Tag: black humor

“There’s been a murder here and someone’s responsible.”

Those words from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) are as true today as ever. But as any hard-boiled dick knows, solving a murder—or any crime for that matter—is no easy task. The proof of that lies in Lono Tagger‘s weird little picture-puzzle book: CRIME MEMES.

Discover imaginary crimes, impossible clues, contaminated evidence, red herrings, private a-eyes, surrealist stoolies, & masters of disguise.

WARNING: FORENSIC HUMOR

CRIME MEMES: A SURREALIST PUZZLE BOOK—just in time for the holidays.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lono Taggers is an insurgent collage artist and translator. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, educated in Great Britain, and lives in Paris with his wife and daughter. He has translated several notorious works by Pierre Louÿs, including A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France (New Urge Editions, Pocket Erotica Series: 2022). His experiments with AI-assisted collage have appeared in Roussel’s Revenge and Typo: The International Journal of Prototypes.

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.

SADE’S SATIRICAL NOVELLA

In this rare novella by the Marquis de Sade, a marriage is arranged between the aging Judge de Fontanis and a young woman, Mademoiselle de Téroze, who (unbeknownst to him) is in love with someone else. The young woman and her brother-in-law (the Marquis d’Olincourt) perpetrate a series of practical jokes, humiliating hoaxes and elaborate schemes in order to deceive the judge and stop him from consummating the marriage.

This amusing tale is an artfully-written and beautifully-structured literary attack on the judiciary, and one of Sade’s most savagely satirical texts.

A JUDGE DECEIVED
Marquis de Sade
Translated from the French by R J Dent
Pocket Erotica #24
pp., 174; paper, $14.95

Two other humorous works by the Marquis de Sade are also available in the Pocket Erotica series.

THE PLAY’S THE THING

Harold Jaffe‘s new collection, Strange Fruit & Other Plays, challenges the reader to confront an America awash in racism, hatred, and violence. With cunning precision, Jaffe employs 20th century icons of art, cinema, music, & literature, to illuminate the dark place we find ourselves in today.

Here are nine diverse and innovative one-act plays, featuring Billie Holiday & Lester Young;  Antonin Artaud & Georges Bataille; Marilyn Monroe & Marlon Brando; Samuel Beckett; condemned prisoners in Texas making their final statement before execution; Israelis & Palestinians in life-or-death dialogue; Charles Manson unleashed; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin & Jim Morrison burning it at both ends; & the potently satirical “Splish Splash,” exploring gender discord.

Harold Jaffe is the author of 30 novels, short fiction collections, essays, and plays. His recent books include Porn-anti-Porn and BRUT: Writings on Art & Artists. He is editor-in-chief of Fiction International.

 

 

 

MORE FUN…

….than a barrel of Britannicas! — and a lot lighter, too.

Le Scat Noir Encyclopédie et Dictionnaire de la Pataphysique, des arts et du savoir humain, par une société d’hommes et de femmes de lettres contains all the knowledge you’ll ever need to have a successful life of the mind. Profusely illustrated, featuring entries by an international roster of distinguished experts from the arts, sciences, university and academia. It is also the first encyclopedia with cover text in French and entries in English. CLICK HERE to order your copy on Amazon.

“An encyclopedia ought to make good the failure to execute such a project hitherto, and should encompass not only the fields already covered by the academies, but each and every branch of human knowledge.” —Diderot

“Today everyone wants to know everything – and preferably in alphabetical order.” —François Caradec

Le mot encyclopédie a été utilisé en français pour la première fois par Rabelais, mais ce n’est que lorsque Norman Conquest en a édité une qu’il a pris une dimension sublime.”—R. Queneau

Distinguished contributors from around the world include: Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Norman Conquest, Caroline Crépiat, René Descartes, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Charles Holdefer, Rhys Hughes, Tractor Inspector, Alfred Jarry, M. Kasper, Richard Kostelanetz, Amy Kurman, Librairie Larousse, Michael Leigh, Olchar E. Lindsann, Opal Louis Nations, Daren Elsa Nibelly, Dr. Novalis, Pata-No , Richard Peabody, Mercie Pedro, Derek Pell, Charlotte Porter, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Sourav Roy, Dr. I. L. Sandomir, Paulette Single, Doug Skinner, Maddy Smith, Linda Klieger Stillman, Corinne Taunay, Text Fixer, Kimberly Vodicka, Tom Whalen, Femke van der Wijk, Carla Wilson.

