Tag: French literature

How “Sweet 16” it is!

Here’s an issue you’ll party with like there’s no tomorrow. It’s filled to the brim with a stellar cast of artists, writers, poets & translators. 150 pages of avant-garde goodness – plus 42 contributors from around the world.

Featuring: Alphonse Allais; Terry Bradford; George Chappell; Georges-Oliver Châteaureynaud; Alex Cigale; Charles Cros; Milo De Angelis; Vojislav Despotov; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Eckhard Gerdes; André Gill; Dana Golan; Émile Goudeau; Franz Hellens; Hogarth, Jr.; Vasyl Khmeliuk; Amy Kurman; George MacLennan; Paul Madsack; Dmitri Manin; Scott Marshall; Jim McMenamin; Ainsley Morse; Ethan Persoff; James Reidel; Michel Robic; Albert Robida; Paul Rosheim; Igor Satanovsky; Erik Satie; Serge Segay; Doug Skinner; Lono Taggers; Corinne Taunay; Lawrence Venuti; Antoine Volodine; Louis Wain; Gregory Wallace; Alyson Waters; Maria Luise Weissmann; and Nikolay Zabolotsky.

Don’t miss this one, folks – Sweet 16 comes only once in a lifetime.

NEW ISSUE!

TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes is packed with avant-garde goodness, featuring Alphonse Allais; mIEKAL aND; Erik Belgum; Steve Biersdorf; Terry Bradford; Geoff Cebula; Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud; Alex Cigale; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; S. C. Delaney; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Vasilisk Gnedov; Daniel Y. Harris; Paul Kavanagh; Irene Koronas; Amy Kurman; Emilia Loseva; Louis Pons; Agnès Potier; Bernard Quiriny; Jason Brandt Schaefer; Doug Skinner; Corinne Taunay; Igor Terent’ev; Froylán Turcios; Michel Vachey; Paul Valéry; Paul Verlaine; Tom Whalen; and Danny Winkler.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What a great way to start 2026 — “The Eros Issue” of TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes #13 — 160 pages of prurient prose, poetry, & titillating graphics. Featuring Nile Southern‘s Oulipian dive into Daddy Terry Southern‘s classic novel CANDY; Amy Kurman on silent stag films; an interview with a bisexual Surrealist vampire; suggestive covers from a 1930s French glamour zine; a report on a shocking Parisienne incident by Alfred Jarry; excerpts from Walter Serner‘s novel THE TIGRESS; and much more.

This special issue includes stellar works by Madeleine de L’Aubépine; Marcel Béalu; Erik Belgum; Tristan Bernard; Terry Bradford; R J Dent; Mike Ferguson; Rachel Galvin; Massimo Gatta; Edward Gauvin; Alfred Jarry; Gabriel de Lautrec; George MacLennan; Alfred de Musset; Opal Louis Nations; Ernesto López Parra; Alejandro Albarrán Polanco; Bernard Quiriny; James Richie; George Sand; Doug Skinner; Lono Taggers; Corinne Taunay; Robin Tomens; Paul Willems, and Mark Wyatt.

Don’t miss TYPO 13.

NEW ISSUE!

IN THIS ISSUE:
Julien Gracq’s “The House”
Albert Cossery’s “Perpetually Barking Man”
The Belgian School of the Bizarre
Paul Nougé’s Optic Unveiled
A “Surreal Wheels” pictorial
Doug Skinner’s intrusive Reader Survey
A rare Boggle toss
Bouncing Draculas
An Oulipian crossword puzzle
And more avant-garde goodness.

FEATURING 38 LUMINARIES: Robert Archambeau; Corina Bardoff; Terry Bradford; Igor Bulatovsky; Paul Busson; Apollo Camembert; Norman Conquest; Albert Cossery; Noël Devaulx; Rachel Galvin; Jean-Luc Gameau; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Julien Gracq; Pierre Autin-Grenier; Daniel Y. Harris; Rick Henry; Esteban Isnardi; Julia Lillard; Joshua Martin; George MacLennan; Dmitri Manin; Paul Nougé; Thomas Owen; Angelo Pastormerlo; Alejandro Albarrán Polanco; Bernard Quiriny; Adam Ranđelović; Simon Read; Doug Skinner; Lono Taggers; Mark Valentine; Tim Walker; Gregory Wallace; Alyson Waters; Andrew Wenaus; Tom Whalen; Bill Wolak.

TYPO #12: The International Journal of Prototypes
edited by Norman Conquest & Paul Rosheim
Trade paperback; 157 pp., illustrated.
ISBN 979-8-9923826-9-3

Summer Reading…

Avant-garde composer & poet, Mirtha Pozzi in Paris.

Don’t miss the current issue of TYPO: The International Journal of Prototypes, featuring the first English translation of a novelette by surrealist André Pieyre de Mandiargues, and previously unavailable translations from a diverse selection of neglected literary masters: Marcel Schneider, Bernard Quiriny, Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, Walter Serner, and others. Plus art and startling surprises.

