Category: wordplay

LONG LIVE LIFE !

We’ll cheerfully drink to that, whilst  launching  this new book by France’s greatest humorist, Alphonse Allais. 

Just in time for the holidays, too,  the first publication in English of the master’s  collection, Vive la vie! — stories culled from the pages of Le Chat Noir, packed with madcap (and bawdy) tales of love, adultery, the supernatural, military life, and—yes—fake news. These texts are quintessentially Allaisian, spiked with absurd digressions, parenthetical asides, footnotes, puns, jokes, military jargon, Parisian slang, neologisms, dog Latin, literary quotations, and other unmentionable forms of wordplay.

“EXPLOSIONS OF LAUGHTER ARE BETTER THAN DYNAMITE. LONG LIVE LIFE, DAMN IT!”
—ALPHONSE ALLAIS

This special Black Scat edition features four additional short stories not included in the original French volume, as well as a lively introduction, illustrations, and fascinating notes on the text by Doug Skinner.

Explosions of laughter guaranteed.

Now available worldwide on Amazon. CLICK HERE to order your copies.

LONG LIVE LIFE!
by Alphonse Allais
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
Trade paperback; 184 pp.,  $14

 

FUN & GAMES & OULIPIAN FICTION

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As the summer heats up, Black Scat offers two treats—a grand anthology and a stunning new novel by Alain Arias-Misson.

Pucker up your lipograms, OULIPO PORNOBONGO has arrived. The three limited edition volumes of this “Anthology of Erotic Wordplay” are out of print and scarce. Now the complete set has been compiled into this juicy paperback edition—Illustrated in shocking full color. Discover inspired works of constrained ecstasy by Alphonse Allais, Alain Arias-Misson, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Rusty Cuffs, Farewell Debut, Tom La Farge, Larry Fondation, Paul Forristal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Roger Leatherwood, D.S. Macpherson, Samantha Memi, Ellen Nations, Opal Louis Nations, Andy O’Clancy, Lance Olsen, Derek Pell, Shane Roeschlein, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Maria Schurr, Lucy Selleck, Kebob G. Shoon, Doug Skinner, Tara Stillions Whitehead, and Giovanni Zuniga. OULIPO PORNOBONGO is a veritable orgy of art, text, and Oulipian mischief.   CLICK TO ORDER

Discover what happens when famous fictional characters surface in the life of a writer. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHARACTER FROM FICTION is an extraordinary work of Oulipian imagination. Alain Arias-Misson has produced an indecently literary novel about a thoroughly picaresque Character. Passages have been plagiarized from a score of great Modernists — from Kafka and Stendhal to Joyce, Austen and Proust, from Strindberg, Constant and Mann to Michaux, Sterne and Beckett, and are woven seamlessly, unidentified, into his “autobiography.” For the Character — a budding author — is the product of those authors whose novels he has been nourished on. Characters step out of their fiction to advise and interfere with his life and he appears on stage in theirs. Where ‘le petit Marcel’s’ nocturnal terrors begin and the Character’s end, or how the Character’s boyhood lusts lead him into the Brussels labyrinth of ladies of the night and how he meets young Daedalus there, already sated in a lady’s embrace, is an open question. The autobiography ends at the age of twenty-one, when like most authors he has read his own most important authors — yet the rest of his life has already been plotted.
CLICK TO ORDER

Let the games begin!

Mondo Bongo!

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A robust romp through the fields of potential literature, OULIPO PORNOBONGO: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY presents passionate works of constrained ecstasy by 28 innovative artists and writers from around the world—from Allais to Zuniga. Prepare to be perplexed, seduced, & titillated by the bongo beat.  168 pages, illustrated in full color.

LEAP HERE

Oulipian Wordplay & Ecstatic Constraints

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Pucker up your lipograms, OULIPO PORNOBONGO has arrived.

Our three,  limited edition volumes of the Anthology of Erotic Wordplay are out of print and scarce. Now the complete set has been compiled into one juicy paperback edition—Illustrated in shocking  full color. This is the book collectors have been drooling for.

Discover inspired works of constrained ecstasy by Alphonse Allais, Alain Arias-Misson, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Rusty Cuffs, Farewell Debut, Tom La Farge, Larry Fondation, Paul Forristal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Roger Leatherwood, D.S. Macpherson, Samantha Memi, Ellen Nations, Opal Louis Nations, Andy O’Clancy, Lance Olsen, Derek Pell, Shane Roeschlein, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Maria Schurr, Lucy Selleck, Kebob G. Shoon, Doug Skinner, Tara Stillions Whitehead, and Giovanni Zuniga.

It’s a veritable orgy of art, text, and Oulipian mischief.

BONGO-COVER-FINAL

OULIPO PORNOBONGO
Anthology of Erotic Wordplay
edited by Norman Conquest
168 pages; illustrated, full color
trade paperback; $24.95

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Act Now and receive…

BONUS

 

The Game is Afoot!

“Pell’s satire doesn’t lack for sharp edges. His twisted humor is sure to appeal to crime-fiction lovers.” —THE RAP SHEET

Black Scat proudly presents Derek Pell’s  MISSING MYSTERIES — the most baffling and hilarious reference book ever published. This  special collector’s edition features a complete history of nonexistent mysteries (1840 – 2015) in one deluxe, large format paperback.

Packed with pulp, crimes, dicks, dames, thugs, puns, gumshoes and stoolies. Loaded with laughs, maps, gaffs, noir, conundrums, puzzles & quizzes. 196 pages crammed with over 100 full-color cover reproductions, plus startling excerpts, scathing reviews, outlandish blurbs and mysterious synopses.

PROMO-FINAL
[click on cover for larger view]

In the words of Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block: “Derek Pell is quite mad, in rather a brilliant way.”

Novelist Robert Coover has called Pell “…a wordplay master and a parodist of great wit and cunning,”  and MISSING MYSTERIES offers further evidence.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER DIRECT FROM OUR PRINTER  / CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

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.

The Inner Skinner

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Coming this summer….a blessed compendium 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.  248 pages of pure, unadulterated Skinner. Holy cow!

Watch this space,

Friends of Black Scat Books dig this…

“Derek Pell spins words like flaming yarn from a berserk spindle. Burroughs would be proud of this one . . . but Pell’s voice is entirely his own. Naked Lunch at Tiffany’s is a true work of literature.” –D. Harlan Wilson, author of Primordial: An Abstraction

PROMO-LUNCH-COVER

On sale now

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