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, spinning out dark fantasies on cycling in Ancient Rome, the taste of tears, the economic advantages of germ warfare, God’s dislike of Christmas, and the proper chemicals for a chaperone’s chamberpot. The intrepid Captain Cap pitches his bizarre inventions over cocktails, and Allais sends back notes from his travels to North America and Southern France. At 65 stories (289 pp.), this collection is his largest—and I’ve added two extra stories by Allais and two by Octave Mirbeau, all on the pressing issue of ambulatory vegetables, as well as an introduction and useful notes. Liliane Milgrom did the lovely cover painting. It all adds up to hilarity! And you can find it on Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The game box was a simple publishing conceit: several simple board games were packed into one box, with the requisite markers, dice, and spinner. Often the boards were the familiar ones for checkers, backgammon, mill, and other favorites; sometimes they were new ones.

This 1956 set from Saalfield contains ten original games, printed on five boards; I don’t know if it’s complete. The ten are Setback, Doghouse, Solo, Drop Out, Collections, Riskit, Magic Wish, Race to the South Pole, Tots, and Ouch! You can see Ouch! above. I suspect a game that encouraged children to molest the cat, tear up books, write on the walls, and spank each other would meet with an icy silence in an editorial meeting today.

Unlike many games, these are signed, by a certain Howard Boughner. A little research reveals that he assisted on the daily strips “Dumb Dora” and “Wash Tubbs,” wrote the strips “Penny” and “Dotty Dripple,” and drew his own strips “Mac” and “Peter and Polly in Toyland,” as well as drawing the daily panel “Hold Everything” and contributing humor features to Marvel. He also drew other games for Saalfield, including another game box in 1954. Some very stylish ’50s art here! (Please click to enlarge.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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 Skinner, with an Afterword by Alphonse Allais. An illustrated compendium of ingenious inventions so ahead of their time they may never be available to the public – not in this world, nor the next. Discover pataphysical gizmos such as the OUIJA BILLBOARD, HELIUM BOMB, IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE FRAME, TROMPE L’OEIL MAGIC KIT, and many others. For now, these inspired concepts are but speculative prototypes – strange dreams haunting the drawing board of destiny – but thanks to this book you may study and savor them, and imagine a future far brighter than the present.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The 21st issue of Black Scat Review is now available from Amazon! My contributions to this special travel issue are a short story, “The Morning Walk,” and translations of two stories by Alphonse Allais, from my upcoming translation of his collection 2 + 2 – 5.

I am, mind you, one of many contributors. My esteemed colleagues are: Robert James Cross, Farewell Debut, S. C. Delaney, John Oliver Hodges, Rhys Hughes, Harold Jaffe, E.E. King, Olchar E. Lindsann, Charles J. March III, Carmelo Militano, Opal Louis Nations, Peter Payack, Persefone, Roger Pheuquewell, Agnès Potier, Collin J. Rae, Jason E. Rolfe, Paul Rosheim, Charles de Rosières, Kristine Snodgrass, Ben Stoltzfus, Corinne Taunay, Ed Taylor, Michel Vachey, Tom Whalen, and D. Harlan Wilson. A stellar crew! Edited and designed by Norman Conquest!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Having previously posted some stereoscopic images of the moon, I can now offer a stereoscopic sun. It was taken, it says, at Yerkes Observatory, at the University of Chicago at Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and published by the Keystone View Company. No date is given.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Happy New Year! I hope the few of you who read this are enjoying your lockdown.

That fine singer, Meg Reichardt, has revived her Holiday Recording Party after a hiatus of seven years. She’s posted it, along with the past sessions, on Bandcamp. My contributions for 2020 are a new song, “When a Snowman Melts,” and a piano arrangement of an old Norwegian folk tune, “Underjordisk Musik,” attributed to the trolls in the caverns.

My book on anomalous music, Music from Elsewhere, is slated for publication this year from Strange Attractor Press off in London, in association with MIT Press. Mark Pilkington urged me to collect my research into music attributed to fairies, trolls, aliens, spirits, angels, and other unusual sources, and it’s on its way.

My translation of Charles Cros’s treatise Principles of Cerebral Mechanics is also due out this year from Wakefield Press. Cros, remembered not only as an exceptional poet, but as a pioneer in color photography and recorded sound, analyzed visual perception by designing imaginary machines that perform visual functions. A curious work, indeed!

