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Louis wrote: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/protest-tea-victoria- lomaskos-other-russias/ I reviewed the book as well: https://louisproyect.org/2017/02/26/other-russias/ ______ Since I imagine that Marxism still has something to do with labor and how the "help" get treated, I'm going to risk Louis's wrath and reproduce here the comment I made under his review of the book, as published on his blog in late February. Nothing has changed for the better since then. If anything, things have gotten worse. I engaged an attorney in New York to help me mediate my grievances with n+1. Since n+1 have a hit on their hands, they seem less interested than ever in remedying in any way the very sharp practices I described in February. I still haven't even received the three copies of the book owed me under the contract, whose only interesting clause, for n+1, was using the 120-day window they had to sell the foreign rights to Penguin UK, who are, allegedly, publishing the book in Brexitlandia this month. I doubt very much whether I'll make any money off that deal, although I hold the copyright on the translation, a copyright that seems well nigh worthless, as does my five years of work translating and promoting an artist who seems more concerned with making an impression on the Sasha Razors of the world, as the reviewer styles herself both on LARB and the UCLA Slavic dept. website: http://slavic.ucla.edu/person/sasha-razor _______________________ It’s really too bad, Louis, that you unfriended me on Facebook. If you hadn’t, you would have heard about the serious problems I’ve been having with n+1 and this book. Of course, the book itself is worth people’s time and money, but I’ve been so badly mistreated by n+1, in quite specific contractual terms and more generally, that I’m considering taking legal action against them. You might have noticed that I’m not identified on the cover. Now look at the cover of KM’s book and notice that they managed to squeeze the names of all four translators onto the cover. As translator, I also had the final say on the text per our written and signed agreement. But now I’ve discovered, after looking through a .pdf preprint of the finished book, that n+1’s editors kept on editing the book after I’d submitted my final edit, making substantial changes to the text. Finally, they supposedly have already sold the UK rights to Random House Penguin UK for a song. If the deal, as it has been described to me, goes through, I’ll make a whopping 500 pounds to go with the stunning $1,000 flat free I finally got from n+1 the other day. Finally, I had to cancel my participation in the promo tour after the author essentially shanghaied me into signing off on the highway robbery pact with Penguin UK. She said everything bad about me she could think of, but that mattered less than her strange conviction, quite common among certain Russians and certain leftists, that translating isn’t real work, but some kind of queer hobby, and we had no business negotiating with Penguin UK for a fairer deal, which was all I had asked her to do. So again, while I would not discourage anyone from buying and reading this book, I would also encourage them to ask n+1’s people, if they are present at any of the events, to explain why they have had to go out of their way to treat the book’s translator in such a manifestly unfair way, and how their abusive labor practices jibe with their allegedly leftist convictions. Yours, Tom Campbell _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
