tariq ali (attn mark s)

Stuff by Ziauddin Sardar is always thoughtful.

Calabrity? Presumably that's a celebrity who brings calamity. 'Ooh, Rudi Dutchke was in my flat and he broke the shower head and clooged the drain with shed head hair and now the squat downstairs hates our guts...'

: - D

Does anyone have a history of verso books, like a piece I could read on the publisher? I thought of them as very crusty left (Tariq Ali, which I guess was new left) but over the years they are publishing a lot of really great sounding books on sex work, borders, etc. and they have just established an union too.

No history, but in a nutshell: interesting start, but became thoroughly assimilated into the Spectacular Commodity Economy, then in the 2000s derailed after contact with long-standing wider ilx members led to a disastrous adoption of a ‘poptimism’ approach to critical theory.

^^disclaimer: the above may be completely untrue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veBduK_2dR8

might be useful? Haven't watched it myself. When I hear people talk about who's in charge Sebastian Budgen is usually the name that comes up, who is, if not crusty, still more of a traditional Marxist than some of their more high-profile recent titles might suggest. I guess he gives the younger editorial crew some freedom with their choices.

That establishing the union took so long and faced such resistance got me wondering who exactly was doing that pushback. Tariq Ali, union buster??

idk what Tariq's involvement with Verso would be nowdays.

I will try and watch that later this week.

lol didn't verso finally just unionise after a long struggle with management = posh-boy tariq?

i like TA's gossipy tales of upper-level politics in pakistan (where he has good family connections)

i actually did know the answer to marcello's 2004 question abt his book but of course *he* no longer reads the boards = the person who had shown an interest in it had subsquently quit (i don't recall why tho ii'm not inclined to give verso the benefit of the doubt tbh)

Coming out from long dormancy and lurking. I'd interned in Verso's NY office and can share that Tariq had been involved in monthly editorial meetings and had some occasional involvement but was very hands off in the day to day. Sebastian is a kind of crusty Trot (depending on how you define crustiness) but he's only one of several acquiring editors there - he primarily covers their more theoretical interventions, translations from FR/IT/DE, etc.

They've got a great core of other editors as well who have been drawing in other younger writers and broadening their purview (which he, as far as I know, has been generally supportive of, even if he remains crusty).

I had no idea about the long drawn out path to unionization (just catching up now) and am genuinely surprised given what I'd known about how they'd managed the company and the, at the time, very generous (by US standards) labour conditions/contracts were. They'd seemed to walk the walk then and I'm having trouble thinking about where the resistance to unionization would have come from. Will have to look into it more deeply.

Some good historical anecdotes on the NLR/Verso in this great profile on Mike Davis by Adam Shatz. Verso evolved out of "New Left Books", the one time publishing arm of the journal - http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9709/davis.html

I feel TA has the least interesting 60s anecdotes of the various London underground papers:

Frendz - we introduced the alleged IRA gun runner Jim McCann to the hash smuggler Howard Marks, and they then formed a notorious long-term partnership that was later made into books, a film etc. Nick Kent reviewed albums.

IT - we were raided by the Police for obscenity because we carried gay lonely hearts small ads; we held famous fund raising events at the Roundhouse, and at Alexandra Palace ("the 24 Technicolour Dream") where Pink Floyd and other bands played

Black Dwarf - visiting radicals slept on sleeping bags under the desks and painted molotov cocktails on the office walls. It was a riot!