Pleased to announce the 29th volume in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series: OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3; ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY.
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.
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.
OUT-OF-PRINT
REAR WINDOWS is a must-have reference for thrill-seeking aficionados, students of cinema, and collectors of offbeat artists’ books. Spanning the golden age of Noir (1941-1962), this edition includes rare, resurrected photographs from the most memorable hard-boiled classics. This lavish, perfect-bound reference is destined to become the bible of film study departments around the world.
With an introduction by Robert Wexelblatt, Professor of Humanities, Boston University.
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REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS
ON SALE NOW!
MUD BATH by Allan Bealy
ON SALE NOW!
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OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY
Coming July 30th
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
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
THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT
THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT
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!
The Derangement of Jules Torquemal
by Robert Wexelblatt
“The best thing would be for me to go away. Everyone says so: Geneviève, Emmanuelle, Dr. Strouville; no doubt the milkman, the President of the Republic, and the Pope in Rome agree. The Minister might allow me a couple of weeks, but he’s been looking at me strangely of late, furtively but with intensity, as if trying to peer inside my skull and make a proper survey of the bleak thoughts to be found there…”
A daunting philosophical puzzle.
Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 07
Publication: April 9
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Mud Bath
by Allan Bealy
“At last, an album of Bealy’s edgy, layered, elegant collages. Incisive, in both senses.”
– Michael Kasper
“Allan Bealy is a collagist with a profound knowledge of the form’s history, as well as art history—period. With a vision that’s wide-ranging but cohesive, he’s one of those artists who can serve up a banquet of images in seemingly disparate styles, yet you’ll always know who cooked them up. Dig in to this delectable feast for the eyes, but take the time to savor each course.”
– Peter Cherches, author of Lift Your Right Arm
Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 08
Publication: May 14
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Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
Rare theatrical works by the great French humorist.
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 28
Publication: July 9
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And more to come.
We start the New Year off with a stunning collection of texts by Gisèle Prassinos—one of surrealism’s most gifted voices.
Prassinos was discovered at age 14 by André Breton who included her poetry in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir (1940). Breton commented: “The tone of Gisèle Prassinos is unique: all the poets are jealous of it.” Indeed, her haunting, childlike style remains unrivaled and her stories timeless.
Gisèle Prassinos reading her poems to the Surrealists (1934)
Photo © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris
Exquisitely translated from the French by Ellen Nations, this limited edition includes 20 transformative texts, plus eight original watercolor paintings by the artist Bruce Hutchinson.
That half the works in this collection were written when Prassinos was just fourteen and fifteen is evidence of how rare a prodigy she was. The surrealist’s sense of the word marvelous certainly applies to these strange creations.
Here is a taste of the text “Filial Devotion”…
He now found himself in the middle of a large lake where furniture made of mahogany, spruce and rosewood swam.Young girls in their panties gently fought each other by now and again blowing on their flushed arms.The man believed he recognized one of his daughters. But thinking it was only a hallucination, he retreated by swimming up to the adjoining door.There, he found himself in the presence of a very large and hairy stag.The stag’s eyes slowly became bigger and bigger as they gradually feasted on his whole egg-shaped face.
Only 85 copies are available for purchase.
OUT OF PRINT
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Ellen Nations, translator and photographer, grew up in Norway and has for many years made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her husband Opal Louis Nations. Together they published the experimental literature and art magazine Strange Faeces. In addition to her translations of Gisèle Prassinos, she has translated works by Alain Jouffroy, Paul Nougé, Raymond Radiguet, Joyce Mansour and others.
Bruce Hutchinson created the watercolor paintings in Surrealist Texts while in his mid-20s as part of his weekly correspondence with Opal and Ellen Nations. He wrote his letters on small pieces of paper with ink drawings on one side, original watercolors on the other. His artwork has appeared in many small press publications.
