GOOD SCAT FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Category: surrealism
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!)
In the wings some special things…
BEAT THE HEAT
BEACH BOOKS FOR THOSE WHO DARE
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YIPPEE YI YO KI YAY!
“…one of his finest collections to date.” –Ceri Shaw
BLAZING TALES OF COWPOKE LIT!
Rhys Hughes saddles up & blasts his way across the vast plains — kickin’ up trouble in this hog-wild collection of Western Weirdness. Using various forms (short stories, a play, lonesome poems — even a garsh-dang essay!), he roasts the genre & serves up some hearty, avant-garde grub — fresh as a dew-dappled Texas rose.
Guns, puns, cowgirrrls & tumbleweed — what more could ya ask for. CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY BEFORE SUNDOWN
“Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet’s literature. He’s as tricky as his own characters. He toys with convention. He makes the metaphysical political, the personal incredible and the comic hints at subtle pain.”
— MICHAEL MOORCOCK
“A dazzling disintegration of the reality principle. Raises the bar on profundity and sets a comic standard for the tragic limits of our human experience. Like Beckett on nitrous oxide. Like Kafka with a brighter sense of humour.” — A.A. ATTANASIO
“If Hughes ever stops writing fiction I will shoot him.” — JEFF VANDERMEER
“If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.”
— SAMUEL R. DELANY
In one of his finest collections to date Rhys Hughes treats us to a cornucopia of Western whimsy and wierdness. His latest offering comes complete with all the standard delights we have come to expect from his writing. There are the wonderful guffaw provoking titles such as ‘Phony Express’, ‘Like a Rhino Cowboy’, ‘For a Few Hollers More’ and ‘Tom Cabin’s Uncle’. There is also a very catholic selection of literary genres on offer in these pages….short stories, even shorter stories, poems, a play, haiku and an essay.
— CERI SHAW
WEIRDLY OUT WEST
Rhys Hughes
Absurdist Texts & Documents (No. 42)
paperback; 141 pp., $14
ISBN 978-1-7357646-1-0
Happy New Year!
A smart start to a pataphysical new year.
Time to celebrate imaginary solutions. — Linda Klieger Stillman
This volume contains all the knowledge you’ll ever need to have a successful life of the mind. Profusely illustrated, featuring entries by an international roster of distinguished experts from the arts, sciences, university and academia.
“An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge.” —Diderot
“Today everyone wants to know everything – and preferably in alphabetical order.” —François Caradec
Le mot encyclopédie a été utilisé en français pour la première fois par Rabelais, mais ce n’est que lorsque Norman Conquest en a édité une qu’il a pris une dimension sublime.”—R. Queneau
Distinguished contributors from around the world include: Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Norman Conquest, Caroline Crépiat, René Descartes, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Tractor Inspector, Alfred Jarry, M. Kasper, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Librairie Larousse, Michael Leigh, Olchar E. Lindsann, Opal Louis Nations, Daren Elsa Nibelly, Dr. Novalis, Pata-No , Richard Peabody, Mercie Pedro, Derek Pell, Charlotte Porter, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Sourav Roy, Dr. I. L. Sandomir, Paulette Single, Doug Skinner, Maddy Smith, Linda Klieger Stillman, Corinne Taunay, Text Fixer, Kimberly Vodicka, Tom Whalen, Femke van der Wijk, Carla Wilson.
TOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Just in time for Xmas — all the world’s knowledge in a single stocking stuffer!
Le Scat Noir Encyclopédie et Dictionnaire de la Pataphsique, des arts et du savoir humain, par une société d’hommes et de femmes de lettres (volume deux) has arrived. This sublime paperback encyclopedia packs everything you need for a successful life of the mind into a single volume. Over 100 pages! This profusely illustrated edition is a must-have for collectors of arcane facts, bizarre biographies, astounding science, impossible inventions, and cryptic definitions. You’ll find everything under the sun from Absentee to Zyborg.
