PRE-ORDER: MEL GORDON'S CABARETS OF DEATH
Hello there, hope all's well,
We're delighted to announce that pre-orders are now open for Cabarets Of Death: Dance, Death, And Dining In Early Twentieth Century Paris, a new book by the late, great writer, critic, and director, Mel Gordon.
Fans and enthusiasts of strange culture will need no introduction to
Gordon's work, his visually rich archival surveys Voluptuous Panic:
the Erotic World of Weimar Berlin and Horizontal Collaboration:
The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 are now cult classics in their
own right.
So it is with great pleasure and pride that we're
publishing Cabarets Of Death, Gordon's
final book, with the editorial guidance of his friend and collaborator,
Morbid Anatomy's Joanna
Ebenstein.
Available in both a standard paperback edition and a limited edition (300) hardback with postcards and enamel Cabaret Du Néant skull and crossbones badge, the initial 500 copies bought from SAP will include a facsimile postcard adapted from Gordon's collection.
Cabarets Of Death
Dance, Death, And Dining In Early Twentieth Century Paris
By Mel Gordon
Edited by Joanna Ebenstein
216mm x 171mm
PB 180pp
ISBN: 978-1-913689-2-69
£25 / £35
From 1892 until 1954, three cabaret restaurants in the Montmartre district of Paris captivated tourists with their grotesque portrayals of death in the afterworlds of Hell, Heaven, and Nothingness. Each offered specialized cuisines and morbid visual displays featuring flashes of nudity and shocking optical illusions.
These cabarets were considered the most curious and controversial amusements in the city, and graphic postcards of their startling spectacles and otherworldly interiors became their own sensational currency.
Cabarets of Death documents the dinner shows, bizarre character interactions, and theatrical goings on in these unique establishments. Presenting original images and drawings from contemporary journals, postcards, tourist brochures, and menus, the late cultural historian Mel Gordon leads a tour of these idiosyncratically macabre institutions, and grants us unique access to a form of popular spectacle now long departed.