Tag: Doug Skinner

TYPO 2

T Y P O: Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, & Constrained Design

Our second issue is packed with treats from around the world…

Alien alphabets

Prismatic subdivisions

Principles of double-talk 

Post-Neoist portraits

Desiring specimens 

Asemic architecture

Paul Éluard poetry

Titular typography

Surrealist trivia

Italian eye candy

Curlicues in review

Generic Sheet Music

Jarry on the English language

Historical filler text translations

& much more

Pierre Albert-Birot; Guillaume Apollinaire; Mark Axelrod-Sokolov; Tom Barrett; Allan Bealy; Miggs Burroughs; Jahan Cader; Janina Ciezadlo; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; R J Dent; Karen Eliot; Paul Éluard; Paul Forristal; Ryan Forsythe; Jesse Glass; Rick Henry; Rhys Hughes; Rory Hughes; Alfred Jarry; Richard Koman; Márton Koppány; Amy Kurman; Peter F. Murphy; Pata-No UN LTD; Gaston de Pawlowski; Derek Pell; Harry Polkinhorn; Tom Prime; Jason E. Rolfe; Ded Rysel; Doug Skinner; Giovanni Antonio Tagliente; Félix Vallotton; Andrew C. Wenaus; Adolphe Willette; Carla Wilson;William Wordsworth.

Trade paperback; 152 pp., $14.95
ISBN 979-8-9869224-5-4

PUNCH LINES

We’re pleased as punch to bring you the 14th volume in our Alphonse Allais Collection—Let’s Not Hit Each Other, the last of the master absurdist’s anthumous works. It features 58 tales, rife with wordplay and wicked humor. This collection has been skillfully translated by Doug Skinner and includes his introduction and illuminating notes on the text.

What are we to make of Let’s Not Hit Each Other?
It includes a flying whale, an inflatable colonel, telepathic snails, a summer crime, the insularization of France, missionary parrots, an amphibious herring, twin cousins, and proposals for billboard dogs, deodorized urine, calming the sea with varnish, and crossing the English Channel with swings. You will also meet Mr. Fish, who travels with capsules of American air, presaging Duchamp’s “Paris Air” by decades.


This is the FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION of a remarkable volume. This edition includes an original portrait of the author by Corinne Taunay.

“One does not trifle with the humor of Allais.”
—Jean-Pierre Delaune

Our Top Ten Scatsellers

We don’t like to play favorites and with a list of some 200 titles we can’t. But we thought you might like to know which titles have been the most popular. So here is a list of our Top Ten. All are in print, so if you missed one just click on its cover.

10 Oulipo Pornobongo (2016)

9 Le Scat Noir Encyclopedie et Dictionaire (2020)

8 Captain Cap, Alphonse Allais (2013)

7 Le Scat Noir Encyclopedia (2017)

6 Critics & My Talking Dog, Stefan Themerson (2019)

5 The Pope’s Mustard-Maker, Alfred Jarry (2019)

4 The Straw That Broke, Tom Whalen (2014)

3 The Zombie of Great Peru, P-C Blessebois (2015)

2 The Squadron’s Umbrella, Alphonse Allais (2015)

1 Here Lies Memory, Doug Rice (2016)

MAD SCATTER

Forthcoming Titles:

Let’s Not Hit Each Other
Alphonse Allais

Her Three Daughters
Pierre Louÿs

Capital of Pain
Paul Éluard

Night Dreams: A Poem for Two Voices and a Secret Piano
Céline Arnauld

TYPO HAS ARRIVED!

 A truly unusual journal… 

PRINT magazine’s Steven Heller says: “Just what I’ve been waiting for.” 

De Villo Sloan in Asemic Front says: “TYPO is not another contribution to the wax museum of official culture. The editors interweave selections from what poet Ron Silliman calls the post-avant with the historic avant garde and esoteric visual-verbal examples from earlier centuries. Included are new iterations and genres in the continuum such as asemics, digital collage, neo-concrete and visual poetry as well as typographical innovations rooted in Lettrism. Accessible and highly enjoyable prose complements the flow of images.” 

