Category: translation

Sweet Sixteen!

We are elated, delirious, tickled, thrilled, and ecstatic to announce the 16th volume in our acclaimed Alphonse Allais Collection. This first English translation of Allais’s Pour cause de fin de bail has been exquisitely prepared and introduced (with notes on the text) by master translator Doug Skinner.

 

This wickedly amusing collection contains fifty-three absurdist tales—packed with phantom limbs, floating brothels, tapeworms, ostrich shoes, and other remarkable things. It makes a jolly beach read, or to browse in your hammock whilst sipping a cool glass of lemonade—or better yet, a jug of absinthe.

 

So, if you haven’t already begun gathering your personal Allais collection—shame on you!—now is the time to start. Scroll down and you’ll find unadulterated links to each edition for convenient purchasing.

Happy Summer!

Le propriétaire

My Rent Is Due!

Let’s Not Hit Each Other

We Are Not Sheep

2 + 2 = 5

Loves, Delights, & Organs

Alphonse Allais Reader

The Blaireau Affair

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks

Pink and Apple-Green

Double Over

I Am Sarcey

Long Live Life!

Masks: Deluxe Special Edition

No Bile!

Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais

The Squadron’s Umbrella  

 

WHET YOUR APPETITE…

Here’s your chance to sample 14 titles in the Pocket Erotica Series, the
seminal series of classic & contemporary erotic fiction.

This mouth-watering anthology includes:

Travels to Merryland. Anonymous
From Their Lips to His Ear. Denis Diderot
Priapeia. Anonymous
A Judge Deceived. Marquis de Sade
A Good Girl’s Home Companion. Lawrence Hamilton
A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France. Pierre Louÿs
Poems of Lust & Desire. Various
Jean-Fucque. Louis Aragon / RJ Dent
Eve’s Academy. Eurydice Eve
A Dirty Story as You Like It. Kim Vodicka
Escape Artists. Su Orwell
Grand Hotel Vittoria. Nina Ansani
The Obedience Room. Catherine D’Avis
The Desire Box. Laure Favager

THE POCKET EROTICA READER

A Connoisseur’s Sampler
Edited by Norman Conquest
New Urge Editions
Paperback; 178 pp.; $14
ISBN 979-8-9908521-5-0

A BIG NEW ISSUE!

Our biggest issue yet—169 pages—packed with prototypes, visual poetry, Belgian fiction, chronograms, Symbolist decadence, vintage surrealism & much more. Featuring an international cast of artists, poets, and writers, including: Frédéric Acquaviva; Terry J. Bradford; Apollo Camembert; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Lynn Crawford; Caroline Crépiat; Noël Devaulx; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Nico Kirschenbaum; John Kruse; Amy Kurman; Jean Lorrain; Emilia Loseva; Jean Muno; Opal Louis Nations; Clemente Palma; Claudio Parentela; Vojtěch Preissig; Vania Russo; Nelly Sanchez; Marcel Schneider; and Doug Skinner.

Maria De Naglowska: Surrealist Muse

The Sapphic Works of  Pierre Louÿs

Italian Precursors of the Incohérents

Symbolist decadence

Vintage typography

A phenakistoscope

Latvian collage

Belgian fiction

Czech eye candy

German Romanticism

Peruvian phantasmagoria

Silent cinema

Cryptic chronograms

Oulipian wordplay

Visual poetry

Asemic specimens

Weird tales

& more

TYPO in PRINT

“I consider myself a polygyphist: a person who is fluent in graphic linguistics. Typoglyphics is the language of phonetic and hieroglyphic (among other glyphic) forms. As Norman Conquest…points out in the recent number of his niche zine TYPO, there is so much joy to be found in dead languages, the least of which is: The reader cannot find the typos. Since my living prose is riven with typos (prior to editing), I am anxious to become expert in what Conquest calls determinative hieroglyphics.”

CLICK HERE to continue reading Steven Heller‘s take on TYPO #5—The Goddess Issue.

Spring Fever!

Spring Fever hath sprung with the special “Goddess Issue” of TYPO—packed with an international cast of luminaries: Tim Newton Anderson; Tom Bradley; Anton Chekhov; Norman Conquest; Caroline Crépiat; R J Dent; Max Ernst; Eurydice Eve; Luc Fierens; Leonor Fini; Théophile Gautier; Harold Jaffe; Amy Kurman; Lo; Michael Maier; Dmitri Manin; Elena Marini; Lilianne Milgrom; Opal Louis Nations; Marty Newman; Claudio Parentela; Angeleaux Pastormerleaux; Paul Rosheim; Jasia Reichardt; Doug Skinner; Phil Demise Smith; Tabarin; Lono Taggers; Corinne Taunay; Shyam Thandar; Stefan Themerson; Konstantin Vaginov, and Gregory Wallace.

IN THIS ISSUE:

·     TYPOGLYPHICS

·     THE LOVES OF PHARAOH

·    GODDESS OF NOIR

·     MAX ERNST & LEONOR FINI LOVE LETTERS

·     MEXICO’S SURREALIST GODDESSES

·     SEXY PRINTER ORNAMENTS

·     THE LOUIS XIII JOKESHOP

·     CONJOINING WORDS

·     SEMANTIC POETRY

·     THE WOMEN OF ROME

·     A BILINGUAL ACROSTIC REBUS

and much more

TYPO #5: The International Journal of Prototypes
edited by Norman Conquest
trade paperback; 152 pp., illustrated; $20
ISBN 979-8-9894330-5-6

DOUBLE YOUR TREASURE

We invite you to double your treasure with this pair of backlist beauties.

CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES

Charles Cros was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography and sound recording, only to die young, poor, and alcoholic. Not incidentally, he also invented the comic monologue for the actor Coquelin Cadet. This edition collects all of Cros’s monologues—masterfully translated & introduced by Doug Skinner—and includes performance notes, plus two biographical essays by his friend and colleague Alphonse Allais. 

UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES

Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets. This first English translation of their inspired collaboration of “Upside-Down Stories” satirized hot topics of the 1880s such as as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. These nutty gems will surprise & delight contemporary readers.

“THE SHEER PLAYFULNESS OF CERTAIN FANCIFUL PARTS OF CROS’S WORK MUST NOT LET US FORGET THAT IN THE CENTER OF SOME OF HIS FINEST POEMS, A REVOLVER IS AIMED AT US.”—ANDRÉ BRETON

Raunchy Wordplay

This scandalous little work appeared in France under the title “Letter to La Présidente.”

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a novelist and poet, one of the champions of Romanticism. In 1850, he and his friend Louis de Cormenin visited Italy, so he wrote his friends back home a letter about their adventures. The result was a rollicking “filthy letter,” packed with jokes, slang, obsolete words, literary allusions, puns, alliterations, neologisms, Spoonerisms, verses, outrageous metaphors, and Rabelaisian lists. It was published privately in 1890, and became a clandestine classic.

A FILTHY LETTER
Théophile Gautier
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner,
with an introduction & notes on the text
Pocket Erotica Series #28
74 pp., 4 x 6 inches;
979-8-9894330-7-0

War, what is it good for?

In war there is only one winner...

Scheduled for publication in 1917, this illustrated text was banned in France for its antiwar and anti-military—(dare we say pro-rat)—stance. Thus, Descaves’ incendiary little chapbook did not appear until 1920, when the censors finally waved their white flag and surrendered to reality.  

Alas, THE RAT WINS! is a potent work of black humor which will remain relevant as long as humans walk the earth.

Read it in peace.

THE RAT WINS!
Lucien Descaves
Illustrations by Lucien Laforge
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
Chapbook; 41 pp.; $12; ISBN 979-8989433063
Absurdist Texts & Documents #47
FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Lucien Descaves (1861-1949) was a prolific novelist, journalist, and playwright, and a constant activist for anarchism and pacifism. His antimilitary novel Sous-Offs (Non-Coms), published in 1889, earned him and his publisher arrests for insulting the army and offending morals. He was a founding member of the Académie Goncourt and the utopian community la Clairière de Vaux, and the literary executor of J.-K. Huysmans. His autobiography, Souvenirs d’un ours (Memoirs of a Bear), was published in 1946.

Lucien Laforge (1889-1954) contributed cartoons and illustrations to many periodicals, particularly for the anarchist press. He was uncompromising and often destitute; he was discharged twice in World War I after feigning insanity. His books include illustrations for Rabelais, Perrault, and Baudelaire, as well as his alphabet Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (1924).

Doug Skinner has translated many wonderful books for Black Scat Books, Wakefield Press, Corps Reviver, and Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, as well as contributing to the Fortean Times, Nickelodeon, Cabinet, and other fine magazines. His latest book of short stories is The Potato Farm, from Black Scat.

Happy New Year–It’s Here!

We’re starting off 2024 with a blast—an awesome issue of TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes.

STARRING: Tim Newton Anderson; Michael Betancourt; David Brizer; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; R J Dent;  Jesse Glass; Reinhard Goering; Rhys Hughes; Tim Hutchings; Mark Kanak; M. Kasper; Amy Kurman; Gabriel de Lautrec; Emilia Loseva; Jim McMenamin; O Homem do Saco; Jasia Reichardt; Doug Rice; Paul Rosheim; Doug Skinner;  Franciszka Themerson; Stefan Thernerson; John Vieira; Gregory Wallace; and Danny Winkler. 

PLUS EIGHT RUSSIAN FUTURISTS:
Velimir Khlebnikov, Igor Terentjev, Aleksey Kruchenykh, Vasily Kamensky, Pavel Kokorin, Tykhon Churylin, Bodjidar (Bogdan Gordejev), and David Burliuk. 

featuring

·     THE EVOLUTION OF IT

·     TOUR DE PANTS

·     PORTRAITS OF SADE

·     SECONDHAND SMOKE SIGNALS

·     ALFRED JARRY, TEEN PATAPHYSICIAN

·     ANTIQUARIAN PUZZLES

·     RUSSIAN FUTURISTS

·     CUBIST TALES

·     DRIBBLING DRABBLES

·     MR. COPYRIGHT

·     REINHARD GOERING STORIES

·     THEMERSON’S LOST FILM

·     FOUND FINDS

·     TYPO’S TYPOS

            And much more

Grab your copy today.

TYPO #4: The International Journal of Prototypes
edited by Norman Conquest
trade paperback; 152 pp., illustrated; $20

Throw open the curtain!