Hip! Hip! Allais! Alphonse! Hooray!

February 1, 2013February 15, 2013Leave a comment

[TRUMPETS BLARING; BANNERS WAVING; BABIES SHRIEKING; READERS CHEERING; etc.]

Black Scat proudly announces the publication of Captain Cap by Alphonse Allais—the first of three volumes in a series of “captails” translated from the French by grand maestro Doug Skinner—who also illustrated the edition and produced its sublime cover.

Vol. I (“Captain Cap Before the Electorate”) covers the captain’s notorious political career—including an unexpurgated appendix of his favorite cocktails**.

That this work by Allais has never before appeared in English makes this a literary event worthy of balloons, noise-makers, champagne, and an inebriated marching band.

~~And to celebrate the Captain’s launch we’re christening this limited edition by offering a FREE Captain Cap campaign button to the first twelve connoisseurs who order a copy.~~

UPDATE (2/15): All the buttons are gone, alas.

Now if you’ve read this far and are wondering who Captain Cap was, here’s a brief excerpt from the translator’s introduction:

“Many discerning readers think Alphonse Allais was
the finest humorist France ever produced. I will have
to concur. Many go further, and class him simply as a
master of the short story. I will have to agree with that
as well. And many claim that his greatest creation was
that hard-drinking adventurer and inventor, Captain
Cap. I will go along with that too, but with one quibble:
Captain Cap really existed.

His real name was Albert Jean Baptiste Nicolas
Caperon, and he was born in Paris in 1864. His father,
Paulin Caperon, had inherited a fortune in his twenties,
and devoted himself to radical politics, bibliomania,
and banking, in no particular order. It was while
practicing the last that he sold railway shares in Alsace
to a Swiss bank; when Germany annexed Alsace in
1871 after the Franco-Prussian war, Germany confiscated
the stock. The Swiss bank wanted its money
back, leaving Caperon in an uncomfortable situation.
He resolved it by fleeing to Belgium, and then to
America, where he adopted the name of Peter Coutts,
and bought land in Mayfield, California (now Palo
Alto).”

We would be remiss did we not mention that the first title in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series was Masks by Alphonse Allais, for its author embodies the spirit which inspires this small press.

Captain Cap is limited to 125 copies, so we suggest you order quickly before it’s too late.

CLICK HERE AND CAST YOUR VOTE FOR CAPTAIN CAP

And have a drink on him!

___________________
**Be sure and try the recipe for Corpse Reviver (pg. 53)

Laughter & Cheer for the New Year!

January 1, 2013April 10, 2024Leave a comment

A Cami Sampler

We proudly present a New Year’s treat—#9 in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series: A CAMI SAMPLER, translated from the French by John Crombie in Paris. The collection includes 10 zany, Dadaesque microdramas by Pierre Henri Cami, plus nine pages of his rare drawings. This is the first collection of Cami’s mini plays to be published in the U.S.

From the introduction by John Crombie:

“Though blissfully ignored for most of his life by the
English-speaking public, Cami (Pierre Henri) remained
for four full decades one of France’s most prolific,
and acclaimed, comic authors. Hailed by his idol and
admirer Charlie Chaplin as ‘the greatest humorist in the
world,’ Cami was somewhat willfully omitted by André
Breton from his Anthologie de l’Humour Noir—no doubt
on account of his huge popular success—but admired
by other Surrealists. Between 1910, when he founded
Le Petit Corbillard Illustré, the ‘humorous organ of the
corporation of undertakers,’ and his death in 1958,
Cami published well over forty volumes of minidramas
and comic novels—notably The Memoirs of God-the-
Father, The Adventures of Loufock-Holmes, The Son of
the Three Musketeers, and the travels of his perhaps most
famous creation, Monsieur Rikiki and the Rikiki family—
as well as countless songs, strip cartoons, screenplays
and even operettas. Many of these he also illustrated.

But Cami was best known for his ‘dramatic fantasies,’
written mostly for La Vie Drôle, the humorous column
published weekly by Le Journal, where he had stepped,
somewhat belatedly, into the shoes of that column’s
immortal co-founder, Alphonse Allais. Self-styled
microdramas of everyday life, of legend, of history
(and even of geography), of true (and false) romance,
and more often than not of volupté, these screwball
skits look backward to the music hall and Alfred Jarry,
sideways to the Marx Brothers and forward to, in
England, the Goons and, in France, to the Theatre
of the Absurd.”

Edition limited to 100 copies.

THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT

Black Scat News from London, Paris, Montreal & Austria

November 1, 2012November 8, 2012Leave a comment

Exciting new books are on the way and you won’t want to miss them. We’ve just published Samantha Memi’s first collection of short fiction: Kate Moss & Other Heroines—#7 in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series. Memi is a gifted young British writer with a unique, offbeat voice. And if we didn’t know better we’d swear she’s a relation to the great French absurdist, Alphonse Allais. Also, the forthcoming first issue of Black Scat Review features an interview with the London-based writer.

The French humorist Pierre Henri Cami (1884–1958) is virtually unknown in America and Black Scat Books is proud to be the first to publish a collection of his writings & drawings in the States. A Cami Sampler
(Absurdist Texts & Documents #9) is translated by John Crombie whose Kiickshaws Press in Paris published several exquisite letterpress editions of works by Cami. Charlie Chaplin hailed Cami as “the greatest humorist in the world,” and if that’s hyperbole… well he’s certainly right up there alongside several Black Scat authors.

Another literary event coming your way—also in the AT&D series—is a text by the Romanian-born French poet and artist, Isidore Isou, founder of the art movement Lettrism. Translated by Doug Skinner, Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara has never before appeared in English. Isou recounts his bizarre and humorous behavior at Tristan Tzara’s funeral. It’s a rare tidbit of renegade art history.

In December, Black Scat will publish Shattered Rainbow by the Austrian artist Monika Mori. The book features a series of stunning abstract works created on x-rays with acrylics using a palette knife.

Florence Bocherel is an experimental comic artist/writer. She was born in London, but currently lives in Montreal, Canada. Black Scat will publish her graphic novel, Post-asphyx in 2013.