Rosheim Returns!

FISHSLICES

Black Scat Books is proud to bring you this long out of print collection of poetry by the founder and editor of the legendary avant-garde press, Obscure Publications.

Paul Rosheim founded Obscure Publications in 2000 and for ten years published an exquisite series of extremely limited edition chapbooks. OP boasted an astonishing roster of avant-garde writers from Europe and America. The list included books by Raymond Queneau, Eric Basso, Peter Ruric (Paul Cain), Harry Mathews, Tom Whalen, Terry Southern, Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, Harold Jaffe, Opal Louis Nations, Georges Perec, Barbara Wright and many others.

Rosheim launched his series with Fishslices and later issued an expanded second edition. This Black Scat Classic Interim Edition is a reprint of the latter volume and includes illustrations. The author also provides an extended introduction with a fascinating history of the press.

Although relatively few copies of Fishslices were produced, the little book soon gathered a reputation among those fortunate enough to have received a copy, and it has long been sought after by collectors.

We invite you to discover this unique little collection.

CLICK HERE to order a copy.

Oulipo Pornobongo 3. The doors are open. . .

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Pleased to announce the 29th volume in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series: OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3; ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY.

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Featuring constrained works by Maria Schurr, Tom La Farge, Paulo Brito, Lucy Selleck, Doug Skinner, Paul Forristal, Ellen Nations, and Norman Conquest.

A titillating anthology—provocative, funny, and uncommonly satisfying.

You can order a copy in print ($15) or the digital edition ($5.25) by clicking HERE.
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Let us seduce you…

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BLACK SCAT REVIEW #8. Featuring seductive works by Suzanne Burns, Doug Rice, Steven Teref, Kurt Cline, Charles Holdefer, Doug Skinner, Paulo Brito, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe, Tara Stillions Whitehead, Maria Morisot, Fox Harvard, Charlie Griggs, Monika Mori, and Tom Whalen. Titillating art, photography, poetry and fiction.

70 pages, full color, perfect-bound.

CLICK HERE to order either the print edition ($16) or the discreet digital edition ($5)

Black Scat Review #8 —Seduction— Now Available!

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Here’s the one we know you’ve been waiting for. It features seductive works by Suzanne Burns, Doug Rice, Steven Teref, Kurt Cline, Charles Holdefer, Doug Skinner, Paulo Brito, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe,Tara Stillions Whitehead, Maria Morisot, Fox Harvard, Charlie Griggs, Monika Mori, and Tom Whalen. [cover photograph by Fox Harvard]

Titillating art, photography, poetry and fiction.

70 pages, full color, perfect-bound.

CLICK HERE to order either the print edition ($16) or the discreet digital edition ($5)

BACKCOVER

If you’ve missed a previous number, back issues are available here.

Go with the flow . . .

WALLOMSAC-cover

Black Scat Books is pleased to present David R. Slavitt‘s sublime, Nabokovian text WALLOOMSAC: A WEEK ON THE RIVER — number 28 in our flagship Absurdist Texts & Documents series. Mr. Slavitt, a writer, poet, and translator, has authored over 100 books. Under the pseudonym “Henry Suttion”  he wrote the bestselling novel The Exhibitionist which sold over 4 million copies. To list all his titles here would require a web site all its own.

WALLOOMSAC is an absurdist journey that on the surface appears to travel in one direction yet actually meanders in many. The mysterious itinerary contains one surprise after another as Slavitt’s dazzling river ripples with eddies and undercurrents. And what’s this about Thomas Crapper? Well, yes, he’s in the book, too, but don’t ask us to explain.

Poet and critic R. H. W. Dillard:

“David Slavitt has written a book about or for which it is impossible simply to write a blurb—a word, it might interest you to know, coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess. (Did you think of a purple cow, just then?) The text itself is indescribably (deliciously?) itself. Like the Waloomsac River, it just keeps rolling along, taking the reader irresponsibly with it—laughing out loud again and again and again; marveling at its rapid wit (white water?), the wide breadths of its erudition, the dangerous shallows of its overt and covert cheekiness; marking the vertiginous depths of its, yes, wisdom. To make a long blurb short, I haven’t had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up ‘til dawn one night in 1962 breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.”

Come take a swim… the water is fine.

WALLOOMSAC: A WEEK ON THE RIVER
David R. Slavitt
Absurdist Texts & Documents No. 28

Paper, perfect-bound; 88 pp. $20.00

CLICK HERE to order.

Post-Humanism, Ontology, and the Encyclopedia Mouse

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Here’s a mouse-bite from Richard Grayson’s interview with Tom Whalen’s Encyclopedia Mouse.

Q: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. We know you’re busy.

The Encyclopedia Mouse: OK.

Q: And your amanuensis is with you this evening?

EM: Tom Whalen. Yes, he’ll type in my answers.

Q: Do you consider The Straw That Broke more metafiction, cyberpunk, or post-humanistic, innovative, philosophical fiction? I believe your publisher, Black Scat Books, has described it as all three.

CLOCK HERE  to read the complete interview over on Medium

CLICK HERE to order a copy of Tom’s extraordinary new novel, THE STRAW THAT BROKE.

Made in China (Warning: Red Hot!)

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 THE LITTLE RED BOOK OF COMMIE PORN by Terri Lloyd & Norman Conquest

Black Scat Books presents the complete and unexpurgated edition of this banned classic of Maoist pornography. Profusely illustrated with full color posters, cult propaganda, sex toys, lewd photos, and explicit Red Chinese erotica never before seen in the west. Includes: Sado-Maoism, podophilia, Bendi Helmsman ™  fetish vibes, “Waters of Yin,”  incest-on-ice, gunnilingus, “Dear White-Boned Demon” advice column, & much, much more!

