Black Scat Books are now available in Canada,
Category: News
Ready for Sleepytime? Here’s a free sample…
Next month, Black Scat will publish Doug Skinner‘s much anticipated collection of short stories, SLEEPYTIME CEMETERY. This event will certainly have Skinner’s growing cult following dancing on the grave of 21st century Literature. So, too, should fans of absurdist fiction and dark humor prepare to rejoice.
For those who have yet to encounter Mr. Skinner’s peculiar creations, we offer here a FREE story from the book.
RAP SHEET Raves!
MISSING MYSTERIES: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF NONEXISTENT MYSTERIES by Derek Pell has just been reviewed by the influential RAP SHEET blog.
Classics Both “Lost” and Reinterpreted
Several times over the past few years, I’ve mentioned that Northern California artist, photographer, and author Derek Pell was creating a pictorial collection of 100 “missing mysteries,” mischievous covers he created for whodunit and thriller novels that never actually existed… CLICK HERE TO READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW
The Game is Afoot!
“Pell’s satire doesn’t lack for sharp edges. His twisted humor is sure to appeal to crime-fiction lovers.” —THE RAP SHEET
Black Scat proudly presents Derek Pell’s MISSING MYSTERIES — the most baffling and hilarious reference book ever published. This special collector’s edition features a complete history of nonexistent mysteries (1840 – 2015) in one deluxe, large format paperback.
Packed with pulp, crimes, dicks, dames, thugs, puns, gumshoes and stoolies. Loaded with laughs, maps, gaffs, noir, conundrums, puzzles & quizzes. 196 pages crammed with over 100 full-color cover reproductions, plus startling excerpts, scathing reviews, outlandish blurbs and mysterious synopses.
[click on cover for larger view]
In the words of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block: “Derek Pell is quite mad, in rather a brilliant way.”
Novelist Robert Coover has called Pell “…a wordplay master and a parodist of great wit and cunning,” and MISSING MYSTERIES offers further evidence.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER DIRECT FROM OUR PRINTER / CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON
Entropy Magazine’s interview with Norman Conquest
Dennis Sweeney interviewed Black Scat founder Norman Conquest for Entropy
Three Plays by D. Harlan Wilson
Black Scat Books is proud to add D. Harlan Wilson to its list of luminaries. This is the renegade author’s first collection of plays, and it’s guaranteed to provoke standing ovations — or perhaps we should say “fistfights in the orchestra” as Jarry’s Ubu Roi did so long, long ago.
Over the last two decades, D. Harlan Wilson has established himself as a writer of avant-garde fiction that has been called many names, ranging from speculative, literary and postmodern to irreal, bizarro, absurdist and “splatter-schtick.” Some say he defies categorization and is a genre unto himself. In THREE PLAYS, Wilson subverts traditional forms of stagecraft, unmans the helm of narrative, and exposes the nightmares that distinguish everyday life in urban and suburban America. Channeling Samuel Beckett and Jon Fosse in one scene, Russell Edson and Alfred Jarry in the next, he subjects actors as much as audiences and readers to mindless violence and torrid irrationality under the auspices of literary theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy and science. These plays belong more to an ultramodern zoo than a modern-day theater. In “The Triangulated Diner,” a Camero fishtails across the stage and runs over actors as jungle animals attack the audience. An elephant is hung onstage by a crane for stomping on the head of an abusive handler in “The Dark Hypotenuse.” “Primacy” finds a husband and wife struggling to write the perfect obituary, ideally one that includes wuxia death matches and flying holy men . . . This collection describes a microcosm that is at once uncanny and familiar, weird and ordinary, comedic and horrific. Wilson puts the human condition on trial and challenges us to view theatrics in a different light.
The official publication date is March 15th, but ADVANCE COPIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon. CLICK HERE to order.
THREE PLAYS BY D. HARLAN WILSON
Trade paperback; 160 pages; $12.95
ISBN-13: 978-0692631539
Cover photograph by Lodiza LePore / DESIGN BY NORMAN CONQUEST
A Grand Buffet!
In this sublime bilingual edition, master chef and avant-garde gourmet Richard Kostelanetz serves up a classic feast guaranteed to spark one’s mental taste buds. From the main course of a carefully carved guinea pig in the form of Gustave Flaubert’s “Dictionnaire des idées reçus,” Kostelanetz carves delicious English morsels seasoned with artificial intelligence (aka Google Translate) and his own sympathies.
GUSTAVE’S POCKET DICTIONARY is a 21st Century classic.
Trade paperback, 190 pages, 5.06″ x 7.81″
$10.95
Click here to order your copy on Amazon
A Blessed Event!
- flipside
Black Scat proudly presents DIVA R.E.M. — a special series of seven, two-sided posters. This glorious addition to our Black Scat Broadside series features full color photographs, art and text on front and back. Each poster is 12″ x 18″ and printed on prime 80# UV-coated, acid-free stock.
Born with original sin and a fascination with religious ritual and imagery, artist Farewell Debut uses her spiritual angst and sexual anxiety as raw material. DIVA R.E.M. is a paper opera of sorts—the tale of Diva (played by a damaged ballerina ornament) who falls in love with heaven (a hellish lover, played by a dead insect and a shard of unidentified plastic). Fauré’s Requiem in D minor was the inspiration for this work and is a suitable soundtrack for a darkly humorous visual requiem.
Available individually for $10 at the links below. To order the entire series of 7 at a divine discount, email us for details: blackscat (at) outlook (dot) com
(Click on thumbnails for larger view.)
DIVA R.E.M. I. INTROIT
Click to order
DIVA R.E.M. II. OFFERTORIUM
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DIVA R.E.M. III. SANTUS
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DIVA R.E.M. IV. PIE JESU
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DIVA R.E.M. V. ANGUS DEI
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DIVA R.E.M. VI. LIBERA ME
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DIVA R.E.M. VII. PARADISUM
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Click here to order all seven posters at special discount price
Theatre of the Absurd—Opening Night!
“Witkiewicz takes up and continues the vein of dream and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the dramatists of the absurd—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Arrabal—of the late nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties.” -Martin Esslin
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (pen name: Witkacy) was desperate to get out of revolutionary St. Petersburg after the Bolsheviks seized power. Back in Poland, eager to make money and a name for himself, Witkacy began to write plays in a style that he called “Pure Form,” which foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd. By the time that he wrote VAHAZAR (1921), Witkacy had achieved a dreamlike dramaturgy: centered on the paranoid and crazed despot, Vahazar, and spiraling outwards through an anthill society of automatons, religious cults, and quack scientific and social theories, this play is about being trapped in nothingness.
This translation of the play by Celina Wieniewska was commissioned by Stefan Themerson in 1967, and later announced as a forthcoming title by the legendary Gaberbocchus Press. Somehow the project was sidetracked and has never appeared until this Black Scat Books publication. Paul Rosheim, publisher of Obscure Publications and scholar of Themersonia, provides a sublime introduction with biographical information about Witkacy and the story of this translation. The book also includes an appendix featuring Franciszka Themerson’s “Vahazar: A Few Suggestions for Design.”
“…Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz and myself, the three musketeers of the Polish avant-garde.” —Witold Gombrowicz
Available now on Amazon in the U.S. and Europe.
Click here to order this masterpiece of the absurd.
Don’t miss the party for ZOMBIE!
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