“The Cinematographer and the Megachiropteran” was written for Le Scat Noir 227, devoted to formal constraints. You can find it in my collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. I devised a technique similar to Raymond Roussel’s famed process, which used puns and homonyms to generate ideas. I used anagrams instead; the longest anagram pair in […]

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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 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 […]

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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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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.

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In the interest of metaphysical and pataphysical confusion, some of my entries in the upcoming second volume of Le Scat Noir Encyclopaedia are fictional, and some are factual. This one, on a famous Parisian prankster, is factual. THE ILLUSTRIOUS SAPECK. Eugène Bataille (1853-1891), better known as the Illustrious Sapeck, is not to be confused with […]

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In 2017, Black Scat Books published Le Scat Noir Encyclopaedia, which presented “all human knowledge in a single volume.” A sequel is now in preparation, offering even more of all human knowledge. I wrote a few entries, including these on music and popular entertainment. ALEATORIC TEMPERAMENT. Rather than choosing pitches by the ratios of frequencies, or […]

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In this gripping tale, our hapless narrator tries to reconcile the competing demands of the cerebral and physical. Here’s the first part; the whole thing is slated for the next issue of the Black Scat Review. THE MORNING WALK It was a beautiful spring morning, so I decided to take a walk. The decision was […]

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The 2oth issue of “Black Scat Review” is now available from Black Scat Books! This one is devoted to black humor, 106 pages of it. I contributed a squalid fairy tale, “The Fisherman’s Wish,” a misanthropic song, “We Are Not a Pretty People,” and a translation of Alphonse Allais’s classically tasteless story “The Rajah Is […]

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