Kiss that Gideon goodbye!

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Holy cow!—it’s the gospel according to Doug Skinner—featuring articles, short stories, verses, columns, literary essays, alphabets, metrical translations, monologues, talks, cartoons, rounds, lipogrammatic smut, a puppet show, a ventriloquism routine, and a one-act play!

THE DOUG SKINNER DOSSIER is destined to be in every motel room across the land. This divine illustrated edition features over 240 pages of wit, wisdom, and profundity. It fairly overflows with inspirational black humor and some rather dangerous (albeit gloomy) ideas that might not be suitable for nuclear family get-togethers. But — swear to god — it’s a hell of a good book!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

Here’s a peek at the contents:

DOSSIER-CONTENTS

Want to try before you buy? Download a FREE excerpt here.

Alphonse Rides Again!

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original-edOn July 4, 2012, we published Alphonse Allais’s MASKS in a limited edition of 50 copiesthe 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 Allaisa 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. excerpt This is the first illustrated edition of this mini masterpiece. If you missed out on our first edition, now’s you chance to own a copy. MASKS Alphonse Allais Translation & illustrations by Norman Conquest With an introduction & notes on the text by Doug Skinner Absurdist Texts & Documents No. 1 Revised  & Expanded Second Edition 50 pp., perfect-bound; illustrated; Special limited launch price:  $12.00    (*$14 after June 4th)

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Alphonse Today! —Hip! Hip! Allais!

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drawing by Doug Skinner

Who was the hippest cat to ever hang his hat at Le Chat Noir in Paris? Alfred Jarry? Erik Satie? Apollinaire? No! Alphonse Allais, of course — the fellow who 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). Furthermore, you don’t need a Time Machine to travel back to 1893 to read Allais’s oddly titled collection Le parapluie de l’escouade. In fact — thanks to Doug Skinner’s inspired translation — you don’t even have to read French to enjoy all 39 wickedly funny texts in The Squadron’s Umbrella because Black Scat Books has launched its first publication in English. Yes, it’s another coup for this little house, and a landmark for lovers of French literature and Pataphysical humor.

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ALPHONSE ALLAIS  (1854 – 1905) was France’s greatest humorist. His elegance, scientific curiosity, preoccupation with language and logic, wordplay and flashes of cruelty inspired Alfred Jarry, as well as succeeding generations of Surrealists, Pataphysicians, and Oulipians.  The Squadron’s Umbrella collects 39  of Allais’s funniest stories — many originally published in the legendary paper Le Chat Noir, written for the Bohemians of Montmartre. Included are such classic pranks on the reader as “The Templars” (in which the plot becomes secondary to remembering the hero’s name) and “Like the Others” (in which a lover’s attempts to emulate his rivals lead to fatal but inevitable results). These  tales have amused and inspired generations, and now English readers can enjoy the master absurdist at his best. As the author promises, this book contains no umbrella and the subject of squadrons is “not even broached.”

THE SQUADRON’S UMBRELLA
by Alphonse Allais
Translated with an introduction, notes and illustrations by Doug Skinner

6” x 9”, trade paperback. 160 pp., Illustrated.
$12.95  /  ISBN -13  978-0692392126

FICTION / FRENCH LITERATURE / HUMOR

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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLACK SCAT BOOKS:

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks by Alphonse Allais
Translated by Doug Skinner

Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais
Compiled and  translated by  Doug Skinner

Rare Classic Back in Print!

“A badass work of concentrated hallucination.”—Nile Southern


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Just in time for the pataphysical New Year, a faux facsimile edition of Aventures dans la ‘pataphysique, which was originally published in Paris in 1951 by Éditions du Sagittaire.

Released in the U.S. by Black Scat in 2013, the limited edition of  ADVENTURES IN ‘PATAPHYSICS (Absurdist Texts & Documents #13) sold out quickly. We’re pleased to announce a reprint of that rare edition.

Discover the Jarryesque joys, thrills, and perils of science in a bizarre classic of “imaginary solutions.” With French text and illustrations throughout, this anonymous gem happens to be one of the strangest books we’ve ever published (and that’s saying quite a lot).

$15.00   /  $7.50 digital edition
Perfect-bound, illustrated,  64 pp. / Second Printing

‘PATAPHYSICS / SCIENCE  / ART / ABSURDISM / FRENCH LITERATURE

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Whose Nonsense is It Anyway?

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SCAT scan by Eckhard Gerdes

This year, give the gift of brazen balderdash. Over 125 pages of utter nonsense by Jake Alexander, Alphonse Allais, Alain Arias-Misson, Mark Axelrod, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, Fiona Duffin, Tom La Farge, Allen Forrest, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Rhys Hughes, Janne Karlsson, Teri Lee Kline, Richard Kostelanetz, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe, Michael Leigh, Terri Lloyd, David Macpherson, Samantha Memi, Monika Mori, Yarrow Paisley, Sheila Pell, Jason E. Rolfe, Doug Skinner, Wendy Walker, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson.

