“Raymond Roussel Has an Idea”

 

© Norman Conquest

A star is born . . .

 

Rectified Readymade (2104)

The GOP War on Women

Black Scat Review #6

BLACK SCAT REVIEW features innovative fiction, art, interviews, and works in translation.

In this issue: Nin Andrews, Emily June Brink, Eckhard Gerdes, Michelle Gray, Judson Hamilton, Sarah Katharina Kayß, Adam Miller, Ivan de Monbrison, Jules Moy, Opal Louis Nations, Doug Skinner, Brett Stout,Joanna C. Valente, and Sayuri Yamada. PLUS an extensive interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky on the release of The Placebo Effect Trilogy.

Full color book format — 78 pages — Perfect-bound ($18.00).

Also available in a digital edition ($5.00).

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Little “Lulita”

from the "Unknown Lulu" series (excerpted from NORMAN CONQUEST'S ILLUSTRATED WORLD.)

Happy Nude Year!

Don’t Worry, It’s Only Ten Bucks

My little chapbook. Don’t Worry, It’s Not About Hats, is back in stock in a second printing. The murky brown cover of the first edition (see below) may have given the impression that the book was in poor taste and possibly offensive. Hopefully the new version will seduce the general public into purchasing it.

Hell, it’s only $10.

Feel free to order multiple copies here.

Peppo Poster

CHECK IN

 

Taking a step back and trying to be objective, Hotel Ortolan reminds me of those early paperbacks published by City Lights… little gems like A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard  and True Minds. Or, perhaps, Breton’s illustrated novel Nadja published by Grove Press. Certainly Michel Varisco’s photographs are equally haunting.

Ortolan is the sort of slender surrealist volume one dreams of encountering at a bookshop in Paris. The door on the cover dares you to enter. And, of course, you do. You open that forbidding door, step inside and then…well, it’s too late. Whalen’s words are in your bloodstream. The book is destined to be  displayed face out on one’s bookshelf, or even under glass. It’s surely not an edition one loans to a friend, as it will never be returned. It won’t find itself in a box at a yard sale in Greenwich, or at the Salvation Army in Sacramento. Maybe, just maybe, a copy will appear in the bin outside Strand in NYC, but only because it arrived from an estate sale and was mistakenly sorted by an ignorant temp.

Limited to only 125 copies, it’s already imbued with the aura of an avant-garde classic that collectors will search for without success.

“Ever seen a copy of Whalen’s Ortolan?”

Here’s your chance, only 75 copies remaining.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Spread the urge…..

LINK

BE FAMOUS LIKE ME

from ART (IS) FOR IMBECILES by Norman Conquest

ART FORUM

from ART (IS) FOR IMBECILES by Norman Conquest

Think BLINK!

An eye-opening new book by artist Farewell Debut is available from Black Scat Books.
LINK TO DETAILS

DRAC ON HUFF

My cover for Dracula was one of the designs featured on Huffington Post at the link below:\

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/classic-book-covers-reinv_n_3333212.html

BOAR on the floor…

A posthumous collaboration with grand master Terry Southern has just launched over on Black Scat Books—HOT HEART OF BOAR & OTHER TASTES. I was honored to  illustrate the edition with eight collages. However, the lovely front cover image featuring Hermann Göring was done by Terry to accompany his unproduced screenplay, The Hunters of Karinhall—an excerpt of which leads off the collection and is where I discovered the book’s title.

I had intended to post a few of the pictures here, but decided they’re not suitable for a family blog such as this. Thus—if you’re morbidly curious—you’ll have to buy a copy to see them. But even without the illustrations, BOAR is worth owning since nothing can match Southern’s brand of satire.

The edition is limited to 125 copies and includes illuminating introductory texts by Nile Southern.

You can order a copy here.

I’ve been fortunate enough to illustrate two books by Southern—the other being Puritan Porn, which was published in 2007 by Paul Rosheim’s exquisite press, Obscure Publications.

It’s certainly rare to have been blessed with two opportunities to have my name attached to books by my idol. And for this I’m forever grateful to Terry’s son.

Thank you, Nile!

“You have been replaced…”

Yes, even you can do it here

What can I say? Scat happens.

Yes, Virginia, it’s ART OFFICIAL

© 2013 by Norman Conquest

More Cover Stories

Readers of this blog (yes, I mean both of you) undoubtedly know that I love book covers. I also love designing them. And I devote a fair amount of time creating covers for Black Scat Books. That’s about twenty covers, I think. I also design for other publishers. For example, I did quite a few for Paul Rosheim’s press, Obscure Publications, with my favorite being for Terry Southern’s PURITAN PORN.

_{A simple design that gets right to the point, so to speak.}
And speaking of simplicity, my cover for Erik Belgum’s COLLECTED STORT SHORIES is truly minimalist.


My cover for the forthcoming issue of FICTION INTERNATIONAL is another personal favorite. I’ve done a bunch of FI covers over the years, and one with a Beuyscout motif turned out to be one of their biggest sellers. Of course that may have been due to that issue’s contributors. Here’s an advance peek at #46.



Took my first crack at designing uniform covers for a trilogy of novels by Yuriy Tarnawsky for JEF Books..

I just completed the design for a reissue of Harold Jaffe’s PARIS 60. The book is loosely based on Baudelaire’s PARIS SPLEEN, so it seemed appropriate to use the poet’s eye.



This is one of the very few covers I’ve done in black and white.
It has the feel of the old New Directions paperbacks I was reared on, like this edition of Rimbaud’s ILLUMINATIONS.



My aesthetic usually tends toward retro and, thus, my designs rarely go out of fashion.

First Issue

Contributors include: Alphonse Allais, Elizabeth Archer, Florence Bocherel, Pierre Henri Cami, Pedro Carolino, John Crombie, S. N. Jacobson. Crad Kilodney, Michael Leigh, Samantha Memi, Doug Skinner, Yuriy Tarnawsky, and Tom Whalen. The issue includes an interview with Samantha Memi, author of Kate Moss & Other Heroines.

Cover photo by S. N. Jacobson

CLICK HERE to order a copy.

New Images & Books

I have several images in the current issue of LITnIMAGE.

Also, three recent books are available:

The Neglected Works of Norman Conquest

What is Art?

Snowdrop in Africa

The latter appears in the Absurdist Texts & Documents series from Black Scat Books, and is an oulipian tale created under rigorous constraints. Call it literary bondage.