Dig in!

Alphonse Allais’s collected stories were published in eleven volumes between 1892 and 1902. He called these books his “Anthumous Works.” With the publication of Feeding Time, Black Scat has now issued all of them—all first English translations by Doug Skinner.

Our stellar, 17-volume Alphonse Allais Collection is now complete and includes six additional volumes: Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks; The Blaireau Affair, Allais’s only novel; Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais; I Am Sarcey, his stories featuring Francisque Sarcey; Alphonse Allais’s Masks: Deluxe Special Edition. (an illustrated version of one of his stories); and our sampler, The Alphonse Allais Reader.

If you haven’t discovered France’s greatest humorist, dig in!

FEEDING TIME
Alphonse Allais
Translated by Doug Skinner
Paperback; 168 pp.; $14.95
ISBN 979-8-9923826-4-8 

TYPO #9: A Fusion of Avant-Garde Literature

Like a robot assembled in a subterranean laboratory, this issue contains prototypical pieces from around the world. Many contributors were previously seen in so-called Obscure Publications. Others have been freshly translated from rare French, Belgian, and Russian books and magazines. Some authors are well-known in avant-garde or fantasy circles. Some artists & writers are just breaking through. But all have been brought together to create this sublime issue for your pleasure.

FEATURING: Alphonse Allais; Chiara Ambrosio; Robert Archambeau; Pierre Bettencourt;  Greg Boyd; Terry Bradford; H.V. Chao; Norman Conquest; Lynn Crawford; Caroline Crépiat; R J Dent; Mark Ducharme;  Jean-Luc Garneau; Edward Gauvin; Vasilisk Gnedov; Kirpal Gordon; Michael Gould; André Hardellet; Jordan Jones; Amy Kurman;  Joel Lipman; Emilia Loseva; Stephen-Paul Martin; George MacLennan; Henri Michaux; Claudio Parentela;  Angelo Pastormerlo; Gabriel & Marcel Piqueray; Bernard Quiriny; Doug Skinner; Renée Vivien; Danny Winkler; Bill Wolak.

TYPO #9: The International Journal of Prototypes
152 pp., trade paperback; $20
ISBN 979-8-9923826-0-0

Seven is Heaven

Where else would you meet this cast of luminaries….

Alphonse Allais; mIEKAL aND; Terry Bradford; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Lynn Crawford; Noël Devaulx; Mark DuCharme; Albert Ehrenstein; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Richard Huelsenbeck; Iliazd; Mark Kanak; Thomas J. Kitson; Amy Kurman; Jean Lorrain; Emilia Loseva; Marcel Mariën; Willy Melnikov; Raymond Roussel; Heather Sager; Phil Demise Smith; Doug Skinner; Paul Willems; Cynthia Yatchman.

151 pp., trade paperback; $20

Sweet Sixteen!

We are elated, delirious, tickled, thrilled, and ecstatic to announce the 16th volume in our acclaimed Alphonse Allais Collection. This first English translation of Allais’s Pour cause de fin de bail has been exquisitely prepared and introduced (with notes on the text) by master translator Doug Skinner.

 

This wickedly amusing collection contains fifty-three absurdist tales—packed with phantom limbs, floating brothels, tapeworms, ostrich shoes, and other remarkable things. It makes a jolly beach read, or to browse in your hammock whilst sipping a cool glass of lemonade—or better yet, a jug of absinthe.

 

So, if you haven’t already begun gathering your personal Allais collection—shame on you!—now is the time to start. Scroll down and you’ll find unadulterated links to each edition for convenient purchasing.

Happy Summer!

Le propriétaire

My Rent Is Due!

Let’s Not Hit Each Other

We Are Not Sheep

2 + 2 = 5

Loves, Delights, & Organs

Alphonse Allais Reader

The Blaireau Affair

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks

Pink and Apple-Green

Double Over

I Am Sarcey

Long Live Life!

Masks: Deluxe Special Edition

No Bile!

Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais

The Squadron’s Umbrella  

 

Raunchy Wordplay

This scandalous little work appeared in France under the title “Letter to La Présidente.”

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a novelist and poet, one of the champions of Romanticism. In 1850, he and his friend Louis de Cormenin visited Italy, so he wrote his friends back home a letter about their adventures. The result was a rollicking “filthy letter,” packed with jokes, slang, obsolete words, literary allusions, puns, alliterations, neologisms, Spoonerisms, verses, outrageous metaphors, and Rabelaisian lists. It was published privately in 1890, and became a clandestine classic.

A FILTHY LETTER
Théophile Gautier
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner,
with an introduction & notes on the text
Pocket Erotica Series #28
74 pp., 4 x 6 inches;
979-8-9894330-7-0