Drawn from Black Scat’s eight editions of the master French absurdist, this compendium is a sublime introduction to the wordplay and black humor that shocked and dazzled Bohemian Paris in the raucous “Banquet Years.” The READER includes the celebrated pataphysical text “A Thoroughly Parisian Drama”–a favorite of both André Breton and the Oulipians–as well as […]

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As a postscript to my book 100 Cartoons from Le Chat Noir, here are some illustrations by Théophile Steinlen, one of the paper’s more prolific artists. That is, by the way, his art on the cover. A brief bio from the book: Steinlen, Théophile Alexandre (1859-1923): Born in Lausanne, Switzerland. Contributed to Le Rire, Gil Blas, Les […]

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101 Cartoons from Le Chat Noir: Early Comics from Bohemian Paris is now available from Black Scat Books! “Le Chat Noir” was one of the liveliest avant-garde papers in 19th century Paris. Published by the legendary cabaret, it delivered a weekly blast of anarchism, pranks, Decadent poetry, and black humor by such luminaries as Alphonse […]

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Have you bought your copy of Le Scat Noir Encyclopaedia yet? Here’s another ullage dozen of reference works from my library, to get you in the mood. A dictionary of Enochian, the angelic language communicated to John Dee and Edward Kelley in a number of scrying sessions in the late 16th century. It remains popular […]

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I particularly enjoyed contributing to the Black Scat Encyclopaedia (see last post) because I’m so fond of reference works. Here’s an ullage dozen from my library (click the images to enlarge): This booklet contains all the eleven-letter words in the 1951 Merriam-Webster’s New International Unabridged Directory, from abacination to zymotically. Word lists like this were […]

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Le Scat Noir Encyclopædia offers “All human knowledge in a single volume.” It contains entries from Acrostic to Zwine, and features contributors from around the world—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 […]

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Norman Conquest of Black Scat Books sent me this spiffy ad for The Zombie of Great Peru, written by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois and translated by the undersigned. Read the ad! Buy the book! (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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The Doug Skinner Songbook is now available! This elegant oversized paperback contains 46 of my songs, including such favorites as “Buenas Noches, Little Roaches,” “Love Me Unconditionally,” “My Pal Satan,” and “Bloated Plutocrats on Parade”! They’re “chillingly zany” (New York Times); they’re “scathingly witty… lullabies etched in acid” (Metro Magazine), and now you can add […]

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The Baby’s Opera, an 1877 offering from Walter Crane, includes both decorated sheet music and full-page illustrations, all at 7 and a half inches square. This is what songbooks should look like! (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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I Am Sarcey is now available from Black Scat Books! Francisque Sarcey was Paris’s most celebrated critic in the 1890s, and one of its most conservative. He famously panned Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi as “a filthy fraud that deserves nothing but the silence of contempt,” and praised light, commercial fare. Not surprisingly, he became an […]

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