Category: satire

Shocking and Scandalous!

THIS POST WAS UPDATED 4.30.22

Black Scat author Caroline Crépiat poses with her edition of LE CHAT NOIR EXPOSED at the recent exposition of Incohérents art at the l’Olympia in Paris. A true funhouse of exhibits and quite a scandal still, just as the early exposition in 1893 shocked the city. The Incoherents were irrational, satirical, iconoclastic and absurdist, but were they artists asked the public? “Mais oui,” exclaimed Jules Lévy, the founder of the Incoherent Art movement, “but these artists don’t know how to draw.” (haha)

Imagine the gasps of attendees when they spied Alphonse Allais‘s green cab curtain, titled Des souteneurs, encore dans la force de l’âge et le ventre dans l’herbe, boivent de l’absinthe (Pimps still in the prime of life and lying face down in the grass drink absinthe)—one of the earliest monochromes in the history of art!—shocking indeed.

Most of the original Incoherent’s artworks & ephemera did not survive, and could only be seen in 19th century illustrations. But then, in 2021, came a remarkable discovery in France — a large trunk with 17 examples of art by Incoherents, including Allais’s monochrome.

But wait…were these artworks real, or fakes and forgeries? And why was the show limited to only 4 hours of viewing?? (What next? A drive-thru exhibition?)

Experts, such as our friend, artist and critic, Corinne Taunay, have been investigating and discovered that several items (including Allais’s curtain!) aren’t authentic. Mon dieu! — another scandal rocks the Parisienne artworld! This brazen scam appears designed to reap enormous profit (10 million euros, anyone?) off the memory of dead avant-garde rebels.

Meanwhile, here in America where everything is branded “fake” today, we remain respectfully silent on the controversy. However, what we can guarantee is the authenticity of Ms. Crépiat’s LE CHAT NOIR EXPOSED. Indeed, her book is the real deal — translated from the French by the great Doug Skinner — an extraordinary work of scholarship that ‘exposes’ the liveliest fin-de-siècle bohemian cabaret and journal in Paris.

CLICK HERE and see for yourself.

JARRY LIVES!

Alfred Jarry spent his brief and turbulent life experimenting with genres of fiction. In his last few years, he created a new fictional form: the absurdist speculative essay. R J Dent’s new English translation of Speculations contains 68 of Jarry’s essays, originally printed between 1901 and 1904 as a series, ‘Spéculations’, in the French journal Le Revue Blanche.

In Jarry’s darkly comic collection of surrealist and satirical prose pieces, the renowned author deploys his characteristic satirical eye and dark humor to devastating effect. These essays range in tone from the wildly comic to the deeply tragic and cover a diversity of subjects, ranging from French Trees to Cannibalism. For Jarry, nothing is sacred; everything is worthy material for his surreal satire; the Passion is presented as a sporting event; buses are the prey of big game hunters, and even the Queen is licked from behind.

A series of sly investigations into fin de siècle France that reads like a beautiful & bloody
handful of paper cuts, splintered essays that turn authority on its head in sharp bursts of
wicked logic, R J Dent elegantly capturing Jarry’s iconoclastic spirit, his scandalous heart.
—Matthew Kinlin

There’s a story that Jarry carried a loaded revolver around with him (said revolver Picasso obtained after his death, and took it with him on night walks around Paris). A woman living near Jarry complained to him about the danger of his gun-toting to her children. To which Jarry said, “If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you.” If you can appreciate as demented a sentiment as that, you can have a hundred more reading Speculations, in a delightful translation from R. J. Dent. —Conor Hultman, The Local Voice

Edible contents:

SPECULATIONS
Alfred Jarry
Translated by R J Dent
Paper; 5.06  x 7.81 inches; 235 pp., $15.95
ISBN 13 979-8-9859996-1-7 

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]

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.

START THE NEW YEAR WITH A BLAST OF LAUGHTER

Comic artist Doug Skinner aims his poisoned pen at 52 works of classic literature—from The Iliad to Ubu Roi—whittling them down to four cartoon panels. It’s a constraint worthy of Georges Perec — an OuBapoian*collection of black humor guaranteed to set funny bones on fire. 

Shorten the Classics is brilliant — albeit abbreviated — fun. If you want to read the classics, but don’t have time, this book is for you.

Grab a copy before it’s too late!

