Category: translation

Some Are Reading . . . (part 2)

Leave a comment

ds

Nothing like a good book on a summer’s day.

Even better, reading a sublime paperback from Black Scat Books.

Better still, enjoying How I Became an Idiot by Francisque Sarcey (actually written by one Alphonse Allais), translated from the French by the venerable Doug Skinner. Mr. Skinner is seen here exhibiting his fine taste in summer reading matter while relaxing in the Hamptons. (NOTE: This photo was not taken in the Hamptons, but it could have been had Mr. Skinner gone there.)

How I Became an Idiot is filled with biting wit and scatological humor. It’s the perfect beach book, as long as it’s read upside down so the title cannot be detected. After all, no one wants to be mistaken for an idiot.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT

Captain Cap Rides Again!

Leave a comment

illustration by Doug Skinner

Hang on to your caps, folks, the Captain is back in a capsized edition designed to tease—Volume III in our hilarious 4-volume series.

Captain Cap: The Antifilter & Other Inventions by Alphonse Allais, translated and illustrated by Doug Skinner. This literary landmark is the first publication in English featuring Allais’s hilarious, booze-cruising captain of the high seas—the unthinkably unsinkable Captain Cap.

Over 100, profusely illustrated pages, The Antifilter is packed with strange, pataphysical inventions, quirky cons, cocktails, wordplay and absurd pranks. In short, it’s a feast for landlubbers and lover’s of French lit & humor.

DISCOVER:

  • a new way to give microbes what they deserve
  • a successful ascension, without a craft
  • a machine that travels 234 kilometers an hour
  • the secret of a truly modern house
  • the art of shoeing horses on the Australian pampas
  • a strange theory on the formation of coal

 and much, much more!

cc

110 pages, perfect-bound. Limited to 125 copies. $21.50

CLICK HERE and climb aboard.

Top Ten Forthcoming Titles

Leave a comment

poggio_cover

The Facetiae Erotica of Poggio
by Poggio Bracciolini. With hand-lettered cover & drawing by Jana Vukovic

Captain Cap (Vol. III): The Antifilter & Other Inventions
by Alphonse Allais. Translated from the French by Doug Skinner

Oulipo Pornobongo 2: Anthology of Erotic Wordplay
edited by Norman Conquest

Blink: Visual Antiphonies
by Farewell Debut

Hotel Ortolan
by Tom Whalen. With photographs by Michel Varisco

Embryo World & Others Stripped Bare
by Opal Louis Nations

Moo Nudes
by Monika Mori

Contemporary Art for Rich Kids
by Peppo Bianchessi

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks
by Alphonse Allais. Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
(Illustrated trade paper edition)

Tintin Meets The Dragon Queen in The Return of the Maya to Manhattan
a novel by Alain Arias-Misson

The Idiot Hath Arrived!

Leave a comment

No, not that idiot, this idiot…

How I Became an Idiot

Esteemed French drama critic (and the butt of derision at the cabaret Le Chat Noir), Francisque Sarcey reviewed the premiere of Alfred Jarry‘s Ubu Roi with this visionary verdict: ”…a filthy fraud which deserves nothing but the silence of contempt.”

Writer and humorist Alphonse Allais transformed Sarcey into an Ubuesque piñata in a series of wicked columns published under Sarcey’s name in the newspaper Le Chat Noir. 

Never before in English, this rare collection is introduced and translated from the French by Doug Skinner. Edition limited to 60 printed copies. #00 in our Black Scat Classics sub-series.

“How I Became an Idiot reminds me of Félix Fénéon’s excellent Novels in Three Lines… the unexpected is suddenly present, and there is rudeness, as well as a savagery of attack that we simply can’t imagine anyone doing to any well-known columnist of today and getting away with it.”
—Jeff Bursey, author of Verbatim: A Novel
Prepare yourself for some nasty laughs.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT.