I was very happy to receive your letter and the stimulating literature that accompanied it.
I have not forgotten anything of our amiable youth,[1] although it was a little excessive. I remember quite remarkable and well-remarked drinking parties, on the Coast, with Marcel[2] and you. And each time I cite what the scholars of today pompously call Sophia-Antipolis, I am instantly reminded of our beautiful team in Valbonne.
I understand your attachment to secularity, in which one learns to think and even to read freely. You had to be sorrowful when Comrade Jospin put his feet upon the chador.[3] From the moment that general ideas are lost, there is not a miniscule detail that is not capable of providing the occasion to commit errors with immense consequences.
I also do not like Sollers,[4] without knowing him, fortunately. Furthermore, I am far from being an enemy of old Bordeaux [wines], the banks of the Rhone, of the Bandol, and even authentic Beaujolais: but you understand that one cannot say everything.[5] The reader believes in the procedure and feels the sincerity to a lesser extent.
For several years now I have indeed passed the winter and spring in the town of Arles. But I have never advanced further than Marseille and Aix, and only rarely. I especially like to go to Camargue. These days I mostly live in Paris. If you tell me a little in advance the next time that you will be here, I will invite you to lunch or dinner, according to what suits you.
Affectionately, your old friend[1] In Cannes.
[2] Marcel Chiron.
[3] Rene Basse was a member of the Socialist Party. [Translator's note: Lionel Jospin was a former Trotskyist who joined the Socialists in the early 1970s.]
[4] Phillipe Sollers, who praised Guy Debord's style of writing all through the late 1980s and 1990s.
[5] Translator's note: in the chapter of Panegyric devoted to alcoholic beverages.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! December 2008. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)