Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara is now available from Black Scat Books!

Isidore Isou, the founder of the artistic movement Letterism, was a great admirer of the Dadaist Tristan Tzara. So, when Tzara died in 1963, Isou disrupted the funeral to give the great provocateur a properly raucous sendoff. Isou’s lively account of the proceedings is both a polemic against traditional funerals and a warm declaration of his affection and admiration for Tzara.

Isou’s text was originally published in 1964. My translation of it was first published in a limited edition by Black Scat Books in 2012. This revised edition is much improved and is now available to all readers interested in Isou and Tzara.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Our 34th Old Maid deck was published around 1900 by Milton Bradley. Atypically, it includes pairs of objects as well as people. Not only is there a Farmer, Golf Girl, Politician, and Red Cross Nurse, but such objects as a Yacht, Typewriter, Automobile, and this oddly-named Graphophone. And here’s the Old Maid, who seems to be in a very bad mood.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Feeding Time is now available from Black Scat Books!

This collection of Alphonse Allais’s short pieces, originally published in 1897, shows the great French humorist at his best, spinning out stories, fables, dialogues, and articles with elegance and imagination. You’ll find clandestine train stations and incandescent leeks, the rules for attending funerals with a bicycle, proposals for celluloid money and explosive confetti, the diplomatic problems of flatulence, and a gallery of swindlers, lovers, and adulterers. Allais’s most popular character, Captain Cap, appears to describe cannon billiards and to suggest replacing carrier pigeons with fish. Translated, annotated, and introduced by Doug Skinner, who also drew the frontispiece.

With this book, Black Scat Books’ editor Norman Conquest and I complete our Alphonse Allais library. It includes all eleven of the collections Allais called his “Anthumous Works,” plus six additional volumes: Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks; The Blaireau Affair (Allais’s only novel); Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais; I Am Sarcey (his stories featuring Francisque Sarcey); Alphonse Allais’s Masks: Deluxe Special Edition (an illustrated version of one of his stories); and a sampler, The Alphonse Allais Reader.

Allais’s work was praised by, among others, André Breton, René Magritte, Umberto Eco, Rachilde, Marcel Duchamp. Harry Mathews, and the Collège de ‘Pataphysique. And here it is for English readers!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Virtuoso Parrot is now available from Black Scat Books!

Claude-Sosthène Grasset d’Orcet (1828-1900) wrote hundreds of startling articles and stories about secret societies, hidden bloodlines, and his own idiosyncratic views of history. His obsession with finding puns and rebuses, in both ancient inscriptions and modern speech, influenced generations of occultists; it was the inspiration for the “language of the birds” expounded by the enigmatic Fulcanelli.

My translation is Grasset d’Orcet’s first appearance in English. It contains five of his odd and often hilarious short stories and a contemporary obituary, as well as my introduction and detailed notes on his ideas and allusions.

At last, the virtuoso parrot speaks to English readers!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Music From Elsewhere is now available from Strange Attractor Press!

This book collects and discusses music derived from unusual sources, including music attributed to fairies, trolls, trowies, banshees, aliens, angels, spirits, time slips, and dreams. You’ll also find chapters on speculative and cryptographic music, and on music from birds and other natural sounds. It’s 272 pages, richly illustrated in green and black (designed by the remarkable Tihana Šare), with 112 pages of historical sheet music. Also available in a limited hardback edition of 300, with a signed bookplate. Purchase includes a link to an MP3 album of Doug Skinner performing some of the music, recorded by Brian Dewan. Published by Strange Attractor Press in the UK, and distributed in the US by The MIT Press.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I wrote the introduction for Amanda DeMarco’s sparkling translation of New Inventions and the Latest Innovations, by Gaston de Pawlowski, now available from Wakefield Press. Here’s what Wakefield has to say:

Originally published in book form in 1916, Gaston de Pawlowski’s New Inventions and the Latest Innovations collects the humorist’s numerous columns mocking and deflating his era’s burgeoning consumer society and growing faith in science. From anti-slip soap, gut rests, and the pocket-sized yardstick to repurposed spittoons, nasal vacuums, new methods for curling endive, electric oysters, and musicographical revolvers, Pawlowski offers a far-sighted satire of technological gadgetry and our advanced society’s promise to remove discomfort from every facet of life, even as soldiers were dying daily in the trenches of World War I and technology was unleashing new horrors upon humanity.

