{"product_id":"at-the-blue-monkey-33-outlandish-stories-9781939663467","title":"At the Blue Monkey: 33 Outlandish Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eWalter Serner's first story collection, published in German in 1921, brought to narrative form the philosophy of his earlier Dada manifesto\/handbook, \u003ci\u003eLast Loosening: A Handbook for the Con Artist \u0026amp; Those Who Wish to Be One\u003c\/i\u003e--life is a con job and demands the skills of a swindler. With its depiction of a world of appearances in which nothing can be trusted, \u003ci\u003eAt the Blue Monkey\u003c\/i\u003e helped establish the ex-doctor and renounced Dadaist as a literary \"Maupaussant of crime\" and offers in this first English translation 33 stories of criminals, con artists and prostitutes engaged in varieties of financial insolvency, embezzlement, sexual hijinks, long and short cons, and dalliances with venereal diseases and drugs. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTold in a baroque, sometimes baffling poetry of underworld slang in an urban world of bars and rent-a-rooms, these short tales are presented to the reader like so many three-card Montes in which readers come to realize too late that they may well themselves be the literary mark. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eWalter Serner\u003c\/b\u003e (1889-1942) helped found the Dada movement and embodied its most cynical and anarchic aspects. After breaking with the movement, he began publishing crime stories and the 1925 novel \u003ci\u003eThe Tigress\u003c\/i\u003e. Moving constantly across Europe, he eventually disappeared and was rumored to have vanished into the criminal milieu he wrote about; in fact he had returned to Czechoslovakia, married and become a schoolteacher. In 1942, he and his wife presumably died after being moved from a concentration camp, his books banned and burned by the Nazis.--Pat Padua \"Spectrum Culture\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Wakefield Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/18\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781939663467\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.00h x 5.40w x 0.60d","brand":"Walter Serner","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36671424626844,"sku":"9781939663467","price":13.56,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_0dd43f44-ffee-4605-a5ae-f0409e8d33fd.jpg?v=1603925353","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/at-the-blue-monkey-33-outlandish-stories-9781939663467","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}