Dear Norm:

Our three senior editors in London and NY, having read the book, are all in agreement that as written its incoherent and unpublishable. As a critique, it’s ineffective. Having read half of it, that is also my own view. It’s too ad hominem and too zany even for you. To be published it would have to be heavily edited or completely re-written. I don’t like writing this, but it is for your own good. We have been proud to publish you and have defended you strongly as has Colin both during his Verso days and later at OR Books. Please don’t throw a tantrum and get tempted by self-publishing. That would be very sad and ineffective. I would just re-think the project (whatever it is) and start afresh.

Many of your books are so methodical and precise—forensic in explaining an opponent’s thought and a devastating deconstruction– that we were all a bit taken aback by this one. It’s almost as if you’ve paralysed yourself. This does sometimes happen. Some successful authors once feted and acclaimed allow these vapours to lodge permanently in the brain and imagine that henceforth anything they write is automatically good. This is never the case. Please think again.

Tariq

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