Tag: French literature

Summer Scatastic!

Here’s a look ahead at some of the goodies coming your way in the next few months.

In August we’re bringing you a major new novel by Tom Whalen, The Straw That Broke—a stunning work of speculative metafiction— filled with wordplay and literary hijinks. This is seminal post-cyberpunk fiction with wicked Oulipian twists, crafted by a master of experimental fiction.

On Labor Day, Mao Zedong’s clandestine Long March reaches its revolutionary climax in The Little Red Book of Commie Porn. A collaboration between California artists Terri Lloyd and Norman Conquest, this outrageously funny collection of satirical art & text is unlike anything we’ve ever published. Indeed, the book is nearly  impossible to describe and must be seen to be believed.

Another literary event you won’t want to miss: the first English translation of the Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais, compiled and translated by Doug Skinner. This special illustrated edition makes a nice companion volume to Allais’s Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks. This new collection includes 24 works: eight monologues, three one-act plays, plus short skits, dialogues, and burlesques. For fans of the absurd, this is a must-have.

For armchair travelers who enjoy going nowhere in wickedly clever fashion, there’s  David Slavitt’s absurdist chapbook Walloomsac: A Week on the River. It has already received advance praise from R. H. W. Dillard: “…I haven’t had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up ‘til dawn…breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.” This one’s a real treat.

Coming in September. we’re thrilled to be publishing Suzanne Burns’ experimental novel Sweet and Vicious. This new work by the gifted young author of Siblings and Misfits and other Heroes, is sure to enhance her reputation as one of the most innovative contemporary American writers.

And just in time for Halloween… the third volume of Oulipo Pornobongo: Anthology of Erotic Wordplay. The collection includes works by Maria Schurr, Paulo Brito, Tom La Farge, Lucy Selleck, Doug Skinner, Ellen Nations, Paul Forristal, and others.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss out on these and other forthcoming titles.

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Print! (sort of)

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We’re pleased to announce that BLACK SCAT REVIEW – No. 1 (2012)  is available in facsimile digital edition. If you missed it, now’s your chance to complete your collection of back issues.

The notorious “Cruci-Fiction” issue features works by Alphonse Allais, Florence Bocherel, Pierre Henri Cami, Pedro Carolino, Norman Conquest, John Crombie, S.N. Jacobson, Crad Kilodney, Michael Leigh, Samantha Memi, Doug Skinner, Yuriy Tarnawsky, and Tom Whalen.

PLUS,  Elizabeth Archer’s interview with Samantha Memi, the UK’s flash fiction goddess and pastry chef.

You can order a print edition for the outrageous price of $1,000, or nab the spiffy digital edition for only $5.00.

Now that’s a steal!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

READING IN TRANSLATION reviews SURREALIST TEXTS

 Falling somewhere between short stories and prose poems in fluid translation by Ellen Nations, Surrealist Texts is an indispensable introduction to this fascinating writer.

—Lucina Schell, READING IN TRANSLATION

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“Nations’s translations admirably resist the urge to clarify or normalize Prassinos’s surrealist prose. Complemented by Bruce Hutchinson’s beautiful watercolors in a limited edition of only 85 copies, Surrealist Texts makes a lovely gift for connoisseurs of surrealism. But the significance of this collection extends beyond its historical value. Like most surrealist literature, the stories are strange and even off-putting on the surface, but plumbing their depths reveals repressed truths, hidden within the subconscious, that are no less painful or true than when they were written.”

Read the complete text of Schell’s glowing review at the link below:

http://readingintranslation.com/2014/02/25/bleak-fairy-tales-gisele-prassinoss-surrealist-texts-translated-by-ellen-nations/

THIS LIMITED EDITION IS OUT-OF-PRINT.

The #2 Bestseller!

THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT

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Praise for MERDE À LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

“BLACK SCAT BOOKS has launched from the pits of lit this shameful little anthology, wonderfully translated and prefaced with futile brilliance by Doug Skinner. I was immediately disgusted and attracted by these turn-of-the-century French luminaries indulging in dirty little boy lyrics and lunatic stories, many of them in the scatological society that hung out at Le Chat Noir…” —Alain Arias-Misson, author of Theatre of Incest

“Incroyable!… Alfred (a fart man from way back) Jarry would surely relish this collection–one which combines force-feeding with delicate odoriferous leakage—something for every taste!”  —Nile Southern, author of The Candy Men: The Rollicking Life and Times of the Notorious Novel Candy

“These dirty little secrets are canonical secretions of literary genius. Fin de siecle Parisian scatology at its best.”  —D. Harlan Wilson, author of Hitler: The Terminal Biography, Freud: The Penultimate Biography, and Douglass: The Lost Autobiography

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This hilarious scatological anthology features stories, a song, poems, a play, a rebus, and naughty jokes by period luminaries. Contributors include Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Edmond Haraucourt, Vincent Hyspa, Maurice Mac-Nab, and Erik Satie.