COMMIE-COVER

ADULTS ONLY

$24.00. 5¼” x 8¼”, Perfect-Bound paperback. Illustrated in lavish color. 50 pp. Limited to 100 copies.
ART  / COMMUNISM / SATIRE / SEX / HUMOR

SOLD OUT

The Mouse That Soared…

“An intriguing blend of SF, philosophy, and word play . . . Giddy fun!” —Rudy Rucker

STRAW-FOR-SCAT

“Call it science fiction or meta-fiction or cyber fiction . . . wonderfully funny, often exciting, always baffling, and occasionally even profound. It’s the Moby-Dick of mice!”   —R.H.W. Dillard

“Pollinates post-cyber-punk with headier poetry than the genre has yet known.”    —Andrei Codrescu

“Allusive, punning, intricately plotted and exponentially self-referential . . . science fiction which ultimately explores the science of fiction or, more aptly, the art of narrative.”  —Brad Richard, American Letters & Commentary

“Storytelling which is subtly, wickedly funny.”     —The Times-Picayune

Bulwer Zetford’s work-in-progress The Cosmic Messenger is about to take a strange turn, and the multiverse with it, when Roithamer of Relix “beads” once again and brings swirling into Zetford’s Kaduza M-mon processor the Encyclopedia Mouse, the one creature who can save the multiverse. Tale twines tale as the mouse battles his Doppelgänger in cyberspace, Heidegger in his Black Forest hut, and a hyper-crazed Roithamer. Death is everywhere, but the mouse, birling (if only barely) in his Binding Nexus Drive, is determined to narrate the universes away from their demise.

Dive into August with a stunning work of speculative metafiction. This is seminal post-cyberpunk with wicked Oulipian twists, crafted by a master of innovative fiction.

THE STRAW THAT BROKE
A novel by Tom Whalen
6” x 9”, trade paperback original. 172 pp.
$14.95  /  ISBN -13 978-0692259436

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***

tom-whalenTOM WHALEN is a novelist, short story writer, poet and critic who has written for Agni, Asymptote, Bookforum, Chicago Review, Fiction International, Film Quarterly, the Washington Post and other publications. His books include Dolls, Elongated Figures, The Birth of Death and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan, and the novels Roithamer’s Universe and The President in Her Towers, which John Warner in the Chicago Tribune called a “mash-up of Kingsley Amis and Italo Calvino. A strange, surreal and wonderful novel.”  Whalen currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany, where he teaches film at the State Academy of Art and Design.

Summer Scatastic!

Here’s a look ahead at some of the goodies coming your way in the next few months.

In August we’re bringing you a major new novel by Tom Whalen, The Straw That Broke—a stunning work of speculative metafiction— filled with wordplay and literary hijinks. This is seminal post-cyberpunk fiction with wicked Oulipian twists, crafted by a master of experimental fiction.

On Labor Day, Mao Zedong’s clandestine Long March reaches its revolutionary climax in The Little Red Book of Commie Porn. A collaboration between California artists Terri Lloyd and Norman Conquest, this outrageously funny collection of satirical art & text is unlike anything we’ve ever published. Indeed, the book is nearly  impossible to describe and must be seen to be believed.

Another literary event you won’t want to miss: the first English translation of the Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais, compiled and translated by Doug Skinner. This special illustrated edition makes a nice companion volume to Allais’s Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks. This new collection includes 24 works: eight monologues, three one-act plays, plus short skits, dialogues, and burlesques. For fans of the absurd, this is a must-have.

For armchair travelers who enjoy going nowhere in wickedly clever fashion, there’s  David Slavitt’s absurdist chapbook Walloomsac: A Week on the River. It has already received advance praise from R. H. W. Dillard: “…I haven’t had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up ‘til dawn…breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.” This one’s a real treat.

Coming in September. we’re thrilled to be publishing Suzanne Burns’ experimental novel Sweet and Vicious. This new work by the gifted young author of Siblings and Misfits and other Heroes, is sure to enhance her reputation as one of the most innovative contemporary American writers.

And just in time for Halloween… the third volume of Oulipo Pornobongo: Anthology of Erotic Wordplay. The collection includes works by Maria Schurr, Paulo Brito, Tom La Farge, Lucy Selleck, Doug Skinner, Ellen Nations, Paul Forristal, and others.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss out on these and other forthcoming titles.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting to know you . . .

Excerpted panel from “How Pleasant to Know Mister Skinner” in THE UNKNOWN ADJECTIVE AND OTHER STORIES by Doug Skinner.

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”Witty and ingenious comics from the exceptionally-talented writer, musician, performer, ventriloquist, and cartoonist Doug Skinner. It’s exciting to finally have these little-seen strips available in one beautiful book. You may be reminded of Voltaire or Ernie Bushmiller while reading these meticulously drawn stories featuring utterly hapless characters, but Mr. Skinner has a style all his own.” —R. Sikoryak

“Mr. Skinner knows many terrible, terrible secrets about us. We are once again fortunate that he chooses to share them so deftly and so altruistically.”—Mark Newgarden

What is the truth behind the “Unknown Adjective”? Will Walter and Benny find the elusive batworm? What really goes on out in “Cowboy Country”? And can Dr. Docket find a cure for all that ails Mr. Pert? You’ll discover the answers to these and other burning questions in this profusely illustrated collection of comics and picture stories from the brilliant (albeit peculiar) mind of Doug Skinner. Take a look inside and see for yourself. Your daily dilemmas will soon seem inconsequential, and the laughter you hear may turn out to be your own.

CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.