Featuring over 40 distinguished experts from around the globe, including: Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Norman Conquest, Caroline Crépiat, René Descartes, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Tractor Inspector, Alfred Jarry, M. Kasper, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Librairie Larousse, Michael Leigh, Olchar E. Lindsann, Musée Patamécanique, Opal Louis Nations, Daren Elsa Nibelly, Dr. Novalis, Pata-No , Richard Peabody, Mercie Pedro, Derek Pell, Charlotte Porter, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Sourav Roy, Dr. I. L. Sandomir, Paulette Single, Doug Skinner, Maddy Smith, Linda Klieger Stillman, Corinne Taunay, Text Fixer, Kimberly Vodicka, Tom Whalen, Femke van der Wijk, Carla Wilson.
Order now and we’ll include this lovely back cover…
The Saucer Has Landed!
In honor of Donald Trump‘s historic election loss we’re bringing back an out-of-print classic from our Absurdist Texts & Documents series:
The thirteen poems penned by screenwriter/director Ed Wood during his lifetime will not to be found in the Ed Wood, Jr. Collection at Cornell University. Cornell is home to the original draft of Wood’s screenplay “Grave Robbers from Outer Space” (released in 1959 as “Plan 9 from Outer Space”), as well as his rare novels Killer in Drag (1965), Death of a Transvestite (1967), and others. There is not, however, a single shred of Wood’s poetry. The only evidence that “the world’s worst filmmaker” was also a poet of equivalent talent are several dozen rejection letters, including one from The New Yorker for a poem entitled “shreik” [sic].
According to Wood’s second (?) wife, the poet renounced his efforts as “pure crap” in 1968, and buried these thirteen unpublished works at the La Brea Tar Pits in California. A few days later, she attempted to retrieve the pages, but they had vanished from their unmarked grave. Wood subsequently coined the term “poesy-snatchers” to explain what had happened to his missing body of work.
Nearly 30 years later the poems were discovered inside an abandoned flying saucer that landed in Lodi, New Jersey. In 1996, the poems were published privately in a limited edition by a small press in Coronado, California under the title Selected Poems — despite the fact that the book represents Wood’s total poetic output.
Black Scat is proud to bring these lost odes back from the dead in a glowing, unexpurgated chapbook. We have erred on the side of caution and retained the original title for—who knows?—perhaps the bard will revisit our planet and dump some more gems.
Click here to read the rave review by John Pietaro in SENSITIVE SKIN magazine.
BRING ME THE HEAD OF FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN!
Jason E. Rolfe‘s mesmerizing new chapbook, THE PUPPET-PLAY OF DOCTOR GALL, is a shadowy existential drama — an absurdist murder-mystery set in Vienna in 1820, with a cast of curious characters: Franz Joseph Gall, The Stranger, Ernst Sieber, Tomas Hocheder, Madam Denebecq, and Count Sedlnitzky.
Are they mere puppets whose every move is directed from above by Madam Denebecq, a self-titled mechanikus? Or are they all too human, performing their lives before our very eyes? And who, in the name of heaven, has stolen the head of Franz Joseph Haydn?
We had intended to reveal the answers to these questions but, alas, it’s too late. The lights have dimmed and the audience is holding its collective breath (if breathe they do).
Order your copy before the curtain rises.
No strings attached.
CRUEL DESIRES
“This modern classic deserves to be ranked alongside the great French erotic masterpieces, Story of O and The Image, and very few others. Not for the faint-hearted or the narrow-minded, this story of love, excess, degradation, cruelty, tenderness and beauty is for all women whose fantasies and desires embrace the intensely erotic.” —Dawn Avril Fitzroy
In the tradition of Decadent literature, spiced with Gothic, this provocative contemporary novel takes the reader on a voyage through dream, reverie, fantasy, memory and imagination – recounting the raptures and tortures in the initiation of a young woman, Gabrielle, by the Vicomtesse, the Comte and their entourage in The Domain.
THE RITES OF ECSTASY
Hélène Lavelle
Translated from the French by Valéry Soers
New Urge Editions
Trade paperback original; 240 pp., $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-7356159-0-5
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