The collection has been tastefully compiled and effervescently translated from the French by Doug Skinner.

This limited edition includes notes on the translations and a brief biography of each contributor.

#2 on our Bestseller List— don’t settle for #1!

Merde à La Belle Époque
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 24
Perfect-bound chapbook, 48 pp.
Limited to 310 copies. – $12.50

*A discreet digital edition is also available ($7.50)

Happy Birthday, Rabelais!

In the wings, some special things (fifth edition)…

 

jt_smlThe Derangement of Jules Torquemal
by Robert Wexelblatt

“The best thing would be for me to go away. Everyone says so: Geneviève, Emmanuelle, Dr. Strouville; no doubt the milkman, the President of the Republic, and the Pope in Rome agree. The Minister might allow me a couple of weeks, but he’s been looking at me strangely of late, furtively but with intensity, as if trying to peer inside my skull and make a proper survey of the bleak thoughts to be found there…”

A daunting philosophical puzzle.

Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 07
Publication:  April  9

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Mud Bath
by Allan Bealy

“At last, an album of Bealy’s edgy, layered, elegant collages. Incisive, in both senses.”
– Michael Kasper

“Allan Bealy is a collagist with a profound knowledge of the form’s history, as well as art history—period. With a vision that’s wide-ranging but cohesive, he’s one of those artists who can serve up a banquet of images in seemingly disparate styles, yet you’ll always know who cooked them up. Dig in to this delectable feast for the eyes, but take the time to savor each course.”
– Peter Cherches, author of Lift Your Right Arm

Black Scat Classic Interim Edition – No. 08
Publication:  May 14

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Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner

Rare theatrical works by the great French humorist.

Absurdist Texts & Documents  –  No. 28
Publication:  July  9

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And more to come.

Surrealism Lives!

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We start the New Year off with a stunning collection of texts by Gisèle Prassinos—one of surrealism’s most gifted voices.

Prassinos was discovered at age 14 by André Breton who included her poetry in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir (1940). Breton commented: “The tone of Gisèle Prassinos is unique: all the poets are jealous of it.” Indeed, her haunting, childlike style remains unrivaled and her stories timeless. 

photo by Man Ray

Gisèle Prassinos reading her poems to the Surrealists (1934)
Photo © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris

Exquisitely translated from the French by Ellen Nations, this limited edition includes 20 transformative texts, plus eight original watercolor paintings by the artist Bruce Hutchinson.spread

That half the works in this collection were written when Prassinos was just fourteen and fifteen is evidence of how rare a prodigy she was. The surrealist’s sense of the word marvelous certainly applies to these strange creations.

Here is a taste of the text “Filial Devotion”…

He now found himself in the middle of a large lake where furniture made of mahogany, spruce and rosewood swam.Young girls in their panties gently fought each other by now and again blowing on their flushed arms.The man believed he recognized one of his daughters. But thinking it was only a hallucination, he retreated by swimming up to the adjoining door.There, he found himself in the presence of a very large and hairy stag.The stag’s eyes slowly became bigger and bigger as they gradually feasted on his whole egg-shaped face.

Only 85 copies are available for purchase.

OUT OF PRINT

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Ellen Nations, translator and photographer, grew up in Norway and has for many years made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her husband Opal Louis Nations. Together they published the experimental literature and art magazine Strange Faeces. In addition to her translations of Gisèle Prassinos, she has  translated works  by Alain Jouffroy, Paul Nougé, Raymond Radiguet, Joyce Mansour and others.

Bruce Hutchinson created the watercolor paintings in Surrealist Texts while in his mid-20s as part of his weekly correspondence with Opal and Ellen Nations. He wrote his letters on small pieces of paper with ink drawings on one side, original watercolors on the other. His artwork has appeared in many small press publications.

Poem for the Holidays

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If you missed the gala Captain Cap launch party last month at The Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, you’re in luck. We’ve prepared two video excerpts featuring Doug Skinner reading from his translation of Alphonse Allais’s masterpiece.

In the first video,  Doug reads “The Chameleon Child“—one of the good Captain’s rare poems.

In the video below, Captain Cap gives a masterful lesson in savoir-faire to an ignorant, European, and dimwitted bartender.

Finally, if Santa in his dotage neglected to leave a copy of CAPTAIN CAP under the tree, you can treat yourself to one here.