The Cocktail Hour is now available! This classic cocktail guide from 1927 contains 224 recipes collected by Marcel Requien, and a running commentary on the proper drink (and etiquette) for every hour of the day by Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud. The bilingual edition from Corps Reviver includes the original French text, an English translation by Doug Skinner […]

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I like the idea of a magazine devoted to only one book, particularly one that has now become so unpopular. A Wake Newslitter was devoted entirely to Finnegans Wake. Back in 1964, Joyce buffs across the globe sent in their discoveries to Fritz Senn (in Unterengstringen, Switzerland) and Clive Hart (in Newcastle, Australia). Senn and […]

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The three Parnassus plays – The Pilgrimage to Parnassus and the two parts of The Return from Parnassus – were written from 1598 to 1601, and performed at St. John’s College at Cambridge as, as the plays themselves say, “Christmas toys.” All three follow the adventures of two students, Philomusus and Studioso, as they face […]

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Tiffany Thayer, founder of the Fortean Society, was often criticized for his novels, which tended to the trashy. Nobody could say, however, that he couldn’t bring one to a glorious close. His Dr. Arnoldi (1934) is a memorably disgusting piece of science fiction about what happens when people stop dying. The terminally ill remain ill […]

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The fifteenth issue of The Black Scat Review is out! This one is subtitled “More Utter Nonsense,” and includes my poem “Pan and Kettle,” as well as my translations of two monologues by Charles Cros, “The Man with His Feet Turned Around” and “The Man Who Made a Discovery.” The other contributors are Edward Ahern, […]

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Sleepytime Cemetery is now available! In the words of Black Scat Books, “In this new collection of short stories by the author of The Doug Skinner Dossier, you’ll discover a world of ostensibly human specimens behaving in peculiar and unpredictable ways. However, they are often recognizable in a manner we dare not admit. Skinner’s dark […]

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Bill Ectric has interviewed me about my translation of The Zombie of Great Peru, by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, published earlier this year by Black Scat Books. It’s over at a site called Red Fez. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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Black Scat Books has just released its eighth broadside, “Limerickshaw: Haiku for the John.” I’ve selected sixteen classic dirty limericks, and rewritten them as haiku. Cleansed of rhyme, each haiku reveals the laconic narrative at the core. Norman Conquest’s design incorporates an equally classic erotic Japanese print, showing a heteronormative couple generating children. It’s suitable […]

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The eighth issue of Black Scat Review is now out!  It contains my short but unpleasant story “Hardwood Mulch,” as well as seductive works by Suzanne Burns, Doug Rice, Steven Teref, Kurt Cline, Charles Holdefer, Paulo Brito, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe,Tara Stillions Whitehead, Maria Morisot, Fox Harvard, Charlie Griggs, Monika Mori, and Tom Whalen.  You can find […]

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Georges Perec followed his masterful novel La Disparition, a lipogram without the letter E, with Les Revenentes, which avoided all vowels except E.  And Les Revenentes is hilarious, bending all rules of grammar, spelling, and syntax in its rigorous pursuit of univocalism (and becoming increasingly smutty in the process). But there is a stray O.  […]

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