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A SPECIAL ISSUE — NOW AVAILABLE!

#20 — THE BLACK HUMOR ISSUE

FEATURING AN INTERNATIONAL CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Alphonse Allais, Mark Axelrod, Jocelyne Geneviève Barque, Tom Barrett, Léon Bloy, Ken Brown, Michael Casey, Wayne Coe, Norman Conquest, Thomas James Cooper, Farewell Debut, S. C. Delaney, Rhys Hughes, Harold Jaffe, David Kuhnlein, Mantis, Marcel Mariën, J. H. Matthews, M. G. Mclaughlin, Jim Meirose, Derek Pell, Agnès Potier, Mark Putzi, Richard Robinson, Marquis de Sade, John Galbraith Simmons, Doug Skinner, Nile Southern, Terry Southern, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Michel Vachey, Tom Whalen, Bill Wolak.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER ON AMAZON

 

“Who is fresh? Allais!”—Paul Verlaine

Summer reading, fresh as a sea breeze  and multicolored,  too.  Yes,  there are only two colors, but what lovely colors they are. Besides, this is no time to nitpick when  a new collection by Alphonse Allais —France’s greatest humorist—awaits you. Translated to perfection by the great  Doug Skinner, this edition is packed with 44 odd and hilarious texts by the master absurdist—plus 5 extra stories culled from the pages of Le Journal. That’s over 260 pages! — guaranteed to keep you laughing all summer long.

PINK AND APPLE-GREEN is a colorful addition to Allais’s “anthumous works.”

FIRST english TRANSLATION — AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ON AMAZON 

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

Add this to your book collection

RISE & SHINE

There is a veritable army of zombie books out there but nothing remotely like this one. This obscure novel—a masterpiece of avant-garde weirdness—was published in France in 1697. It was written by one Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, “the Casanova of the 17th century,” as an act of literary revenge. It is not simply vengeful, but it’s the first work in world literature to use the word “zombie” and stands as an early example of bizarre black humor. This outrageous relic—unearthed & translated from the French by the incomparable Doug Skinner—is the novel’s first appearance in English and features a preface by the great Guillaume Apollinaire.

_____________________Z-DAY___________________________

The Zombie of Great Peru has risen from the grave—unleashed worldwide by Black Scat in an appropriately fetid trade paperback edition, with sublime cover art and design by Norman Conquest.

Lock your doors and windows. Better yet, order it now before it’s too late!

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THE ZOMBIE OF GREAT PERU
Pierre-Corneille Blessebois
with a preface by Guillaume Apollinaire
translated from the French by Doug Skinner

$10.95
Paperback: 146 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0692409749

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

FIRST PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH

The Pope’s Mustard-Maker (Le Moutardier du pape) was the last work that Alfred Jarry finished, a few months before his death in 1907. It is a bawdy three-act farce loosely based on the medieval legend of Pope Joan, with a huge cast and lively songs bubbling with rhymes and wordplay.

Readers who know Jarry only from Ubu or his novels may be surprised that he wrote operettas, but his are fully Jarryesque, with his usual gusto for smutty jokes, legend, folklore, puns, wild invention, and popular theater. In his hands, Pope Joan becomes Jane, who runs off with her lover and disguises herself as pope. How will she pass inspection on the slotted chair? What will she do when her husband shows up? And has there ever been another production number celebrating the spiritual virtues of enemas?

A sublime translation from the French by Doug Skinner.

Click to order this avant-garde masterpiece

 

Green is the New Black

Have you seen The Book With the Green Cover?

It’s a collection of verbo-visual treats by Norman Conquest. It features posters, charts, mock book & magazine covers, rectified readymades, typographic diversions, found novels, and other detritus. It’s profusely illustrated with color plates and silverware.

Available now, just in time for summer. Be the first kid on the block to take this coffee table chapbook to the beach!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY