reprimanding the fool who said it?

Indeed, who could ignore such an indignity, but that’s beside the point. The purpose of the quotation is to offer you an
hors d’oeuvre, the lilt and flow of the text.

We trust you’ll enjoy this humorous little feast.

The Self-Made Cuckold
Marquis de Sade
Translated by RJ Dent
Pocket Erotica No. 20
Paper; 60 pp., $10
ISBN 978-1737371199