The lovely “Lewd, Nude & Rude” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW has just stormed the beach!
As you’ve come to expect, it’s filled with Sublime Art & Literature — innovative fiction, eye-popping graphics, works in translation, and spicy absurdities. Featuring 131 pages packed with an international cast of contributors: Mark Axelrod; Thomas Barrett; Sebastian Bennett; Giacomo Girolamo Casanova; Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Dawn Avril Fitzroy; Eckhard Gerdes; Alexander Krivitskiy; Amy Kurman; Hélène Lavelle; Marc Levy; Olchar E. Lindsann; Clément Marot; Lilianne Milgrom; Alison Miller; T. Motley; Angelo Pastormerlo; GerardSarnat; Doug Skinner; Valéry Soers; Jean Donneau de Visé; Gregory Wallace; Tom Whalen; and David Williams.
As the first publisher to bring many books by France’s greatest humorist to America — in sublime translations by Doug Skinner — we are happy to share the exceedingly rare photo below. It was recently unveiled by the Musée Alphonse Allais in Honfleur (Allais’s birthplace) and donated by Nicole et Xavier Artus. It shows Alphonse with his wife, Marguerite, and daughter, Paulette, at “La Ferme de la grande cour” (circa 1896). Of the location, Allais wrote: “I go there often, to this rustic inn, half farm, half hotel; I go there to drink a glass of fresh cider, under the apple trees and even have a bite to eat when the heart tells me…”
Below, we have taken the liberty of colorizing the photograph and improving its exposure. We think it brings the image to life.
Happy May Day to Allais and to all our visitors. Help us celebrate by ordering one of the master’s collections here.
The master absurdist is back in LOVES, DELIGHTS, & ORGANS(Amours, délices et orgues). This madcap collection of stories, fables, hoaxes and jokes is pataphysical fun for the literate layabout. This first English translation features 47 sublime textual specimens — PLUS six additional stories, a rousing introduction, and enlightening notes on the translation by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner. If you’ve yet to discover the bizarre world of Alphonse Allais, you’re in for a treat.
“Allais comes across as a very modern writer, and his work as an experimental enterprise which is exemplary in many ways… it is also quite possible to invoke such writers as Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges.” —Jean-Marie Defays
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alphonse Allais was born in the Northern port town of Honfleur, in Calvados, on October 20, 1854. He was, therefore, born in the same town as Erik Satie, and on the same day as Arthur Rimbaud. His father was a pharmacist, and sent young Alphonse to Paris to learn the family trade. Young Alphonse mostly cut his classes, and steeped himself in the absinthe-soaked delights of bohemian Montmartre.
He joined the hard-drinking literary coterie the Hydropathes, accompanied the celebrated prankster Sapeck (Eugène Bataille) on his misadventures, submitted monochromatic pictures to the proto-Dada exhibitions of the Incohérents, and wrote squibs for various ephemeral papers. He became adept, in both word and deed, at the unique Parisian discipline of fumisme: a heady mix of hoaxing, provocation, and iconoclasm, all delivered with deadpan aplomb. Although he’d abandoned chemistry, his scientific credentials gave him a perspective (and persona) that set him apart from the more febrile poets around him. He was often likened to an English schoolmaster, with a placid demeanor that made his wild ideas all the more startling. [from the introduction by Doug Skinner]
Step right up! The “Funhouse” issue is now available. It walks, it talks, it crawls on its belly like a reptile . . .
Featuring astounding art and fiction by Mark Axelrod; Tom Barrett; David Berger; Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Muriel Falak; Eckhard Gerdes; Richard Gessner; Alfred Jarry; Richard Kostelanetz; Amy Kurman; Mantis; Kate Meyer-Currey; Bob McNeil; Lillianne Milgrom; Lance Olsen; Paul Rosheim; Doug Skinner; Nile Southern; and Jim Yoakum.
Comic artist Doug Skinner aims his poisoned pen at 52 works of classic literature—from The Iliad to Ubu Roi—whittling them down to four cartoon panels. It’s a constraint worthy of Georges Perec — an OuBapoian*collection of black humor guaranteed to set funny bones on fire.
Shorten the Classics is brilliant — albeit abbreviated — fun. If you want to read the classics, but don’t have time, this book is for you.
Grab a copy before it’s too late!
Shorten the Classics Doug Skinner Absurdist Texts & Documents #43 paperback; 116 pp.; 5.06 x 7.81 inches; $14 ISBN 978-1-7373711-3-7
*Oubapo: Ouvroir de bande dessinée potentielle: ”workshop of potential comic book art”)
BLACK SCAT REVIEW 23: Wordplay Bask in the lilt & spew of vowels & consonants, the litter of letters lost & found, visual lipograms, puzzles, puns, and blazing wordplay from the KO Corral.
FEATURING: Mark Axelrod, Tom Barrett, Kevin Brown, Norman Conquest, Brian Coughlan, John Crouse, S. C. Delaney, Paul Forrestal, Ryan Forsythe, Eckhard Gerdes, Penelope Gerdes, Joseph Harms, Amy Kurman, Opal Louis Nations, Angelo Pastormerlo, Steve Patterson, Derek Pell, Agnès Potier, Raymond Queneau, Paul Rosheim, Gerard Sarnat, Doug Skinner, Michel Vachey, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson.
A special reprint edition of BLACK SCAT REVIEW #1 is now available.
Originally published in 2012, the issue sold out quickly and has long been out of print. It features John Crombie’s translation of “Like Mother” by Alphonse Allais; a hilarious accusatory text by the legendary Canadian absurdist Crad Kilodney; collage art from the UK by Michael Leigh; Elizabeth Archer’s revealing interview with British humorist Samantha Memi; experimental comic art by Florence Bocherel; a rare comic drama by Pierre Henri Cami translated by Doug Skinner; bizarre poems from Portugal’s Pedro Carolino; and astounding short fiction by Samantha Memi, YuriyTarnawsky and Tom Whalen. (EDITOR’S NOTE: The original cover photograph by S. N. Jacobson has been censored to allow its display on Amazon.)
BLACK SCAT REVIEW (Number One) edited by Norman Conquest paperback; illustrated; full color; ISBN 979-8450666396
blackscatbooks.com 