I gave this antibook to my friends. No one else was aware of its existence. “I wanted to speak the beautiful language of my century.” I wasn’t
terribly interested in being noticed… In any case, I never said anything positive about the Mémoires when they came out. And I don’t think there
is any more to say about them now. I had, from the beginning, manifested my cool indifference to the public’s opinion, since the public was not
even allowed to see the book. Aren’t such conventions a thing of the past?
So, my Mémoires, in thirty-five years, has never gone on sale. The book’s
fame arises from the fact that it was only distributed as a form of potlatch: a
sumptuary gift that challenges the recipient to give back something better
in return. In doing so, smug individuals show that they are capable of anything, but in their own way.
Guy Debord, Mémoires
Debord and Jorn’s book Mémoires, “composed entirely of prefabricated elements,” in which the writing on each
page runs in all directions and the reciprocal relations of the phrases
are invariably uncompleted.
Internationale situationniste #3