With some perplexity I have seen the forms that you have recently addressed to me, for an affiliation with the coffers of the old-age pensions of the C.A.V.M.U. and for which it is necessary for me to provide you with a "reconstruction of career," a checklist of my activities or my "liberal professional revenues" from 1954 or 1960.
My familial origin, my lack of taste for all careers, etc. have entailed for me neither the obligation nor the desire to devote myself to any kind of work, neither salaried nor any other kind of lucrative activity.
Thus I do not conceive how I can be linked to a socio-economic sector from which I have withdrawn.
Despite forty-two years of idleness, I have nevertheless written a book and, in 1973, I actually realized a cinematic realization of it, according to the contract with Simar Films that you have evoked.
If such participation in what one can consider as the exercise of eminently liberal arts implies, in these days, the legal obligation to enroll in a "retirement fund," and precisely with the C.A.V.M.U., I would beg you to address to me the anticipated forms for people in my particular actegory.
Until the end of the year, you can address all correspondence to the address indicated at the head of this letter.[2]
I ask you, Sirs, to accept my distinguished salutations.
Guy Debord
[1] Translator's note: Caisse d' Allocation Viellesse des professeurs de Musique.
[2] Via delle Caldaie, 28, 50125, Firenze (Italy).
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)