Pawlowski’s humorous cultural critique and tongue-in-cheek celebration of uselessness and futility bears relevance for today, and not just because some of the absurdities described have since been invented: tech startups continue to receive inflated funding, and technology remains the hoped-for answer to our increasingly troubled human condition. Described with the excessive optimism of the sales pitch, these inventions of yesteryear were also an influence in the arts, admired by such figures as Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Queneau, and stand as a precursor to the work of such artists as Jean Tinguely and today’s looming specter of AI-generated images and text.

Gaston de Pawlowski (1874–1933) was a productive journalist, humorist, and bicycle enthusiast who wrote on everything from war correspondence to the fourth dimension. His friends and colleagues included Alfred Jarry, Marcel Proust, and Guillaume Apollinaire, but he is chiefly remembered today as being an influence on Duchamp’s The Large Glass.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

TYPO 7 is now available from Black Scat Books!

I contributed a set of silent pieces (“Eleven Silent Études”); translations of two stories by Alphonse Allais (“Gaudissart Has Fun” and “The Theater of Mr. Bigfun”), both taken from My Rent Is Due!; and a translation of Raymond Roussel’s first work in prose (“Chroniquettes”).

This rollicking and trenchant issue also includes great stuff by mIEKAL aND, Terry Bradford, Steve Carll, Norman Conquest, Lynn Crawford, Noël Devaulx, Mark DuCharme, Albert Ehrenstein, Shawn Garrett, Edward Gauvin, Richard Huelsenbeck, Iliazd, Mark Kanak, Thomas J. Kitson, Amy Kurman, Jean Lorrain, Emilia Loseva, Marcel Mariën, Willy Melnikov, Heather Sager, Phil Demise Smith, Paul Willems, and Cynthia Yatchman. The whole thing is edited and designed by the industrious Norman Conquest.

I’m happy to announce that my translation of Alphonse Allais’s My Rent Is Due! is now available from Black Scat Books. This collection, originally published in 1899, includes delightful stories about tapeworms, phantom limbs, floating brothels, and other interesting things. André Breton saluted Allais’s “terrorist activity of the mind”; maybe you will too.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The sixth issue of TYPO is now available from Black Scat Books!

This issue weighs in at 169 pages, edited by Norman Conquest, and loaded with “prototypes, visual poetry, Belgian fiction, chronograms, Symbolist decadence, vintage surrealism & much more. Featuring an international cast of artists, poets, and writers, including: Frédéric Acquaviva; Terry J. Bradford; Apollo Camembert; Steve Carll; Norman Conquest; Lynn Crawford; Caroline Crépiat; Noël Devaulx; Shawn Garrett; Edward Gauvin; Nico Kirschenbaum; John Kruse; Amy Kurman; Jean Lorrain; Emilia Loseva; Jean Muno; Opal Louis Nations; Clemente Palma; Claudio Parentela; Vojtěch Preissig; Vania Russo; Nelly Sanchez; Marcel Schneider; and Doug Skinner.”

I contributed a short story (“Uncopyrightable”), a musical optical toy “Dodecaphonophenakistoscope”), an introduction to a Czech chronogram, and an article on the “Indisposizione di Belle Arti,” a proto-Dada art exhibit held in Milan in 1881.

And you can find it on Amazon!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Tops and Tails,” an undated game from the venerable Viennese firm Piatnik, invited players to match the two halves of animals. The illustrations are detailed, imaginative and charming. And, of course, the players can also amuse themselves by mismatching the cards, creating unusual hybrids.

The backs of the cards are also worth a look.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)