A little compendium stuffed with inspired infestations of inanity — from subtle emanations to cartoon lunacy. It’s sprinkled with squirmy absurdist specimens. Indeed, this is an anthology to cherish, worship, and drool over, featuring a range of deranged artists & writers, including Ivars Balkits; Tom Barrett; Michael Cheval; Norman Conquest; R J Dent; Boris Glikman; Rhys Hughes; Mark Kanak; Allan Randolph Kausch; Amy Kurman; David Macpherson; Catulle Mendès; T. Motley; David Paddy; Doug Skinner; Lono Taggers; and Phil Demise Smith.
Here’s your chance to sample 14 titles in the Pocket Erotica Series, the seminal series of classic & contemporary erotic fiction.
This mouth-watering anthology includes:
Travels to Merryland. Anonymous From Their Lips to His Ear. Denis Diderot Priapeia. Anonymous A Judge Deceived. Marquis de Sade A Good Girl’s Home Companion. Lawrence Hamilton A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France. Pierre Louÿs Poems of Lust & Desire. Various Jean-Fucque. Louis Aragon / RJ Dent Eve’s Academy. Eurydice Eve A Dirty Story as You Like It. Kim Vodicka Escape Artists. Su Orwell Grand Hotel Vittoria. Nina Ansani The Obedience Room. Catherine D’Avis The Desire Box. Laure Favager
THE POCKET EROTICA READER A Connoisseur’s Sampler Edited by Norman Conquest New Urge Editions Paperback; 178 pp.; $14 ISBN 979-8-9908521-5-0
STARRING: Tim Newton Anderson; Michael Betancourt; David Brizer; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Farewell Debut; R J Dent; Jesse Glass; Reinhard Goering; Rhys Hughes; Tim Hutchings; Mark Kanak; M. Kasper; Amy Kurman; Gabriel de Lautrec; Emilia Loseva; Jim McMenamin; O Homem do Saco; Jasia Reichardt; Doug Rice; Paul Rosheim; Doug Skinner; Franciszka Themerson; Stefan Thernerson; John Vieira; Gregory Wallace; and Danny Winkler.
PLUS EIGHT RUSSIAN FUTURISTS: Velimir Khlebnikov, Igor Terentjev, Aleksey Kruchenykh, Vasily Kamensky, Pavel Kokorin, Tykhon Churylin, Bodjidar (Bogdan Gordejev), and David Burliuk.
featuring
· THE EVOLUTION OF IT
· TOUR DE PANTS
· PORTRAITS OF SADE
· SECONDHAND SMOKE SIGNALS
· ALFRED JARRY, TEEN PATAPHYSICIAN
· ANTIQUARIAN PUZZLES
· RUSSIAN FUTURISTS
· CUBIST TALES
· DRIBBLING DRABBLES
· MR. COPYRIGHT
· REINHARD GOERING STORIES
· THEMERSON’S LOST FILM
· FOUND FINDS
· TYPO’S TYPOS
And much more
Grab your copy today.
TYPO #4: The International Journal of Prototypes edited by Norman Conquest trade paperback; 152 pp., illustrated; $20
Paul Éluard’s Capital of Pain (Capitale de la douleur ) appeared in 1926 and established his reputation as the preeminent French surrealist poet.
Éluard’s surrealist vision is illuminated by a painter’s eye; his imagery includes light, surfaces, reflections, sunlight, mirrors, halos and radiance, although he deploys them to evoke suffering, despair and emptiness. Details of the poet’s personal life are found in this collection’s two-part central poem, “In the Flame of the Whip.” Each line crackles with irrepressible power – resembling the criss-cross lash marks left on human flesh by the whip.
Both sides of the mirror are exposed in Capital of Pain – the reflective surface and the tain on its reverse side. The mirror is, of course, Éluard himself, because, as the collection’s title suggests, it reveals the poet’s private anguish and personal agony.
Paul Éluard was a dedicated and devoted surrealist who championed the juxtaposition of distinct elements and the play of dualities which give surrealist poetry its profundity and vitality. As readers, we are fortunate he chose to expose the mysterious and hidden aspects of his life with lyrical brilliance.
“…it is gratifying to find a collection of Paul Éluard’s poetry translated into English by R. J. Dent, and published (with a glorious cover!) by Black Scat Books – one of the last publishers to keep the flag of Olympia, Éditions Jean-Jacques Pauvert and Grove Press flying, with new writing as well as classics of Surrealism, the Absurd, Dada, Erotica and ‘Pataphysics…. All in all, Dent, a poet and novelist in his own right, demonstrates clearly the truth of the old maxim, it takes a poet to translate a poet.” —Reese Saxment, Surrealerpool
Alfred Jarry spent his brief and turbulent life experimenting with genres of fiction. In his last few years, he created a new fictional form: the absurdist speculative essay. R J Dent’s new English translation of Speculations contains 68 of Jarry’s essays, originally printed between 1901 and 1904 as a series, ‘Spéculations’, in the French journal Le Revue Blanche.
In Jarry’s darkly comic collection of surrealist and satirical prose pieces, the renowned author deploys his characteristic satirical eye and dark humor to devastating effect. These essays range in tone from the wildly comic to the deeply tragic and cover a diversity of subjects, ranging from French Trees to Cannibalism. For Jarry, nothing is sacred; everything is worthy material for his surreal satire; the Passion is presented as a sporting event; buses are the prey of big game hunters, and even the Queen is licked from behind.
A series of sly investigations into fin de siècle France that reads like a beautiful & bloody handful of paper cuts, splintered essays that turn authority on its head in sharp bursts of wicked logic, R J Dent elegantly capturing Jarry’s iconoclastic spirit, his scandalous heart. —Matthew Kinlin
There’s a story that Jarry carried a loaded revolver around with him (said revolver Picasso obtained after his death, and took it with him on night walks around Paris). A woman living near Jarry complained to him about the danger of his gun-toting to her children. To which Jarry said, “If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you.” If you can appreciate as demented a sentiment as that, you can have a hundred more reading Speculations, in a delightful translation from R. J. Dent. —Conor Hultman, The Local Voice
Edible contents:
SPECULATIONS Alfred Jarry Translated by R J Dent Paper; 5.06 x 7.81 inches; 235 pp., $15.95 ISBN 13 979-8-9859996-1-7
Charles Baudelaire’s decadent erotic poems caused a scandal when they first appeared in 1857. Both author and publisher were prosecuted for unveiling works that were “an insult to public decency,” and six poems in the collection were suppressed. These so-called indecent works (banned in France until 1949) were: Lesbos; Condemned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta; Lethe; To One Who Is Too Happy; Jewels; and The Metamorphosis of the Vampire— and all are included in this Pocket Erotica edition, plus 20 more.
Selected Erotic Poems Charles Baudelaire Translated from the French by R J Dent Pocket Erotica No. 21, New Urge Editions paper chapbook; 64 pp., $12 ISBN 978-1737943037
Did the notorious author of Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom have a sense of humor?
Indeed he did, and this short story shows a side of the author few have seen. Here is a witty, libertine tale, free of flagellation and sexual perversion. Instead, it reveals a husband’s adultery and a wife’s clever “retaliation.”
This is a decidedly feminist text and it punctures the double standard still infecting relations between men and women.
blackscatbooks.com 