Shorten the Classics
Doug Skinner
Absurdist Texts & Documents #43
paperback; 116 pp.;
5.06 x 7.81 inches; $14
ISBN 978-1-7373711-3-7

*Oubapo: Ouvroir de bande dessinée potentielle: ”workshop of potential comic book art”)

UFOs (Unidentified Flying Odes)

John Pitaro has written an illuminating review of our SELECTED POEMS OF EDWARD D. WOOD, JR.
(Absurdist Texts & Documents #26).

It appears in the current issue of SENSITIVE SKIN magazine.

Here’s a snippet:

“Within this mix of emotional upheaval and splintered symbolism, Wood closes the chapbook with a particularly notable piece, one indicating his inclusion in both the literary underground and the LGBTQ community as well as the sorrowful reality of unsuccessful arts careers. It is dubbed “Howl” (page 25) and opens with a sharp, satiric awareness of Ginsberg:

I saw the best flicks of my generation destroyed/by critics/ranting hysterical mutants/
Dragging directors in drag through the mud like/blood-thirsty bullies

Here, Wood deems himself “the angel-headed genius in the orange neon dusk of Hollywood”, and observes his audience both laughing at and cheering him in the cinema before

They staggered off into the sunset strip/
Leapt off the Hollywood sign into the bliss of the curvaceous cult-womb/
That wrapped them forever in its loin-lit angoric embrace “

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REVIEW

CLICK HERE to buy the book and weep with laughter. Inspired satire, guaranteed.


Read My Lips . . .

Lawrence Hamilton has selected spicy excerpts from an anonymous English translation of Denis Diderot‘s satiric libertine novel, Les Bijoux Indiscrets (The Indiscreet Toys, 1749). Our edition, titled  From Their Lips to His Ear, is # 6 in the Pocket Erotica series— little,  4 x 6-inch editions, lovingly designed for collectors, yet priced inexpensively.

Denis Diderot was a highly celebrated 18th century French  philosopher & editor of the groundbreaking Encyclopédie. In 1748, in need of  money, he wrote this scandalous and amusing libertine allegory whose hero, a sultan, is in possession of a magic ring. When aimed at female genitals, the ring prompts these private parts to speak — revealing a woman’s deepest sexual desires, experiences, and indiscretions. In this precursor to The Vagina Monologues, the women  are portrayed  as  powerful beings through their liberated  ideas and sexuality.

“…filled with the strings of sexual metaphors (both explicit and concealing) … a linguistic tour de force, a rhetorical experiment in verbalizing the obscene, and a representational puzzle, signaled by that deliberate act of veiling and unveiling.”

FROM THEIR LIPS TO HIS EAR
Denis Diderot
Pocket Erotica No. 6
71 pp., perfect-bound; $10
ISBN 978-1-7356159-1-2

CLICK HERE to order on Amazon

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please email blackscatbooks (AT) icloud (DOT) com

Hogarth’s Cottage

 “…what makes an artist great is having the courage to provoke and challenge.” —The New York Times

 

CLICK HERE for more titles in the Pocket Erotica series.

LOOK OUT MAMA, IT’S DEBAUCH-O-RAMA!

“A harsh, hilarious, scurrilous, and scatological satire.”
—Ed Simon, JSTOR Daily

Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was considered one of the greatest English satirists — a nimble wit and scribbler of sublime wordplay, parodies & pornographic puns.

Hailed by Graham Greene and Ezra Pound, Wilmot is perhaps best known for his outrageous libertine satires, including this wickedly funny Restoration drama.

Originally titled The Farce of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, DEBAUCH-O-RAMA is an absurdist “closet drama” – written to be read aloud and not performed.  It consists of five acts in raunchy rhyming couplets and a madcap cast of characters:

CAST

  • Bolloxinion – King of Sodom
  • Cuntigratia – his Queen
  • Pricket – young Prince
  • Swivia – Princess
  • Buggeranthos – General of the Army
  • Pockenello – Prince and favourite of the King
  • Borastus – Buggermaster-General
  • Pene & Tooly – Pimps of Honour
  • Officina – Maid of Honour
  • Fuckadilla – Maid of Honour
  • Cunticulla – Maid of Honour
  • Clytoris – Maid of Honour
  • Flux – Physician to the King
  • Vertuso – Dildo- and Merkin-Maker for the Court

Let the curtain rise and the laughter begin!

DEBAUCH-O-RAMA
A Restoration Closet Drama
by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
Pocket Erotica  [№ 11 ]
65 pp.; paper, perfect bound; 4 x 6 inches; $10
ISBN 978-1-7357646-2-7