TYPO #1: Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, & Constrained Design.
Trade paperback; 148 pp., $14.95

TYPO #1

In this issue: Marc-Alain Barbot; Tom Barrett; Michael Betancourt; Isabelle B.L; Restif de la Bretonne; Mamie Caton; Norman Conquest; Caroline Crépiat; Art Dandy; farewell debut; Ange Degheest; Jean-Pierre Duffour; Luc Fierens; Jack Granath; Isidore Isou; Amy Kurman; Claude Nicolas Ledoux; Giambattista Palatino; Raymond Queneau; Reese Saxment; Karen Shaw; Doug Skinner; Corinne Taunay; John J. Trause; Tristan Tzara; Cal Wenby; and Femke van der Wijk.

Get in on the ground floor with this collector’s edition.

TYPO : Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, & Constrained Design
Number 1.

6 x 9 inches; 148 pp.; paperback; $14.95
ISBN: 979-8-9869224-5-4

LATEST NEWS:

Typo: Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, & Constrained Design is the first in a promised (irregular) series of anthologies devoted to oddities of typographic design history, extending from now to the 1400s, including mnemonic devices, “Forty-Five First Letters” (they’re real!), “Surrealist Sign Language,” asemic writing, and lots more from Doug Skinner, Norman Conquest, Raymond Queneau, Isadore Isou and other contributors. Visually fun to look at and filled with interesting historical factoids about printing.
— i arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden,
BOOK BEAT

TYPO in PRINT

TYPO hits the top of the charts on Amazon

RAVE REVIEW

“The first issue of TYPO … has arrived at an ideal moment in the evolution of avant garde and experimental art and writing. The monuments of the 20th century avant garde such as DaDa, Surrealism, Lettrism and Oulipo are enjoying healthy interest in the digital age, inspiring the creation of new genres.TYPO provides fresh insights and perspectives on these movements.

TYPO is not another contribution to the wax museum of official culture. The editors interweave selections from what poet Ron Silliman calls the post-avant with the historic avant garde and esoteric visual-verbal examples from earlier centuries. Included are new iterations and genres in the continuum such as asemics, digital collage, neo-concrete and visual poetry as well as typographical innovations rooted in Lettrism. Accessible and highly enjoyable prose complements the flow of images.”

—De Villo Sloan, ASEMIC FRONT 2

Read the full review HERE

LE CHAT NOIR EXPOSED

Caroline Crépiat talks about her book, Let Chat Noir Exposed: The Absurdist Spirit Behind a 19th Century French Cabaret, translated from the French by Doug Skinner.

Now available worldwide on Amazon.

DUCHAMP CLEARS THE AIR!

Ahh, a breath of French air!

Marcel Duchamp‘s exile in New York, in 1915-1917, brought him sudden fame and changed the course of his career. Corinne Taunay’s lively and witty study describes the scandals of “Nude Descending a Staircase” and “Fountain,” the creation of the first readymades, and the evolution of Duchamp’s artistic strategies. With 19 illustrations in black and white and in color.

Corinne Taunay is a visual artist and art historian who has contributed to many publications in Europe and the US.

MARCEL DUCHAMP: Paris Air in New York
Corinne Taunay
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
Paper; 50 pp., 15.24 cm x 19.05 cm; illustrated; color; $14
nonfiction
ISBN 979-8-9869224-4-7

BACK TO STOOL

Originally released in a limited edition, this vastly expanded version of Black Scat’s Merde à La Belle Époque brings gastric laughter to all of America. This hilarious scatological anthology features verses, stories, songs, and playlets by some of Paris’s most inventive and eccentric comic writers of the period. It includes the exceedingly rare Le Journal des Merdeux — an illustrated broadside devoted entirely to merde. Indeed, upon its publication in 1882, The Little Shits’ Journal was seized by the police and banned. Merde!

This lovely, deodorized paperback edition, designed by Norman Conquest, has been exquisitely compiled, deftly translated, and introduced by Doug Skinner, and includes his erudite and witty notes on the texts.

Return to those raucous years of La Belle Époque when French “shiterature” scandalized Paris.