MICHAEL BRODSKY & SUHRKRAMPF VERLAG

Dear Herr Landgrebe, et al:

Re: Michael Brodsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Brodsky

& his novel DETOUR (UMWEG):

MANUSKRIPTE:

https://tinyurl.com/y8luo42m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detour_(Brodsky_novel)

& the novella TATBESTAND https://tinyurl.com/y94rnltu

translated by Juerg Lederarsch

http://www.zeit.de/1983/38/michael-brodsky-der-tatbestand-und-seine-huelle

One of the two happiest moment in the unhappy and short life of Urizen Books

http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2011/04/short-unhappy-life-of-urizen-books.html

[the other being Sam Shepard winning the Pulitzer for BURIED CHILD] came when I opened the maroon leather satchel that the Peter Handke & Patricia Highsmith recommended Michael Brodsky left after we had chatted a bit and I took a look at the first page of the five within manuscripts and instantly knew that a writer on the order of Beckett had arrived at our doorstep & it was only a question of the order in which we would publish these five works. -And every time Handke appeared at my NY doorstep during those long ago NY days I'd be sure for the two friends to get together!
    The first book we published, DETOUR, then won the PEN Hemingway Prize and I sold it to Suhrkamp Verlag and Urizen managed to still get his WEDDING FEAST & OTHER NOVELLAS out (one of which was done by Partisan Review) and Michael went on to get the other works published by other small publishers, with Kevin Begos help and continued to write and to edit, now part time at the U.N., and has a truly big novel ​nearly completed. Not only did Suhrkamp acquire DETOUR the Swiss author and translator Juerg Laederach who became his first European backers translated the novella TATBESTAND and Suhrkamp published it.

Recently Michael and I, who now living three thousand miles apart have managed to reconnect and discovered that Suhrkrampf never actually published Detour, there is only a German Amazon claim that UMWEG exists as published by Suhrkampf and two isbn numbers as though a simultaneous hard and soft cover edition had been announced. Neither Michael nor I ever were informed of its non-publication, but for an excerpt of the translation published in Kolleritsch’s MANUSKRIPTE; no

copies or statements for EITHER the published TATBESTAND or the unpublished UMWEG, but after numerous e-mails Suhrkamp finally had their

„Webeditor” reply:

„Dear Sirs,

your inquiry below was handed on to our department. Following your questions on a German edition of „Detour“ we would like to clarifiy that there is not, and never has been, an edition of that book published by Suhrkamp. It is therefore untrue that this book is or ever has been deliverable via Amazon. Amazon does gather all available data from archives to display as much data as possible. We can only speculate that for displaying the title of the book Amazon used very old data from a time ( ca. 40 years ago) when Suhrkamp indeed initially had planned to publish this book. However, Suhrkamp never did.

With best wishes,

Suhrkamp Verlag.”

Since Suhrkamp never informed the author, nor me as his editor and publisher, albeit of the now defunct Urizen, that they did not publish, we were left under the impression that the German language right to the title still resided with Suhrkamp which in fact would have reverted to the author many years ago, question being only how pre-publication of parts of the book in MANUSKRIPTE is to be interpreted, and to be accounted. In our view the

the German copyright has been severely damaged as well as the book’s ability to earn during these many years; what is the market value of the damage that Suhrkamp have caused? Why have their been no statements, no contract for TATBESTAND? Is the translator Juer Laederach to responsible????

Michael Roloff

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