Tag: Translation
GO GODEAU!
Balzac’s WAITING FOR GODEAU was just named #1 on Amazon’s New Releases in French Dramas & Plays. Congratulations to translator Mark Axelrod.
Go Godeau!
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Monsieur Godeau, party of one, your table is waiting…
“It is upon this one comedy that Balzac can lay any claims as a dramatic artist.”
—The New York Times
If you missed the limited edition published in 2013, the wait is over. Mark Axelrod’s translation of this obscure comedy by Balzac is now available worldwide on Amazon in a handsome paperback edition.
Originally presented under the title Mercadet or The Good Businessman, this play in three acts appears to have inspired the creation of the unseen character in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Indeed, 102 years before Godot ‘s debut, Mercadet opened at the Theatre du Gymnase-Dramatique in Paris and—curiously enough—featured a character named “Godeau” who never appears on stage.
A comic coincidence? One of life’s little absurdities?
The translator met and corresponded with Beckett, and in WAITING FOR GODEAU we present an unpublished letter from Beckett in which the burning question is answered.
Or is it?
You be the judge.
WAITING FOR GODEAU
by Honore de Balzac
Translated from the French by Mark Axelrod
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
trade paperback; 154 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0692738108
$12.95
Hip! Hip! Allais!
Alphonse Allais’s Absurd “Affair”!
Adapted to film four times, “L’Affaire Blaireau” has remained popular and in print in France since its original appearance in 1899. This is its first publication in English. It is humorist Alphonse Allais’s only novel and, in the words of translator Doug Skinner: “It isn’t quite as wild or cruel as his early stories, but I find it delicious anyway. Summer in the provinces, the shrewd but impressionable Blaireau, futile political squabbles, a ridiculous but charming love story, what more could one want? And innocence is rewarded!”
Here’s a taste from Chapter I:
THE BLAIREAU AFFAIR is a rare find to be savored by the author’s growing circle of fans in America.
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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).
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.
Surprise!
Alphonse Allais (1854-1905) was France’s greatest humorist. His elegance, scientific curiosity, preoccupation with language and logic, wordplay and flashes of cruelty inspired Alfred Jarry, as well as succeeding generations of Surrealists, Pataphysicians, and Oulipians. Celebrate the master’s birthday with mirth, mischief, and cocktails!
And one of his sublime books translated by Doug Skinner, from Black Scat, of course.
Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks
Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais
“To leave is to die a little, but to die is to leave a lot.” –-Alphonse Allais
Cheers!
Theatre of the Absurd—Opening Night!
“Witkiewicz takes up and continues the vein of dream and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the dramatists of the absurd—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Arrabal—of the late nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties.” -Martin Esslin
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (pen name: Witkacy) was desperate to get out of revolutionary St. Petersburg after the Bolsheviks seized power. Back in Poland, eager to make money and a name for himself, Witkacy began to write plays in a style that he called “Pure Form,” which foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd. By the time that he wrote VAHAZAR (1921), Witkacy had achieved a dreamlike dramaturgy: centered on the paranoid and crazed despot, Vahazar, and spiraling outwards through an anthill society of automatons, religious cults, and quack scientific and social theories, this play is about being trapped in nothingness.
This translation of the play by Celina Wieniewska was commissioned by Stefan Themerson in 1967, and later announced as a forthcoming title by the legendary Gaberbocchus Press. Somehow the project was sidetracked and has never appeared until this Black Scat Books publication. Paul Rosheim, publisher of Obscure Publications and scholar of Themersonia, provides a sublime introduction with biographical information about Witkacy and the story of this translation. The book also includes an appendix featuring Franciszka Themerson’s “Vahazar: A Few Suggestions for Design.”
“…Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz and myself, the three musketeers of the Polish avant-garde.” —Witold Gombrowicz
Available now on Amazon in the U.S. and Europe.
Click here to order this masterpiece of the absurd.
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)
BLACK SCAT REVIEW 11—Now Available!
New format, new size, new design PLUS a boatload of great artists and writers: Alphonse Allais, Nika Baum,Sandra Boersma, S. C. Delaney, Tony Duvert, Margie Franzen, William L. Gibson, Kristien Hemmerechts, Andy Koopmans, Richard Kostelanetz, Terri Lloyd, Happy Nightmares, L T O’Rourke, Derek Pell, Bobby Phillips, Agnès Potier, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Nelly Sanchez, Doug Skinner, Mark Stewart, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Carla M. Wilson. 116 pages of sublime art and lit.
BLACK SCAT REVIEW is an international magazine of the arts unlike any other. Issue #11 includes translations of exciting work by Kristien Hemmerechts, Tony Duvert, and Alphonse Allais.
Available now direct from our printer – CLICK HERE
Or from Amazon worldwide
BSR #11 is almost here…
BLACK SCAT REVIEW has a new look, a new size, and a new format.
Available as a trade paperback in the U.S. and Europe.
FEATURING Alphonse Allais, Sandra Boersma, S. C. Delaney, Tony Duvert, Margie Franzen, William L. Gibson, Kristien Hemmerechts, Andy Koopmans, Richard Kostelanetz, Terri Lloyd, Happy Nightmares, L T O’Rourke, Derek Pell, Bobby Phillips, Agnès Potier, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Nelly Sanchez, Doug Skinner, Mark Stewart, Yuriy Tarnawsky, and Carla M. Wilson.
116 pp.
perfect-bound, illustrated, full color
US Trade Paper edition, 5.06″ x 7.81″
$18.00
blackscatbooks.com 