This morning I sent you the dummy for our cover.[1] I hope that you will have the time to occupy yourself with it before departing.
The map is good. The principal modifications with respect to the preceding one resides in the enlargement of the field and in the deplorable notation of a mass of bus lines in the city's outskirts, which no doubt means that Paris was no longer intra muros.[2] The new map will not fit into the centering. Thus, I have chosen (using the Junius-Jomini format as a reference and supposing a length of around 300 pages) the precise delimitation of the center of Paris, so as to compose the image as follows: the front cover, the binding and the back cover. In case it is necessary to float the image a little, one must consider as the ne varietur[3] limit the bottom and the right side of the image (the south and the east), while one could possibly shrink or enlarge it a few millimeters on the north and west edges).
Do you think that we could get a better image (because one desires the maximum legibility) by re-photographing the original, focusing on the center or, rather, during the developing stage, stretching it out a bit but including the entire negative, with the least space surrounding it?
Concerning what will be printed on top, black seems necessary. Boldface and thick characters (like those of Jomini). I have marked where they would be placed. One can envision three groups of type:
1) the largest, for the title on the front cover;
2) smaller, for the title on the binding and my name on the front cover; and
3) even smaller, for my name on the binding.
As I do not like the small letters that Jomini uses, we should limit them to the first name (uy).
The numerals in the dates, centered and in a suitable size, must come below the stations "Chemin-Vert" and "Breguet," and above "Bastille." I believe that this will be legible enough and beautiful in its way.
I attach a copy of the complete text to print on the first flap.[4]
See you Friday. Best wishes,P.S. See how one dies quickly in Italy after Moro![5]
In the cinema, Debord has always proposed to do nothing that one has already done, and to do everything that one has not already done. Over the course of a period of twenty-five years, each of his films -- conceived so as to aggravate his situation -- has confirmed this detestable ambition.
One knows that, since the destruction of art itself, followed by the promotion of any individual of good will to the status of small cultural bureaucrat, society no longer counts its "accursed artists."[6] The negative having been, in the cinema, even less attempted in the cinema than everywhere else, perhaps there never would have been an accursed filmmaker if Debord had not made films. The world has responded to his excesses by considering him to be perfectly insignificant.
[1] The cover of Complete Cinematographic Works.
[2] Translator's note: Latin for "within the walls."
[3] Translator's note: Latin for "it must not be altered."
[4] See below.
[5] Jean-Paul I, elected Pope on 26 August 1978, died suddenly on 28 September, after reigning for 33 days.
[6] Translator's note: See Asger Jorn's text, "Guy Debord and the Problem of the Accursed," which appeared in Contre le Cinema (1964).
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! April 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)