I thank you for the beautiful book[1] that you have sent me, and also for the translation of your historical notes concerning the Situationist International. These notes are very exact. I do not know if they will greatly clarify a book that is truly difficult, coming so far away in space and time. I think that a book of this kind is more easily explained by subsequent events. I believe that you think so, too, since you asked me for a preface. I have exactly made a preface[2] for Gallimard that concerns the principal event that appears to me to confirm the critique of modern capitalism: the dissolution of the power of the bureaucratic class in Russia.
I am about to finish a book that I will send to you: "Cette mauvaise reputation . . ." It is the examination of the most significant parts of the polemic directed against me by the media[3] in France in the last five years. I respond in it, and it is an occasion to speak in more detail about the catastrophic situation in which I believe the rest of the world has arrived.
Alice [Becker-Ho] was happy that you are interested in her discoveries concerning argot. She has pursued her research quite far, and you will receive the sequel to her first book sometime in the spring.
Quite amicably to you,[1] The first Japanese edition of The Society of the Spectacle.
[2] Translator's note: the "Foreword" to the third French edition of The Society of the Spectacle.
[3] Translator's note: English in original.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2009. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)