I never expected to write so many literary translations. They keep adding up, however. Here’s a list, arranged by author, of both books and shorter pieces, for anyone who’s curious.

Albert-Birot, Pierre: “Four Poems” (Typo 2, 2023)

Allais, Alphonse: Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks (Black Scat, 2013)
Selected Plays (Black Scat, 2014)
The Squadron’s Umbrella (Black Scat, 2015)
The Blaireau Affair (Black Scat, 2015)
Double Over (Black Scat, 2016)
I Am Sarcey (Black Scat, 2017)
Long Live Life! (Black Scat, 2017)
No Bile! (Black Scat, 2018)
Pink and Apple-Green (Black Scat, 2020)
2 + 2 = 5 (Black Scat, 2021)
Loves, Delights, and Organs (Black Scat, 2022)
Let’s Not Hit Each Other (Black Scat, 2023)
We Are Not Sheep (Black Scat, 2023)

Apollinaire, Guillaume: “Introduction” (The Zombie of Great Peru, Black Scat, 2015)
“Victory” (Typo 2, 2023)

Auriol, George: “A Little Semi-Hieroglyphic Tale” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Bertrand, Aloysius: “Instructions to the Typesetter” (Typo 3, 2023)

Blessebois, Pierre-Corneille: The Zombie of Great-Peru (Black Scat, 2015)

Cami, Pierre: “The Man in the Iron Mask” (Black Scat Review 1, 2012)

Caradec, François: “Absinthes” (Black Scat Review 3, 2013)

Casanova de Seingalt, Giacomo: “English Etiquette” (from Histoire de ma vie) (Black Scat Review 25, 2022)

Courteline, Georges: “A Stubborn Case of Constipation” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Crépiat, Caroline: Le Chat Noir Exposed (Black Scat, 2021)

Cros, Charles: “Song of the Sculptors” (Black Scat Review 18, 2019)
Collected Monologues (Black Scat, 2018)
Upside-Down Stories (with Émile Goudeau) (Black Scat, 2019)
Principles of Cerebral Mechanics (Wakefield Press, 2021)
The Science of Love (Wakefield Press, 2024)

Descaves, Lucien: The Rat Wins! (Black Scat, 2024)

Donneau de Visé, Jean: “The Noble Apothecary” (Black Scat Review 25, 2022)

Farnoux-Reynaud, Lucien: The Cocktail Hour (with Marcel Requien) (Corps Reviver, 2017, with Gaylor Olivier)

Forneret, Xavier: “It’s — A Dream” and “Selection from Dreams” (Strange Attractor Journal 3, 2006)

Gautier, Théophile: A Filthy Letter: Letter to La Présidente. (Black Scat, 2024)

Gill, André: “The Anderlique of Landerneau” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Goudeau, Émile: Upside-Down Stories (with Charles Cros) (Black Scat, 2019)

Haraucourt, Edmond: “Philosophy: A Shameful Sonnet” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Hyspa, Vincent: “The Flatulist: A Song Without Music” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Isou, Isidore: Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara (Black Scat, 2012)

Jarry, Alfred: “Mobilization of Tourists” and “Hanging” (Le Scat Noir 225, 2017)
The Pope’s Mustard-Maker (Black Scat, 2019)

Jouy, Jules: “The Functionaries” (Black Scat Review 18, 2019)
“The Little Shits’ Journal” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

La Fontaine, Jean de: “The Glutton,” “The Farmer Who Had Lost His Calf,” and “Sister Joan” (The Doug Skinner Dossier, Black Scat, 2015)

Lautrec, Gabriel de: “Cubist Tale” (Typo 4, Black Scat, 2024)

MacNab, Maurice: “The Clyster-Pump” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Masson, Armand: “The Eye” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Mirbeau, Octave:”The Fugitive Cucumber” and “Explosive and Ambulatory” (extra stories in Allais’s 2 + 2 = 5) (Black Scat, 2021)

Moy, Jules: “The Unicolorist” (Black Scat Review 4, 2016)

Nazari, Giovanni Battista: Three Dreams: On the Transmutation of Metals (Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, 2002)

Palatino, Giambattista: “Squared Ciphers” (Typo 1, 2022)

Queneau, Raymond: “Lipogram” (Le Scat Noir 227, 2017)
“The Statue People on the Lawn” and “Place de la Bastille” (Black Scat Review 23, 2021)

Renard, Jules: “Alphonse Allais Gives a Talk” (Black Scat Review 3, 2013)

Requien, Marcel: The Cocktail Hour (with Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud) (Corps Reviver, 2017, with Gaylor Olivier)

