Monday, March 25, 2002

I am trying to decide what to do about a little quote-error from Baudrillard. No, not my error - his. He quotes Philip K. Dick, a book he calls The Schizo's Ball, and the quote is so beautiful and fits so well into his argument, it just flows along. However, Dick never wrote a book with that name, it's the direct translation from the French title of the book We Can Build You, and the quote is a translation back to English from the french translation, distorting the quote until it's hardly to be recognised.

So far I have used the quote from the English translation of Seduction, and added a footnote where I say which book this is and what the original text of the quote is. I might have to just delete it all, but I love the lines too much: "Take me to my room and fuck me. There's something indefinable in your language, something left to be desired."

Unfortunately Dick's characters said: "'Take me into your motel room,' Pris said, 'and screw me.'
'There is, somehow, in your language, something, which I can't put my finger on, that somehow leaves something to be desired.'"

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