Guy Debord: The Life and Times of a Situationist Revolutionary [Paperback]

Len Bracken (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1997

The long-awaited first biography of one of the 20th century's greatest revolutionaries, this book includes rare, never-before published materials. Bracken provides readers with an abundance of material on this reclusive historical figure who refused all interviews. 12 photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Guy Debord was one of the founders of the situationist movement of the 1960s; his Society of the Spectacle has become an indispensable text for anyone seeking to understand the pop culture of global capitalism. But despite the fame and notoriety he accrued during the Paris street revolution of 1968, he did his best to escape the burden of celebrity, refusing all interviews, publishing very little, and spending most of his time in bars. ("I wrote much less than most people who write," he once conceded, "but I drank much more than most people who drink.") Len Bracken copes with the dearth of biographical information by focusing primarily on Debord's writings and "anti-films" and his relationship to France's political and philosophical avant-garde. Numerous photographs identify key figures for the reader and give a sense of the turmoil of the '68 riots. This is an interesting historical supplement to, but not a substitute for, reading Debord's work.

From Library Journal

This account of a radical French intellectual's life sheds light on many turbulent periods of revolutionary thought and political activism of the late 20th century. Debord, avant-garde poet, theorist, leftist political provocateur, and filmmaker, was a founding member of the French leftist movement Situationist International, which matured in the 1960s. It advocated a total critique of the world as it exists and particularly of Western consumer capitalism. Debord's 1967 book, Society of the Spectacle, eventually became the bible of the student-led cultural revolts in May 1968 in France and worldwide. When Debord committed suicide in 1994, the French press, which had always repudiated him, made him into a celebrity. This biography by Bracken, editor of the leftist journal Extraphile, is rich in illustrations and heavy on quotes by Debord. It also includes Debord's newly translated boardgame, "The Game of War." Recommended for comprehensive library collections.?Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Feral House; 1st edition (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 092291544X
• ISBN-13: 978-0922915446
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,533,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bracken's bio of Debord a disappointment., December 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Guy Debord: The Life and Times of a Situationist Revolutionary (Paperback)

I must say I found Bracken's book to be extremely disappointing,especially after the build-up I had received from him personally, and from others in the 'pro-Situ' scene. As a biography - i.e: a record of the life of an interesting person - it is an abject failure. If information on a person is scant - and yes Debord was secretive about his private life out of paranoia &/or a desire for mythification - then the biographers' job is made very much harder. It is, however, the absolute worst option to do what Bracken has done and constantly assert that Guy 'would probably' have read x book or seen y film, or that he 'must have' thought blah, with absolutely no evidence. For all that he is critical of Greil Marcus' "Lipstick Traces" (1989), at least Marcus spoke to Michele Bernstein, Trocchi and others who were directly involved. (Bracken is not beyond recycling Marcus' interviews - detournement, perhaps?) With the exception of Debord, Lefebvre & Lebovici, most of the 'major players' in all the events Bracken imaginatively reconstructs are alive. Why did he not attempt to contact them? (Even a tale of non-interviews, such as Ian Hamilton's attempted search for Salinger, would be preferable) Bracken's "I get inside the mind of Guy by reading his texts" method smacks of a) the poorest kind of psycho-biography (although Debord would be a fascinating subject for a Freudian...) and b) the "reputable sources told me" sort of tabloid reportage of the famous but unavailable. In short, I found Bracken's book envious and hagiographical ("Guy Debord is the new messiah") and almost completely uninformative. As to the 'critical' part of the 'critical biography', I think Gabriel Thy's paraphrase sums it all up: "Guy Debord is the new Messiah. Everything he wrote is a masterpiece! Everybody else got it wrong." Whilst I acknowledge that no-one has (or can) get everything about the S.I 'right', I think it is a long way from that to simply stating that 'everybody else got it wrong'. Marcus, Sadie Plant, Peter Wollen, Thomas McDonough, 'not bored', even Stewart Home have all taught me different perspectives on the S.I. I don't take any of them as gospel, yet I admit the strengths and weaknesses of each and negotiate my position between the 'source texts' and the disparate views of the critics (I am a good post-structuralist bricoleur). Whilst I might be an academic 'fence sitter' and not a 'true believer', the one thing about the S.I, in common with the scattered Left (as it exists in 'advanced capitalist societies') that disappoints me the most is this fractiousness and - for a movement that supposedly reifies praxis and abhors ideology - stubborn insistence upon asserting (not proving) that ones' own opinion is correct, that all others are false, and that anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Introduction to Situationism, December 23, 1999

By 

John Filiss - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guy Debord: The Life and Times of a Situationist Revolutionary (Paperback)

The life of Debord is used as a springboard for discussing the ideas that motivated him. This book gives the best introduction to Situationism I have yet seen (I asked one individual, who is much more into the Sits than I, what he thought was the best English language introduction. He agreed with me that this was it). The typical reader will certainly find it far friendlier than The Society of the Spectacle, the main work of Debord himself. Debord's writing is wrapt in Hegelian jargon that was opaque even to a former Marxist I know. The book has some small deficiencies (e.g., the first several chapters have a hurried, first-draft feeling), but really, this might be the best biography I have ever read.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debord bio fills niche and introduces him to wider audience, October 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Guy Debord: The Life and Times of a Situationist Revolutionary (Paperback)

I take strong exception to the Melbourne reader's critique (well-written as it is) of Len Bracken's book. The Situationists were far and away the most seminal and influential of the radical groups fomenting the May `68 revolts in Paris, and Bracken performs an important service with his on- target intellectual biography of their leader Guy Debord, a reclusive and prickly misanthrope whose masterpiece, Society of the Spectacle, quietly influenced numerous more high-profile intellectuals like Jean Baudrillard and Malcolm McLaren. It's true that sources about Debord are scant, but the late master's widow and friends are well-known for their reluctance to go on the record. Bracken's approach is authentic and, I feel, gives a strong image of the Situationist milieu as well as of Debord through the lens of Debord's ideas. Most of the SI's critique of the banality of everyday life is just as on-target today, as are their experience of the city as a "psychogeographical" mental map. I believe Bracken (editor of the zine Extraphile), has written an important book that both fills a long-empty niche in Situationist literature and makes Debord's brilliance available to a popular audience.