Tag: humor

Tick tock, tick tock … It’s Time!

“Jason Rolfe’s precise, inventive stories are a treat. He makes them seem easy, which they’re not; he makes them seem funny, which they are. What’s more, they have a tasty Canadian tang to them. Here’s to CLOCKS!” —Doug Skinner

CLOCKS is literary Vaudeville, a stage where slapstick philosophy performs a high-wire act — wrestles with time and mortality. This major collection of comic tales is laced with insight and absurdist angst.

Rolfe’s fiction simultaneously sets the clock forward and back and gives new meaning to the word nonsense.

CLICK HERE to order on Amazon

LONG LIVE LIFE !

We’ll cheerfully drink to that, whilst  launching  this new book by France’s greatest humorist, Alphonse Allais. 

Just in time for the holidays, too,  the first publication in English of the master’s  collection, Vive la vie! — stories culled from the pages of Le Chat Noir, packed with madcap (and bawdy) tales of love, adultery, the supernatural, military life, and—yes—fake news. These texts are quintessentially Allaisian, spiked with absurd digressions, parenthetical asides, footnotes, puns, jokes, military jargon, Parisian slang, neologisms, dog Latin, literary quotations, and other unmentionable forms of wordplay.

“EXPLOSIONS OF LAUGHTER ARE BETTER THAN DYNAMITE. LONG LIVE LIFE, DAMN IT!”
—ALPHONSE ALLAIS

This special Black Scat edition features four additional short stories not included in the original French volume, as well as a lively introduction, illustrations, and fascinating notes on the text by Doug Skinner.

Explosions of laughter guaranteed.

Now available worldwide on Amazon. CLICK HERE to order your copies.

LONG LIVE LIFE!
by Alphonse Allais
Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
Trade paperback; 184 pp.,  $14

 

STAND AND SALUTE!

What happens when you combine patriotism and ‘pataphysics (the science of imaginary solutions)? That’s right, you get a big BANG and fireworks — all packed inside the new
LE SCAT NOIR.  

The July issue features incendiary works by Alain Arias-Misson, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Mitchell Eva, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Alfred Jarry, Richard Kostelanetz, Terri Lloyd, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Mercie Pedro e Silva, and Doug Skinner. 

#225 marks the first interactive edition with “live” links and an EXCLUSIVE screen-video of Alfred Jarry’s resurrection!  

As always, it’s free to read online or download to your device, so stand and salute! Then  CLICK HERE.

Sucker Punch Gala in NYC

(photo by Karina Tarnawsky)

If you were in NYC on June 15th and missed the BLACK SCAT SUCKER PUNCH bout between high lit  heavyweight champs Yuriy Tarnawsky (seated)) and Alain Arias-Mission —shame on you! You missed a bloody good reading.

The Emily Harvey Foundation. provided ringside seats,  booze & noisemakers  to an unruly crowd of fans. Tarnawsky threw wicked upper-cuts from his classic collection of “short shrift fictions,” CROCODILE SMILES, while Arias-Misson responded with  a blazing left hook from his new novel THE DETECTIVE WHO DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE.

Alas, both titles are out of print.

CHEER UP — IT’S FREE!

The June Gloom issue of LE SCAT NOIR is now available for download. We won’t bother mentioning that  it’s free because  you  already know that. #224 features an international roster of artists and writers, including Alphonse Allais, Adrienne Auvray, Mark Axelrod, Paulo Brito, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, Félix Fénéon, Pippa Anais Gaubert, Eckhard Gerdes, Thomas Gresham, Adao Iturrusgarai, Jim Johnson, Rick Krieger, Terri Lloyd, Jim McMenamin, Andy O’Clancy, Frank Pulaski, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Marina Rubin, Doug Skinner, and Rebecka Skog.

SUMMERTIME CRIME WAVE

Staring hard, the Sergeant was convinced that he could indeed perceive a faint rounded pattern. He stepped back and stared at the Inspector with undisguised awe, “My god sir! You are right! And what use can we make of that?”

“Ah, nothing at this moment, my dear fellow,” and the visibly pleased Inspector waved a hand airily, “but there has been a murder and there has been a victim, so for future reference, who knows!”

Don’t be deceived by the Wodehousian style, gory, third-sex serial murders and a breath-taking third-sex romance await you in this hilarious new novel by Alain Arias-Misson.  Meet a baffled detective trapped  inside a startling  screwball plot, in which straight sex meets third sex!

THIS TITLE IS OUT OF PRINT.

****

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alain Arias-Misson was born in Brussels, grew up from age four in New York, Greek Literature and philosophy at Harvard, led a nomadic life throughout Europe, North Africa and New York. Lives in Paris and Venice. This is his tenth novel. In Europe he is known for his Public Poems in a dozen cities, and also New York and L.A., as well as his experimental poetry which has been shown in hundreds of galleries and museums around the world.

OTHER SUBLIME BOOKS BY ARIAS-MISSON

Autobiography of a Character from Fiction

Tintin Meets the Dragon Queen in The Return of the Maya to Manhattan

The Man Who Walked On Air & Other Tales Of Innocence

Welcome to Blissville USA!

Take this hilarious trip back to 1970s suburbia and meet sexy Beulah Montezuma. Alas, despite her abundant charms, she’s having a hard time satisfying her well-endowed hubby. But Beulah is not a quitter, and she’s determined to give it her all in this outrageous “erotical” novel.

Originally published by Grove Press, we’re proud to bring this raunchy classic back to life in a New Urge edition. And, yes, the cat (and the pun) is out of the bag now, as the man behind the Stephanie Gatos pseudonym is none other than writer and poet Steve Katz.

Steve is the author of many  acclaimed books of fiction and poetry, including The Exagggerations of Peter Prince (recently reissued), Creamy and Delicious, Saw, Wier & Pouce, Florry of Washington Heights, Swanny’s Ways, Journalism, et al.

This Posh is his.

But this is no time for pussyfooting…CLICK HERE and order your copy today!

You can sample the first chapter for free in the special “Eros” issue of LE SCAT NOIR here

AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ON AMAZON

THE IDIOT GETS A RAVE

“Every time I write about Doug Skinner’s translations of Alphonse Allais – the new one is I Am Sarcey  – I say that Allais’s humor columns and so on ought to be period pieces, historical ephemera, but are better than that, are good.  Still funny; still fun.  This is my only idea about Allais, apparently.  If anything this is even more the case with I Am Sarcey – more ephemeral yet not, but even more so.’

—Wuthering Expectations

CLICK HERE to read the complete review.

And then CLICK HERE and enjoy the book for yourself.

The Sporting Life!

This collection of sporting tales mashes literary history and sports lore into a satirical inferno—skewering academic jargon and postmodern analysis with a razor-sharp, poison-tipped foil. Axelrod mischievously injects the ancients with steroids and offers statistics to prove how little we know about the origin of our favorite pastimes. Inside you’ll discover the “Baudelaire-Bird Connection or, How the Boston Celtics Got To Be That Way”; the obscure “Russian Sport of Face Slapping”; “Metaleptic Parabasis or, the Fine Art of High Jumping”; “Jai-Alai Machu Picchu,” and many other strange feats of Physical Lit-ness. Arm yourself with these tales and head to the nearest sports bar or poetry reading and laugh your ass off.

Dante’s Foil & Other Sporting Tales
by mark axelrod

150 pp., trade paperback, $12.95

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON