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Tag: pataphysics
Uncommon Scents
smells like teen ‘pataphysics
“If physics proposes: ‘You have a brother and he likes Cheez Whiz,’ then metaphysics replies, ‘If you have a brother, he likes Cheez Whiz.’ But ‘Pataphysics says: ‘You don’t have a brother and he likes Cheez Whiz.’ “—after Georges Perec
NOW AVAILABLE worldwide!
Over two years in the making, smells like teen ‘pataphysics is packed with signs of the phenomenon, oscillating pyramids and luminous vapors. This groundbreaking trade paper edition is profusely illustrated with dystopian charts, diagrams, maps, mazes, and crime scene photographs. Discover Norman Conquest‘s cryptic pataphysical experiments—triumphs as well as failures— guaranteed to astound. Surf the Science of Imaginary Solutions!
Black Scat Books is proud to bring this illuminating volume to the general public.
**Includes THE previously unpublished secret rules to the game of Monotony.
smells like teen ‘pataphysics
by Norman Conquest
112 pp., illustrated, $12.95
CLICK HERE to order on Amazon.
Green is the New Black
Have you seen The Book With the Green Cover?
It’s a collection of verbo-visual treats by Norman Conquest. It features posters, charts, mock book & magazine covers, rectified readymades, typographic diversions, found novels, and other detritus. It’s profusely illustrated with color plates and silverware.
Available now, just in time for summer. Be the first kid on the block to take this coffee table chapbook to the beach!
Sublime Chaps
MASKS
Alphonse Allais
translated from the French and illustrated by Norman Conquest
with an introduction and notes on the text by Doug Skinner
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 1
Illustrated in full color; 50 pp., $12.50
CLICK HERE to order
REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS
Norman Conquest
with an introduction by Robert Wexelblatt
Absurdist Texts & Documents – No. 27
Illustrated; 70 pp., $12
CLICK HERE to order
“Why, That’s Patently Absurd!”
Yes, indeed—Pas de Bile!—another patently absurd volume in Black Scat’s seminal Alphonse Allais Collection.
This will be the book’s first publication in English, with a sublime and inspired translation by the great Doug Skinner. In addition to the complete text of the original Flammarion edition, published in France in 1893, it will include several uncollected stories by Allais. There will also be Skinner’s copious notes on each text, and an informative and entertaining introduction. Throw in this eye-catching cover by Norman Conquest and you’ve got an edition worthy of display in your home or office.
Publication: Late Summer, 2018
And while you’re waiting, be sure to read Alphonse Allais’s LONG LIVE LIFE!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALPHONSE ALLAIS (1854 – 1905) began his career in Paris during the Belle Epoque. He was particularly active at the legendary cabaret Le Chat Noir, where he wrote for and edited the weekly paper. He quickly became known for his deadpan wit and inexhaustible imagination. Among other things, he also exhibited some of the first monochromatic pictures (such as his all-white “First Communion of Chlorotic Girls in the Snow” in 1883) and composed the first silent piece of music: “Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man” (1884). Throughout most of his life, he contributed columns several times a week to Le Journal and Le Sourire. These pieces were collected into twelve volumes, which he called his “Anthumous Works,” between 1892 and 1902. He also published a collection of his monochromes, Album Primo-Avrilesque, in 1897, and a novel, L’affaire Blaireau, in 1899, as well as a few plays. His later years were troubled by debt, a bad marriage, and heavy drinking; he died at 59. He was a crucial influence on Alfred Jarry, as well as on the Surrealists: Breton included him in his Anthology of Black Humor, and Duchamp was reading him on the day he died. Allais’s fascination with wordplay, puns, and holorhymes led Oulipo to call him an “anticipatory plagiarist”; the Pataphysical College dubbed him their “Patacessor.” His books have remained in print in France, and the Académie Alphonse Allais has awarded a literary prize in his honor since 1954.
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.
The Science of Sciences!
“A badass work of concentrated hallucination.”—Nile Southern
Discover the perils of science in this bizarre classic of “imaginary solutions.” Profusely illustrated in color and b/w. This is a reprint of the rare limited edition published by Black Scat in 2013.
ADVENTURES IN ‘PATAPHYSICS
by Anonymous
5.25″ x 8.25″ – perfect-bound paper, 64 pp., illustrated in black & white and full color
$15
‘PATAPHYSICS / SCIENCE
Alphonse Rides Again!
On July 4, 2012, we published Alphonse Allais’s MASKS in a limited edition of 50 copies—the first title in our Absurdist Texts & Documents series. The chapbook quickly sold out and, today, is a coveted collector’s item. Since we’ve received many requests to reprint the book, we’re pleased to announce a revised and expanded edition. Translated from the French, adapted and illustrated by Norman Conquest, this new volume also features a most Allaisian introduction & notes on the text by the great Doug Skinner. Originally published in France under the title Un drame bien parisien (1890), this darkly humorous tale is quintessential Allais—a pataphysical text admired by the Surrealists (André Breton included it in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir). It was also celebrated by the French group Oulipo, and has been the subject of scholarly studies by the writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, Francis Corblin, and others. 
This is the first illustrated edition of this mini masterpiece. If you missed out on our first edition, now’s you chance to own a copy. MASKS Alphonse Allais Translation & illustrations by Norman Conquest With an introduction & notes on the text by Doug Skinner Absurdist Texts & Documents No. 1 Revised & Expanded Second Edition 50 pp., perfect-bound; illustrated; Special limited launch price: $12.00 (*$14 after June 4th)
Baffling Illuminations
Of the three modes of communicating their ideas that
human beings possess, viz., speech, gesture, and creative writing, the last one has received the least notice. Indeed, the study of hand-writing when applied to the creation of poetry and short stories is more connected in one’s mind with fortunetelling,
and other forms of popular superstition or deception,
than with scientific investigation; yet there is much to
learn by the study of insane writers.
selected pages from . . .
Wasted Energies, Baffled Thoughts: On the Writing of the Insane
by G. Mackenzie Bacon, M.D.
ABSURDIST TEXTS & DOCUMENTS NO. 16
