THE CROS FLIES!

September 4, 2018

CHARLES CROS: COLLECTED MONOLOGUES

It’s back to cool with the great French monologist, humorist, poet, and inventor—in a trenchant translation by Doug Skinner.

FIRST PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH!

Born in1842, Charles Cros was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography and sound recording, only to die young, poor, and alcoholic. Not incidentally, he also invented the comic monologue for the actor Coquelin Cadet. In these strikingly spontaneous and modern sketches, he introduces a gallery of fools and obsessives—The Clean Man, The Fencing Master, The Capitalist, The Friend of the Family—all nattering away, assaulting the audience with trivia, and blithely unaware of their own failings.

This edition collects all 22 of Cros’s monologues—masterfully translated & introduced by Doug Skinner—and includes performance notes by Coquelin, plus two biographical essays by his friend and colleague Alphonse Allais.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

“The sheer playfulness of certain fanciful parts of Cros’s work must not let us forget that in the center of some of his finest poems, a revolver is aimed at us.”—André Breton

Kiss that Gideon goodbye!

July 7, 2015

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Holy cow!—it’s the gospel according to Doug Skinner—featuring articles, short stories, verses, columns, literary essays, alphabets, metrical translations, monologues, talks, cartoons, rounds, lipogrammatic smut, a puppet show, a ventriloquism routine, and a one-act play!

THE DOUG SKINNER DOSSIER is destined to be in every motel room across the land. This divine illustrated edition features over 240 pages of wit, wisdom, and profundity. It fairly overflows with inspirational black humor and some rather dangerous (albeit gloomy) ideas that might not be suitable for nuclear family get-togethers. But — swear to god — it’s a hell of a good book!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

Here’s a peek at the contents:

Want to try before you buy? Download a FREE excerpt here.

Alphonse Allais—LIVE!—On Stage!

September 15, 2014

OK, that’s hyperbole, but here’s the next best thing to Allais’s reincarnation.

Please take your seats…STANDING ROOM ONLY.

This long awaited collection of rare theatrical texts includes original translations—never before published in English—of ten monologues, three one-act plays, and twelve shorter dialogues, skits and burlesques drawn from Allais’s columns in such publications as Le Chat Noir and L’Hydropathe.

In addition to Doug Skinner’s fascinating notes on the texts, you’ll find an appendix of scarce photographs from the Paris production of “Le Pauvre Bougre et Le Bon Génie.”

Here’s a peek at the Playbill…

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