Rimbaud, Arthur: “The Accursed Cherub” (Merde à la Belle Èpoque, Black Scat, 2022)

Roussel, Raymond: “Travels with Raymond” (sentences accompanying images by Derek Pell, Typo 3, 2023)

Russolo, Luigi: The Art of Noises (Black Scat, 2022)

Salis, Rodolphe: “Messire Satanas in the Colickie Comfit-Box” (Merde à la Belle Époque, Black Scat, 2022)

Satie, Erik: “A Letter to Conrad Satie” (Merde à la Belle Époque, 2022)

Tabarin: “The Louis XIII Jokeshop” (Typo 5, 2024)

Tailhade, Laurent: “Hydrotherapy” (Black Scat Review 18, 2019)

Taunay, Corinne: Marcel Duchamp: Paris Air in New York (Black Scat, 2022)

Verne, Jules: “To Morphine” (The Doug Skinner Dossier, Black Scat, 2015)

TYPO 2 is now out and ready to be read!

This sporadic periodical calls itself a “Journal of Lettrism, Surrealist Semantics, and Constrained Design.” I contributed brief articles on alien alphabets and the principles of double talk, the score for my musical transcription of “lorem ipsum dolor,” and translations of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Albert-Birot, and Gaston de Pawlowski, The editor and designer is Norman Conquest (aka Derek Pell); the other contributors are Mark Axelrod-Sokolov, Tom Barrett, Allan Bealy, Miggs Burroughs, Jahan Cader, Janina Ciezadlo, Farewell Debut, R J Dent, Karen Eliot, Paul Éluard, Paul Forristal, Ryan Forsythe, Jesse Glass, Rick Henry, Rhys Hughes, Rory Hughes, Alfred Jarry, Richard Koman, Márton Koppány, Amy Kurman, Peter F. Murphy, Pata-No UN LTD, Harry Polkinhorn, Tom Prime, Jason E. Rolfe, Ded Rysel, Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, Félix Vallotton, Andrew C. Wenaus, Adolphe Willette, Carla Wilson, and William Wordsworth.

Available, like so many things, on Amazon.

An Afternoon in the Arboretum is now available on Bandcamp! This album contains solely instrumental music, mostly for keyboard, from as early as 1976 to as late as 2022. All selections were composed and performed by Doug Skinner, and recorded and mixed by Brian Dewan:

An Afternoon in the Arboretum (2020)
Radio Valentine (1976)
Ulterior Misgivings (2020)
Twinge (2021)
Stint (2012)
Nocturne (2012)
The Gateway to the Getaway (2022)
Aftermath (2020)
Spillover (2017)
Gilding the Pyrite (2001)
Under the Weather (1983)
A Slot Machine for Wooden Nickels (2022)
On a Theme by Lewis Carroll (1994)
Lorem Ipsum Dolor (2010)

Let’s Not Hit Each Other is now available from Black Scat Books!

This collection by the incomparable Alphonse Allais includes a flying whale, an inflatable colonel, telepathic snails, a summer crime, the insularization of France, missionary parrots, an amphibious herring, twin cousins, and proposals for billboard dogs, deodorized urine, calming the sea with varnish, and crossing the English Channel with swings. You will also meet Mr. Fish, who travels with capsules of American air, presaging Duchamp’s “Paris Air” by decades. This is the first English translation of this remarkable volume, first published in 1900.

Translated, annotated, and introduced by Doug Skinner, and designed by Norman Conquest. This edition includes an original portrait of Allais by Corinne Taunay.

A piano piece, all in the middle octave of the keyboard: G3 to G4, extended briefly to F#3 to G#4 every ninth measure.

In this song from “Doug and Mike’s Adult Entertainment,” I gave the recipe for our signature cocktail, the Gibsonetto, while Michael Smith followed the directions. It was a Gibson made with Amaretto instead of gin; in the puppet show that followed, Doug and Mike explained to their horrified guests that “it’s really not that sweet.”

An alphabet that’s both categorical and musical.

HORN

Alphorn
Bullhorn
Car Horn
Drinking Horn
English Horn
French Horn
Greenhorn
Horn
Inkhorn
Jawhorn
Krummhorn
Leghorn
Matterhorn
New Horn
Old Horn
Pronghorn
Quadruple Horn
Ramshorn
Stinkhorn
Tinhorn
Überhorn
Valve Horn
Waldhorn
Xanthohorn
Yak Horn
Zink

Corinne Taunay’s chapbook Marcel Duchamp: Paris Air in New York, in my translation, is displayed in the window of Les Ateliers du Tayrac in Paris, on the occasion of her show of portraits of artists and writers. It’s small, but you can see it at the bottom of the left window, if you click on the photo for a larger image.