My translation of Alphonse Allais’s collection 2 + 2 = 5 is also scheduled for this year from Black Scat Books. It’s the longest of that unique writer’s “anthumous works,” and is supplemented with an introduction, notes, and four extra stories from his exchange of columns with Octave Mirbeau.

The inimitable director of Black Scat, Derek Pell, and I are collaborating on Patents Pending, a collection of original and often unpleasant inventions. Such innovations as Evangelical Shrapnel, the Narcoleptic Leisure Suit, Cocktail Haggis, and the Anti-Pacifier will soon be available to haunt your dreams and attract investors.

Since it’s been years since I released an album, I’m recording a new one, with Brian Dewan at the controls. The provisional title is Twilight in the Sinkhole, and it’s coming along quite nicely.

I continue to teach ukulele classes and private lessons, over Zoom, through the Jalopy Theatre. If you want to enroll, here’s the info.

And I plan on posting here more regularly. I don’t know who reads these posts, but I see them quoted in Wikipedia and elsewhere, since, true to its mission, the site documents various things that nobody else does. And, again, Happy New Year!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

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 or less factual and/or fictional subjects. It is, incidentally, in the English language; only the cover is French. You can find it on Amazon, and there’s more information at Black Scat Books.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Pluck and Luck was the most persistent of the “dime novels,” racking up 1605 issues between 1898 and 1929. I put “dime novel” in quotes, since it’s somewhat of a misnomer; as you can see, this issue cost a nickel.

It was published by Frank Tousey, a  New York publisher responsible for a number of magazines, including Boys of New York, Golden Weekly, Happy Days. Handsome Harry, Wide-Awake Library, and many others. This issue, from August 23, 1916, features “The Haunted Mill on the Marsh,” by Howard Austin, an elaborate adventure story in 24 chapters, printed in minuscule type on 21 pages. The plot involves doubles, a switched baby, an attempt to steal an inheritance, long-lost cousins, a reclusive alchemist, and a mill with hidden rooms. To pander to anti-Semitic readers, the villain is a dastardly French Jew with an elaborate synthetic accent. The style seems dated for the period, but Tousey endlessly recycled his copy, so there’s no telling when it was written.

The rest of the 32 pages are filled with two one-page chapters from serial stories (“Making it Pay” and “Simple Sam”), six pages of brief fillers (“Current News,” “From all Points,” “Timely Topics,” “Interesting Articles,” “Items of General Interest,” and “Articles of All Kinds”), and a page of editorial information and “Grins and Chuckles.” The last two pages are ads: the first one small ads for cheap novelties, and the second a full-page ad for the current issue of The Liberty Boys of ’76.

The back cover advertises Tousey’s line of “Ten-Cent Hand Books,” How-To manuals on such diverse skills as ventriloquism, making candy, flirting, boxing, bird-keeping, and dream interpretation.

Here are some of the enticing ads:

Howard Austin, the author of The Haunted Mill on the Marsh, was, as was often the case, a pseudonym; the probable author was Tousey stalwart Francis Worcester Doughty. Doughty also published a curious little pamphlet called Evidences of Man in the Drift (1892), which details his belief that stones he found in New England were actually small sculptures by ancient man. He placed them in the Tertiary Period (from 66 to 2.6 million years ago), which is rather unorthodox. And raises the question: did Richard Shaver know about this?

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I have been asked by Norman Conquest, the indefatigable director of Black Scat Books, to post this announcement. Perhaps some of you will see fit to contribute to this useful reference work.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Hugo Gernsback was one of the pioneers of publishing, producing one of the first science fiction magazines, Amazing Stories, and many publications devoted to radio and electronics. Along the way, he also published pulp magazines (Pirate Stories), comics (Superworld), and, of course, the controversial but probably informative digest Sexology. He was also known for his poor treatment of writers, and for his early science fiction novel Ralph 124C 41+, essentially a list of fictional inventions couched in clumsy prose.

Starting in 1934, he sent out a small magazine called Forecast as a Christmas bonus to his subscribers. It was officially published by Radio-Electronics, and contained 32 pages of scientific articles and predictions. It was never sold, and I suppose copies are rare nowadays. This 1965 edition contained articles on the first satellite photos of the moon, medical electronics, flying saucers, the possibility of picturephones, the difficulties of manned space flight, multiplex televisions, and changing tastes in science fiction–all written by Gernsback.

And here’s a drawing of his proposed multiplex television. No more families squabbling over the channel in the wonderful world of the future!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)