The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism Book

If you're looking for a traditional autobiography, comprised of personal anecdotes and confessions, you will likely be disappointed. Debord's panegyric to himself always maintains an ironic, self-critical distance from its author. In this lacuna, he nonetheless finds ample space to reflect on insights of a life lived against and outside of its time; an unseasonable nature brought further into focus by regular allusions to the words and thoughts of figures long gone. The second part consists entirely of quotations and graphic ephemera from the author's life and travels. The work ends with explicit instructions for translation and publishing of future editions, as well as references to subsequent volumes which Debord requested be burned shortly before his suicide. A cryptic yet moving contemplation on the follies and seasons of a life like few others, which refuses elucidation of its subject, preferring instead to render him a far stranger creature than the one we may presume to know.