The new expanded edition of Merde à la Belle Époque is now available from Black Scat Books! I’ve selected, translated, annotated, and introduced scatological songs, stories, poems, and playlets from some of the most inventive and eccentric writers of the golden age of Parisian Bohemia: Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Charles Cros, J. Eschbach, […]

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The 26th issue of Black Scat Review is now available! I contributed an alphabet, “Partners in Crime,” and my translation of “Upside-Down Stories: Mineral Waters,” by Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau (from my edition of those stories). The other contributors are a fine bunch: Tim Newton Anderson, Tom Barrett,  Margot Block, Robert James Cross, Farewell […]

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My novel Nominata is now available from Black Scat Books! You can get it on Amazon! I’ve been working on it for years: it’s not long, but it took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Here’s the blurb from Black Scat Books: Nominata has gone missing, and her old […]

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My translation of The Art of Noises is now available from Black Scat Books! Luigi Russolo’s treatise on enriching music with noises was published in Milan in 1916. It contains his 1913 Futurist manifesto on noises, as well as his accounts of building noise instruments, his riotous concerts, his notation, and analyses of the noises […]

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My new annotated translation of “Loves, Delights, and Organs,” by Alphonse Allais, is now available from Black Scat Books. Allais was a peerless humorist whose wild imagination, and fascination with technology and language, made him a favorite of Alfred Jarry, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Eco, and generations of writers. The Pataphysical College named him […]

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Shorten the Classics is now available from Black Scat Books! This book reduces 52 great works of literature to one cartoon page apiece: not by summarizing them, but by cutting them off early. See what happens when Helen rejects Paris, the acorn misses Chicken Little, Adam and Eve eat the serpent, Leopold Bloom sleeps in, […]

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Le Chat Noir Exposed is now available from Black Scat Books! This extraordinary work of scholarship exposes the liveliest fin-de-siècle bohemian cabaret and paper in Paris. Le Chat Noir was a playground for painters, writers, poets, pranksters, and musicians, all gleefully demolishing the standards of art and good taste. Caroline Crépiat examines such eccentric personalities […]

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2 + 2 = 5 is now available from Black Scat Books! This, if you’re doing the math suggested by the title, is my tenth translation of France’s master humorist, Alphonse Allais. 2 + 2 = 5 (in French, 2 + 2 = 5), was first published in 1895. Allais is in his prime here, […]

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Patents Pending is now available from Black Scat Books, and can be obtained on Amazon! The inimitable Derek Pell and I came up with a book chock-full of new inventions. I’ll let Derek give the pitch: The 41st volume in our seminal Absurdist Texts & Documents series has arrived: PATENTS PENDING by Derek Pell and Doug […]

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The second volume of Le Scat Noir Encyclopédie is now available! This cornucopia of information, like its predecessor, is edited by Norman Conquest and published by Black Scat Books. I was among over forty contributors; my contributions include articles on Aleatoric Temperament, Boxing Kangaroo Rats, Communion Waffles, Spicy Railroad Stories, Viper Midwives, and other more […]

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