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
This second edition of Norman Conquest‘s classic REAR WINDOWS features digitally enhanced scenes from fifty Film Noir masterpieces as you’ve never seen them before. It’s a must-have reference for thrill-seeking aficionados, students of cinema, and collectors of offbeat artists’ books. Spanning the golden age of Noir (1941-1962), it includes over 50 rare photographic stills from memorable hard-boiled motion pictures, such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, Kiss Me Deadly, and many more. Includes an illuminating introduction by Robert Wexelblatt, Professor of Humanities, Boston University.
“…the most truthful book on Noir that’s out there.” —Tosh Berman, Tam Tam Books
“I’ve just been (re)reading Rancière on the mis-en-scene revolution in theatre at the end of C19th. Here Norman Conquest goes literally beyond the mis-en-scene and adds in a Wagnerian negation of the star system. Erase glamour! Bring forward the scene makers.“—Stefan Szczelkun
“This is conceptual art at its finest. Ingenious in its simplicity, startling, absurd, and very funny.” —Alec Burroughs
“Evocative… I like the various physical/psychological angles with which [Conquest] approaches the stills, each of which is elegantly if sometimes surprisingly effected.” —Harold Jaffe
No. 27 in our acclaimed Absurdist Texts & Documents Series, REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS by Norman Conquest is available worldwide on Amazon.
Le Scat Noir Encyclopædia contains entries from Acrostic to Zwine, and features forty-three contributors from around the globe—some of whom are distinguished professors at prestigious universities. Others are Nobel Prize winners, while a few have been arrested on felony charges. Discover rare factoids, flash fiction, nubile moon spew, mythological arcana, cabalistic pathogens, pataphysical detritus, scatological schemata, crypto-heuristic scripture, and radical homomorphism. Over 100 pages of profusely illustrated weirdness.
Only $12.95 — Available Worldwide on Amazon. CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Contributors include Mark Axelrod, Jeff Bagato, Jacques Bekaert, Doktor Bey, Paulo Brito, Adam Levon Brown, Theodore Carter, Brendan Connell, Norman Conquest, Sean Coolican, Catherine D’Avis, Farewell Debut, Edith Doove, Paul Forristal, Ryan A. Forsythe, Peter Gambaccini, Eckhard Gerdes, Amelia Gorman, Thomas Gresham, Charles Holdefer, James R. Hugunin, Harold Jaffe, Richard Kostelanetz, Rachel Kushner, Terri Lloyd, Harry McCullagh, David Macpherson, Opal Louis Nations, Andy O’Clancy, Peter Payack, Caleb Puckett, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Stephen Silke, Mercie Pedro e Silva, Doug Skinner, Seth D. Slater, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Robert Wexelblatt, Tom Whalen, Gregg Williard, Carla M. Wilson, and D. Harlan Wilson.
Digitally enhanced scenes from fifty Film Noir masterpieces as you’ve never seen them before! A must-have reference for thrill-seeking aficionados, students of cinema, and collectors of offbeat artists’ books. Spanning the golden age of Noir (1941-1962), this edition includes over 50 rare photographs from the most memorable hard-boiled classics.
With an introduction by Robert Wexelblatt, Professor of Humanities, Boston University.
5.25″ x 8.25″ perfect-bound, paper, 68 pp. illustrated
$15
We’re thrilled to announce this advance release of Norman Conquest’s REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS—destined to become the bible of Film Noir studies
This special edition features digitally enhanced scenes from fifty Film Noir masterpieces as you’ve never seen them before. It’s a must-have reference for thrill-seeking aficionados, students of cinema, and collectors of offbeat artists’ books. Spanning the golden age of Noir (1941-1962), it includes over 50 rare photographic stills from memorable hard-boiled motion pictures, such as The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, Kiss Me Deadly, and many more. Includes an illuminating introduction by Robert Wexelblatt, Professor of Humanities, Boston University.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
“…the most truthful book on Noir that’s out there.” —Tosh Berman, Tam Tam Books
“I’ve just been (re)reading Rancière on the mis-en-scene revolution in theatre at the end of C19th. Here Norman Conquest goes literally beyond the mis-en-scene and adds in a Wagnerian negation of the star system. Erase glamour! Bring forward the scene makers.“—Stefan Szczelkun
“This is conceptual art at its finest. Ingenious in its simplicity, startling, absurd, and very funny.” —Alec Burroughs
“Evocative… I like the various physical/psychological angles with which [Conquest] approaches the stills, each of which is elegantly if sometimes surprisingly effected.” —Harold Jaffe
This is No. 27 in our acclaimed Absurdist Texts & Documents Series.
Perfect-bound paperback. 68 pp. $16.00
CLICK HERE to order online.
Jules Torquemal is a middle-aged civil servant in the Ministry of Education living shortly before the First World War blew up the Belle Époque. His life is settled and his hobby is philosophizing of the complacent variety. One day, told by an indignant friend of a petty injustice, Torquemal finds questions he had thought long closed re-opening and the ground slipping beneath him. The world he believed morally moored and logically consistent suddenly appears to him anything but.
The Derangement of Jules Torquemal by Robert Wexelblatt is a wickedly clever (and haunting) philosophical puzzle.
This Black Scat Classic Interim Edition is limited to 100 copies. CLICK HERE to order
Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play, and a short novel, Losses. His novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction.
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REAR WINDOWS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT FIFTY FILM NOIR CLASSICS
ON SALE NOW!
MUD BATH by Allan Bealy
ON SALE NOW!
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OULIPO PORNOBONGO 3: ANTHOLOGY OF EROTIC WORDPLAY
Coming July 30th
The 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.
blackscatbooks.com 