The Best of Le Scat Noir is now available! It collects memorable gems from the online journal edited by the ebullient Norman Conquest, in a large, full-color trade paperback. I have a number of pieces in it, as do many others, to wit: Paulo Brito, Paul Kavanagh, Erik Satie, Samuele Bastianello, Alice Pulaski, Pink Buddha, Yuriy […]

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Here, for the holidays, is a song about the many sterling qualities of Santa Claus. It’s also the only song I’ve written in Italian. It begins: Babbo Natale pranza in letto. Babbo Natale balla sul tetto. Babbo Natale evita le frotte. Babbo Natale viaggia di notte. Santa Claus eats in bed. Santa Claus dances on […]

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A black cat investigates six absinthe glasses, in an illustration for my translation of No Bile!, by Alphonse Allais, to be published soon by Black Scat Books. Most of the stories were originally published in Le Chat Noir, Allais often mentions absinthe, and I’ve included six extra stories.

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People who have children have to take what they get. And they shouldn’t be surprised if those children turn out no better than their parents.

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You’d better jump on that bandwagon! You don’t want to be left behind, do you? And now, you can listen to this cautionary song on That Regrettable Weekend (see the previous post).

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Here they come! Get out of their way!

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The 17th issue of Black Scat Review is now out, subtitled “Dada Forgery.” I contributed a piece on Tristan Tzara’s final book, Le Secret de Villon, in which he searched for “discontinuous anagrams” in the works of Villon and Rabelais. Other contributors include Captain Anonymous, David Moscovich, Anna Keeler, Christy Sheffield Sanford, Karl Waldmann, Ruth […]

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Black Scat Books is proud to serve up the master absurdist’s inaugural collection,  containing his hand-picked favorites from the pages of Le Chat Noir, the bohemian journal that amused and scandalized Paris. Here you’ll find Allais in the first flush of his comic genius, spinning out elegant and hilarious gems of black humor on suicide, […]

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The sixteenth (count them) issue of Black Scat Review is out! This one is devoted to “Obsession,” and fittingly includes my translation of Alphonse Allais’s story “Little Pigs.” You can find this fine journal here, and the book from which the story was taken, Double Over, will be out soon.

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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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