from Guy Debord

To Patrick Straram
26 July [1960]
Dear Patrick:

I have received your letter of 18 July [1960]. The photos please me and the declaration to La Presse[1] is excellent.

As I've already told you, I must write you one or several long letters concerning the Notebook [for a landscape to be invented] and our problems. And, even more generally, because "valuable interlocutors" are nevertheless still rare, as we said long ago. But I lack the time and today I must leave Paris, probably for a dozen days. Thus I limit myself here to immediate practical details.

Today I've sent you five registered packages (by boat), respectively containing: 5 copies of I[nternationale] S[ituationniste] #1; 5 copies of I.S. #3; 4 copies of I.S. #4; 5 copies of the Report [on the Construction of Situations] and 4 copies of [Asger] Jorn's Critique [of Political Economy]; [and] 3 copies of Memoires.

Today, I've sent you La Somme et Le Reste [Sum and Remainder] and the new edition of Critique de la vie quotidienne [Critique of Everyday Life].[2] The other books will be sent later.

If [Louis] Portugais' visit to Europe has begun by 25 September, it would be best if he could attend our next "international conference," which will take place in London on that date. But I imagine that this is improbable; the autumn will just have begun. In Paris, at least, he should contact me by telephoning TURbigo 25-24. The Notebook, I hear, has passed through the hands of a dozen thinkers -- unknown to you as to me, without doubt -- of the Saint-Germain-des-Pres, before being returned to me. They are talking about it, commenting on it. Which is amusing. But this is a loss of time.

As I am leaving before having received other copies of the Notebook, I ask you to quickly send one to each of the following addresses:

Jacqueline de Jong, 85 Weteringschaus, Amsterdam, Holland
Attila Kotanyi, 26 rue du Monastere, Brussels, Belgium
Andre Frankin, 285 rue Saint-Gilles, Liege, Belgium
Asger Jorn, Albisola Mare (Savona), Italy
H.-P. Zimmer, Siegfriedstrasse 11/I, Munich-Schwabing, D.B.R.
R. Dahlman Olsen, Wiedersvej, 16, Dragor (Copenhagen), Denmark
Jacques Ovadia, 33 rue Arlosoroff, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Without neglecting 3 or 4 copies fo rme, if this hasn't already been done.

Good health,
Guy

N.B. Our old address in Amsterdam, which you published, is at present in the hands of the enemy.

[1] On 2 July 1960, under the title "So as not to be an accomplice," La Presse, a daily newspaper in Montreal, published a protest by Patrick Straram against the sentencing of the writer and journalist Georges Arnaud to two years in prison for refusing to talk. In Paris-Presse, Arnaud had reviewed a conference given by Francis Jeanson, who was thought to be the head of a support network for the F.L.N.

[2] By Henri Lefebvre.


(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 1, 1957-1960. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2005.)



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