This strange X[2] wants to support his bad pleasantry with one that is serious and even worse. He [now] adds the excessive. Pathetically, he says that "the evidence" shows that he cannot present Anders[3] to a publisher. But I, who am not a publisher, have not said this (it was last year that he tried).
He says that valuable arguments would be better than a tone of contemptuous assurance when one wants to express what one thinks of an author. Certainly. But why must I argue with respect to accessible fragments from an author about whom I am indifferent? Why did he recently ask me via [Jean-Francois] Martos[4] what I think of his summary, which I had not even read (with this stupid provocation, Martos will thus have spoken with me for the last time).
He [Baudet] says it would be necessary to know German, which I do not, to judge a translation into French. This is false (he forgets, moreover, that Floriana [Lebovici] had me read his first version of it last year[5] ).
One says the wise Truffaut[6] thinks likewise.
He [Baudet] appears to conclude that he doesn't find me interesting. He is far from being the first to think so; or to claim that this is what he thinks. And, when it comes to him, I will be less desolate than where all the others are concerned.
Only inform Floriana of all these impoverishments, I beg you, when she is completely recovered. And also to see to it that Clausewitz' book[7] doesn't suffer from them.
Cordially,[1] An employee of Editions Gerard Lebovici.
[2] Jean-Pierre Baudet, who demanded in Signed X that his name and the letters that Debord wrote to him not appear in this volume.
[3] Gunther Anders, author of Die Anti-quiertheit des Menschen (L'Obsolescence de l'homme). [Translator: this book has still not been translated into English.]
[4] See the letter to Jean-Francois Martos dated 22 September 1988.
[5] See Jean-Pierre Baudet's letter to Floriana Lebovici dated 29 October 2008.
[6] Francois Truffaut.
[7] On War, translated from the German into French by Baudet.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 7: Janvier 1988-Novembre 1994 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2008. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! October 2008. Footnotes by the translator.)