CLICK HERE and order before you come to your senses.

 

Back to the Future!

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Part Oulipian exercise, these meticulous scrapings reveal the future in all its sublime absurdity. The author approached the horoscope in his morning newspaper as if it were a puzzle, like the crossword or sudoku. By scraping out the middle part, and joining the beginning and end, he received a hidden message.

Reading outside the lines here one discovers an alternative fate more interesting than the fluff dispensed by run-of-the-mill soothsayers. Indeed, these predictions are pithy, profound, and astonishingly accurate.

In HOROSCRAPES, Doug Skinner offers up 366 clever twists of fate—something for every sign—guaranteed to alter forever how we view the universe.

Who knows what the future holds?

Doug Skinner knows.

HOROSCRAPES

HOROSCRAPES
by Doug Skinner
ABSURDIST TEXTS  & DOCUMENTS NO. 31

$15
Perfect-bound paperback, 66 pp.

ASTROLOGY / WORDPLAY / HUMOR

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In the wings, some special things (sixth edition)…

HOROSCRAPES

Black Scat’s Absurdist Texts & Documents series is divided into sets of six titles each. This year we’ll be closing out the fifth set with AN INCONVENIENT CORPSE by Jason E. Rolfe (#30) and HOROSCRAPES by Doug Skinner (#31). Both gems are imbued with the mischievous spirit of Alphonse Allais.

Indeed, we launched the series in the summer of 2012 with Allais’s story MASKS, and the great French absurdist remains the guiding light behind Black Scat Books–suitably sublime and obscure. You’ll find plenty of evidence in the just released trade paperback SELECTED PLAYS OF ALPHONSE ALLAIS.

Next month we’re publishing a novel by a talented young writer, Suzanne Burns.

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Sweet and Vicious is an inspired exploration of Waldeinsamkeit and (post)romantic angst that turns the mundane into something beautiful and wild. Burns is a gifted writer.” –D. Harlan Wilson.  Coming October 15th, just in time for Halloween.

Need we say more?

Artist Terri Lloyd  (THE LITTLE RED BOOK OF COMMIE PORN) returns with a new monstrosity that’s in preparation as we speak. For now, the nature of the book must remain under wraps to avoid causing  panic. We can only report that it’s another collaboration with Norman Conquest. (Clearly these two don’t know when to stop.)

The grand “utter nonsense” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW (#9) is going to be our biggest issue yet. Publication date TBA.

Looking ahead to 2015, you’ll discover books by Mark Axelrod, Eckhard Gerdes, Alain Arias-Misson, Farewell DebutCarla M. Wilson, Doug RiceRichard Kostelanetz, and other luminaries.

HAPPY FALL!

Baffling Illuminations

Of the three modes of communicating their ideas that
human beings possess, viz., speech, gesture, and creative writing, the last one has received the least notice. Indeed, the study of hand-writing when applied to the creation of poetry and short stories is more connected in one’s mind with fortunetelling,
and other forms of popular superstition or deception,
than with scientific investigation; yet there is much to
learn by the study of insane writers.

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selected pages from . . .

Wasted Energies, Baffled Thoughts: On the Writing of the Insane
by G. Mackenzie Bacon, M.D.
ABSURDIST TEXTS & DOCUMENTS NO. 16  

UPDATE: THIS TITLE IS OUT-OF-PRINT

In the wings, some special things (fifth edition)…

 

jt_smlThe Derangement of Jules Torquemal
by Robert Wexelblatt

“The best thing would be for me to go away. Everyone says so: Geneviève, Emmanuelle, Dr. Strouville; no doubt the milkman, the President of the Republic, and the Pope in Rome agree. The Minister might allow me a couple of weeks, but he’s been looking at me strangely of late, furtively but with intensity, as if trying to peer inside my skull and make a proper survey of the bleak thoughts to be found there…”

A daunting philosophical puzzle.

Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 07
Publication:  April  9

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Mud Bath
by Allan Bealy

At last, an album of Bealy’s edgy, layered, elegant collages. Incisive, in both senses.”
– Michael Kasper

“Allan Bealy is a collagist with a profound knowledge of the form’s history, as well as art history—period. With a vision that’s wide-ranging but cohesive, he’s one of those artists who can serve up a banquet of images in seemingly disparate styles, yet you’ll always know who cooked them up. Dig in to this delectable feast for the eyes, but take the time to savor each course.”
– Peter Cherches, author of Lift Your Right Arm

Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 08
Publication:  May 14

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Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais

Translated from the French by Doug Skinner

Rare theatrical works by the great French humorist.

Absurdist Texts & Documents  –  No. 28
Publication:  July  9

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And more to come.

Are writers insane?

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Only a few copies remain of this illuminating—albeit baffling—illustrated edition of Bacon’s text. If you’re considering a career as a writer (or have already taken the plunge), this book is a wake-up call from another century.

If it strikes you as a dangerous book… well, it is.

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“Utterly baffling, yet brilliant.”  The London Times

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