
NA: Tell me
about Black Scat Books?
NC: When I was in the
eighth grade I was given detention for clowning around in class. When the
teacher left the room briefly (probably to have a smoke and calm her nerves) I
started snooping around her desk and discovered a copy of Ginsberg’s HOWL.
I started reading it and it changed my life. It was my introduction to the
Beats, which inevitably led me to the avant-garde, pataphysics, and surrealism.
I grew up amid piles of
books published by City Lights, Grove Press, Olympia (Paris), and Gaberbocchus
(London). Those are the publishers whose footsteps Black Scat tiptoes in. I
don’t think there’s anybody doing quite what I do…and that may explain why
there’s no money in it.
NA: I think that everyone should look at your
website before we talk more. You have to
see the covers and read the descriptions of the books. It’s a beautiful website. Could you provide a link?
NC: www.blackscatbooks.com
NA: Are you the sole
editor of the press?
NC:
I founded the press in July, 2012 here in the Bay Area. Artist
Farewell Debut, in NYC, was in on the ground floor, and without her support and
inspiration Scat would be a scrawny shadow of itself. Farewell and I go way
back and have indulged in various art-lit conspiracies. From time to time I
also get enlightened editorial assistance from Ryan Forsythe and Jim McMenamin.
NA: Farewell Debut? She’s a photographer? I think I saw her on the website.
NC: We published a book of
her photographs:
http://blackscatbooks.com/2013/08/19/enter/
NA: What attracts you to
absurdist texts?
NC: We live in an absurd world. This point of view, this philosophy
if you will, is a survival mechanism… a rational way of coping with the
inherent strangeness of this planet and its day to day horrors. I don’t waste
my time trying to decipher, define or make sense of things beyond
interpretation. I embrace the absurd. I dance with it. And sometimes I kick it
in the ass.
NA: How did you come up
with the title, Black Scat?
NC: It morphed from my personal blog, Le Scat Noir
(“where art & literature hit the fan”), which started out as an imaginary
newspaper with concocted stories accompanied by odd illustrations. I don’t post
there much now since Scat gobbles most of my time.
NA: What’s the origin
of the Black Scat clown logo?
I’d
love you to attach a jpeg of the logo and one or two more of your covers.
NC: I came across that face in a 19th century French
lantern catalog. I traced the image and altered it a bit to achieve the perfect
grin. The rest, as they say, is history.
NA: I just read one of
your recent books, Hotel Ortolon, by
Tom Whalen, http://blackscatbooks.com/2013/08/31/your-room-is-waiting/, which is a book of prose
poems, accompanied by dream-like photographs by Michel Varisco. The text
reminds me of a Kafka story. Tom is fantastic writer. How did you come
across Tom’s work?
NC: I’ve been a fan of Tom’s work for many years. He’s one of the
most innovative writers working today. His wicked little Doll with Chili
Pepper was the second book published in our Absurdist Texts & Documents
series.
NA: I thought maybe I should include Tom in
this interview and ask him to talk about Hotel Ortolan . . .
Tom, How did this book come about?
TW: Michel Varisco's foreword states:
"The text for Hotel Ortolan originated
in a dream of the author’s in Münster, Germany. [...] The summer after I first
read the story, I went to stay at an empty cottage owned by some friends that
was located in the Languedoc region of southern France. It was Bastille
day weekend, July 13th (my birthday), when I entered their three-story
intensely vertical house, and noticed a cemetery marker on the fireplace mantle
reading 'here lies Marcelle Marie Portal' with the date 'le 13 Juillet'. Out of
that disorienting set of circumstances and the intrigue of Tom’s writing came
the photographs."
She is right. This
is one of the rare instances when I dreamed something worth recording.
(Readers will recognize the section.) Over the next few weeks, as I
wandered around Münster in a Westphalian or perhaps Annette von
Droste-Hülshoffian daze, I would pause wherever and jot down the pieces
that eventually became the text for Hotel Ortolan.
It's Michel's
analogical faculty, her poetic eye that placed image to text so aptly and
mysteriously. (For more on her work, see www.michelvarisco.com) We both loved the project, but it took
several years (with an infamous hurricane in the middle) before we admonished
ourselves for not trying to publish it. After extensively revising some
of the sections, I suggested we submit it to Black Scat Books, in large part
because I thought the press would do her photographs (and the writing) justice.
NA: Tom, how
did it happen that you and the photographer, Michel Varisco, began to work
together?
TW: During my last three years at the New Orleans Center for
Creative Arts I was lucky enough to have Michel as a colleague. She in the art
department, I in the writing department. I liked her work and wrote a
short piece on her "Cotton Mill Series." It began, "The
rejected objects of our world have something to say to us, but we seldom hear
them." I linked her photographs to Wright Morris's "transient
ruins." Also she let me sit alone in her darkroom at the school,
which I found very therapeutic.
NA: Could
you provide an excerpt from the book?
TW: "In the room
next to mine live angels. Sometimes when I pass their room during the day
their door is partially open and I step in. They hang from the ceiling,
one in each corner, their dark wings enfolding them like the wings of
bats. Always one opens its eyes, which are as gray as the sea, and I
politely ask if there is anything I can do for them, but the angel only
shudders inside its wings and closes its eyes. I do not stay long, the
smell of the room, like that of dead birds, is too strong. I have never
seen them in the halls or outside the building. But often at night I hear
them stirring about, hear their wings thump against my wall, and their soft
moans to one another, like those of people making love." (page 27)
NA: Back to Norman, your
latest book is a Tintin book. Tintin Meets the Dragon Queen in the
Return of the Maya to Manhattan. Could you tell me about it? And
provide a link to it?
NC: Tintin is but one of many characters in this extraordinary
novel by Alain Arias-Misson. You’ll also find Captain Haddock, as well as
several characters out of ‘real life,’ i.e., the Spanish philosopher, Ignacio
Gomez de Liaño, novelist Walter Abish, and others. The adventure begins when
ghostly Maya pyramids suddenly appear in the streets of Manhattan.
Arias-Misson is a writer
who doesn’t fit into a familiar niche. He’s completely unique and quite a
character himself!
NA: If you could pick any
three authors to publish, dead or alive, who would you publish?
NC: Stefan &
Franciszka Themerson; Georges Perec; Russell Edson. Oops, that’s
four—sorry--and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Publishing translations
from the French are a particular thrill for me. I’m fortunate to have John
Crombie of Kickshaws Press (based in Paris) and Doug Skinner in my corner. John
translated a collection of microdramas by the French humorist Pierre Henri
Cami; and Doug has translated works by Isidore Isou (the founder of
Lettrism) and the great Alphonse Allais (1854-1905).
Allais, I should mention,
represents the heart and soul of Black Scat Books. He was the first writer I
published and is totally unknown in the U.S. He was hailed by Breton and
included in his seminal Anthologie de l’humour noir.
NA: How many books do you
publish per year?
NC: About 20. I’ve been
traveling all around northern California recently, so I’m doing much of my
editing in motel rooms. It’s a bit chaotic.
NA: How do you find your
authors?
NC: Most I’ve solicited
directly, although a few have arrived unannounced and knocked on my in-box. For
example, the British writer Samantha Memi was a pleasant surprise. I’ve known
Nile Southern for years and together we assembled a collection of unpublished
works by his father–Terry Southern–one of my favorite satirists.
NA: I’d love to close
with a selection from one of your books.
NC: Here’s an excerpt from TINTIN MEETS THE DRAGON QUEEN IN THE RETURN OF THE MAYA TO MANHATTAN, a
novel by Alain Arias-Misson
Augustus pivoted on
his knees and scuttled back down the Pyramid in order to intercept this
childhood hero lookalike, and even so, with his head lower than his posterior
as he hurried on the downward slope, he experienced no pull from gravity, the
inclined plane of the Pyramid's surface maintaining all the characteristics of
a horizontal. And as he caught up with the odd-looking personage below, the
latter glanced up with that perfect 0 of a face, empty except for the
pin-pricks of eyes and stubby turned-up nose and taut line of a mouth, his
expression not one of pleased recognition but of utter disbelief. Eye-contact
was brief, a shock of recognition, and he realized the young man before him
actually was the real Tintin—or better, the unreal Tintin. However real Tintin
had always appeared to him, his appearance here was out of the question—some
fraud, some masquerade. And the same dismissal of his presence was evident in
Tintin’s eyes.
Self-uneducated, Norman
Conquest dropped out of the Art Institute of Chicago and, in 1989, co-founded
the anti-censorship art collective, Beuyscouts of Amerika. He has produced
book-objects, verbo-visual multiples, mixed media, and collage. Several of his
book-objects are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art
in NYC. He is the author of many books, including the A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO ART
DECONSTRUCTION (Permeable Press), WHAT IS ART? (JEF Books), and THE
NEGLECTED WORKS OF NORMAN CONQUEST (Black Scat Books).
Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College
and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council
grants, she is the author of several books including The
Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife
Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do
You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow Nin on Twitter here.