Order or Chaos?

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Jules Torquemal is a middle-aged civil servant in the Ministry of Education living shortly before the First World War blew up the Belle Époque.  His life is settled and his hobby is philosophizing of the complacent variety.  One day, told by an indignant friend of a petty injustice, Torquemal finds questions he had thought long closed re-opening and the ground slipping beneath him. The world he believed morally moored and logically consistent suddenly appears to him anything but.

The Derangement of Jules Torquemal by Robert Wexelblatt is a wickedly clever (and haunting) philosophical puzzle.

This Black Scat Classic Interim Edition is limited  to 100 copies.  CLICK HERE to order

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Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play, and a short novel, Losses. His novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction.

 

Coming Attractions

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REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS
ON SALE NOW!

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MUD BATH by Allan Bealy
ON SALE NOW!

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THE UNKNOWN ADJECTIVE by Doug Skinner
Coming June 11th

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ASTOUNDING

28

SELECTED PLAYS OF ALPHONSE ALLAIS
Coming July 9th

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SEX

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OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY
Coming July 30th

PLUS

Class Struggle, Wordplay, & Derring-do!

Each line that Judson Hamilton invents carbonates your imagination to the point where your brain spills over in a waterfall of fizzy synapses.”
—Carl Annarummo, Greying Ghost Press

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Cover art and design by Ievgen Kharuk

The Count of Monty Christo meets Monty Python in this wickedly funny experimental novella. Will Morel and Valentine usurp their respective masters in time for a happy ending?  Judson Hamilton‘s tale of class struggle appropriates the language of 19th century literature and turns it against itself. Rad, indeed!

Available in a limited print edition of 150 copies as well as a digital version

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

 

READING IN TRANSLATION reviews SURREALIST TEXTS

 Falling somewhere between short stories and prose poems in fluid translation by Ellen Nations, Surrealist Texts is an indispensable introduction to this fascinating writer.

—Lucina Schell, READING IN TRANSLATION

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“Nations’s translations admirably resist the urge to clarify or normalize Prassinos’s surrealist prose. Complemented by Bruce Hutchinson’s beautiful watercolors in a limited edition of only 85 copies, Surrealist Texts makes a lovely gift for connoisseurs of surrealism. But the significance of this collection extends beyond its historical value. Like most surrealist literature, the stories are strange and even off-putting on the surface, but plumbing their depths reveals repressed truths, hidden within the subconscious, that are no less painful or true than when they were written.”

Read the complete text of Schell’s glowing review at the link below:

http://readingintranslation.com/2014/02/25/bleak-fairy-tales-gisele-prassinoss-surrealist-texts-translated-by-ellen-nations/

THIS LIMITED EDITION IS OUT-OF-PRINT.

BLACK SCAT REVIEW #6 is Available!

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BLACK SCAT REVIEW features innovative fiction, art, interviews, and works in translation.

In this issue: Nin Andrews, Emily June Brink, Eckhard Gerdes, Michelle Gray, Judson Hamilton, Sarah Katharina Kayß, Adam Miller, Ivan de Monbrison, Jules Moy, Opal Louis Nations, Doug Skinner, Brett Stout, Joanna C. Valente, and Sayuri Yamada. PLUS an extensive interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky on the release of The Placebo Effect Trilogy.

Full color book format — 78 pages — Perfect-bound ($18.00).

Also available in a digital edition ($5.00).

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

INSIDE

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Baffling Illuminations

Of the three modes of communicating their ideas that
human beings possess, viz., speech, gesture, and creative writing, the last one has received the least notice. Indeed, the study of hand-writing when applied to the creation of poetry and short stories is more connected in one’s mind with fortunetelling,
and other forms of popular superstition or deception,
than with scientific investigation; yet there is much to
learn by the study of insane writers.

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selected pages from . . .

Wasted Energies, Baffled Thoughts: On the Writing of the Insane
by G. Mackenzie Bacon, M.D.
ABSURDIST TEXTS & DOCUMENTS NO. 16  

UPDATE: THIS TITLE IS OUT-OF-PRINT

Digital Ribaldry

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A classic collection of indecent absurdities by Poggio Bracciolini—now available in a discreet digital edition.

The Facetiae Erotica of Poggio

Over 100 pages of naughty amusement. 

Stash it on your iPad or other mobile device.  (Copies of the limited print edition are also available.) 

This title is no longer available.

The #2 Bestseller!

THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT

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Praise for MERDE À LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

“BLACK SCAT BOOKS has launched from the pits of lit this shameful little anthology, wonderfully translated and prefaced with futile brilliance by Doug Skinner. I was immediately disgusted and attracted by these turn-of-the-century French luminaries indulging in dirty little boy lyrics and lunatic stories, many of them in the scatological society that hung out at Le Chat Noir…” —Alain Arias-Misson, author of Theatre of Incest

“Incroyable!… Alfred (a fart man from way back) Jarry would surely relish this collection–one which combines force-feeding with delicate odoriferous leakage—something for every taste!”  —Nile Southern, author of The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy

“These dirty little secrets are canonical secretions of literary genius. Fin de siecle Parisian scatology at its best.”  —D. Harlan Wilson, author of Hitler: The Terminal Biography, Freud: The Penultimate Biography, and Douglass: The Lost Autobiography

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This hilarious scatological anthology features stories, a song, poems, a play, a rebus, and naughty jokes by period luminaries. Contributors include Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Edmond Haraucourt, Vincent Hyspa, Maurice Mac-Nab, and Erik Satie.

The collection has been tastefully compiled and effervescently translated from the French by Doug Skinner.

This limited edition includes notes on the translations and a brief biography of each contributor.

#2 on our Bestseller List— don’t settle for #1!

Merde à La Belle Époque
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 24
Perfect-bound chapbook, 48 pp.
Limited to 310 copies. – $12.50

*A discreet digital edition is also available ($7.50)

Happy Birthday, Rabelais!