Thank you for the good news. I will thus schedule the reading of these two books among my work for the first semester of 1987.
It is very good that X[1] writes a book about Chernobyl.[2] The experience goes much further beyond that of Three Mile Island:[3]
1) it scientifically guarantees a follow-up almost anywhere;
2) the Chernobyl disaster is itself far from reaching its end;
3) one can already vaguely measure the extent of the destruction of all kinds, the fabulous economic cost of the affair;
4) at the moment, what most distresses the economists-nuclearists of the world, and especially in France, is the concomitant irrationality of the drop in the price of oil, the most unfortunate of the unforeseen misfortunes in their programming!
4) finally, can one not hope that the next Russian revolution will find one of its harbingers in this frightening demonstration of the competence of the tyrant?[4] Finally, Poland will be avenged. . . .
Floriana has sent me the prospectus for the most recent work by Atlas,[5] but not the pamphlet. Can you find a copy for me?
As far as the rotten Slavists,[6] I have advised Floriana [Lebovici] to not respond to this riffraff (and to ask you what they are exactly). We see them clearly. I have already found the text of 24 June[7] to be as ignoble and provoking as that which they claim to denounce. Which is addressed, I believe, to the "spiritual inheritors" of Gerard [Lebovici], beginning with the strange formula: "Madame, Monsieur." Madame is quite naturally addressed to Floriana. But to whom is this "Monsieur" addressed? This has not pleased me and I hope that I can make them feel that in one fashion or another.
I do not know how to be a Lukacsian[8] (but Mulligan[9] does), nor the inspirer of Tapie:[10] perhaps through the mediation of [Jacques] Attali?
This Raufer[11] truly speaks like dust: ultima ratio regis.[12] One recognizes the expert.
See you soon. Best wishes,[1] Translator's note: this would appear to be Jean-Pierre Baudet, who -- in protest against the fact that Editions Fayard/Alice Debord did not include in Correspondance any of the letters addressed to Guy Debord, thereby "presenting the interlocutors of Mr Debord as reduced to mutism, and incapable of having inspired, nourished or contradicted what he expressed in his own letters" -- demanded on 5 April 2006 that Editions Fayard/Alice Debord not include any of the letters that Debord addressed to him between 1985 and 1989. Not only did they comply, but they also replaced any reference to "Jean-Pierre Baudet" with the letter X.
[2] Chernobyl: Anatomy of a Cloud would be published anonymously by Editions Gerard Lebovici in 1987.
[3] Accident at Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) on 28 March 1979, nuclear reactor #2, put into service in December 1978.
[4] Translator's note: a truly remarkable prophecy: within six years, the "Communist" regimes in the USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia et al would "suddenly" collapse.
[5] Autopsy of the 20th Century by Anatole Atlas.
[6] "The Friends of Boris and Ossip," the two authors of Remonstrances and rectifications addressed to a Parisian publisher, on the usage of those who present themselves as the "party of the truth."
[7] Cousu de fil blanc. [Translator's note: literally "a bent white wire," this phrase means an obvious or transparent dissimulation.]
[8] According to Andre Trillaud, in The Secrets of Form.
[9] Buck Mulligan, in La Nouvelle Gazette rhenane #301.
[10] Bernard Tapie, accused by Anatole Atlas -- in an interruption of a televised broadcast -- of having plagiarized The Society of the Spectacle in his book To Win, without citing the author.
[11] Xavier Raufer. [Translator's note: this footnote goes on to refer the reader to footnote #9 attached to the letter dated 18 January 1981, but that note concerns Francis Romanetti. Xavier Raufer is in fact a criminologist who, according to his own web site, "has been interested in political and social violence, terrorism, organized crime, etc. since 1975."]
[12] Last argument of the king.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 6: Janvier 1979-Decembre 1987 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2006. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)