Writing Itself 1965–1966 165
keep together the philosophical, anthropological, and literary ques-
tions that he cared most about. He was glad that Sollers shared his
work with him, sending him to read, hot off the press, his articles
‘Sade in the text’ and ‘Literature and totality’. Derrida found them
‘wonderful’, assuring Sollers that the piece on Mallarmé had ‘taught
him a lot’. He was sure: with these two texts, and Pleynet’s essay on
Lautréamont, which was also ‘powerful and right’, ‘the next Tel Quel
will cause a stir, stir things up. It will be this autumn’s happening.
The unity of the whole thing’s obvious, blindingly obvious.’^29
Sollers was equally enthusiastic. That year, 1966, was the year in
which for him Derrida was the thinker, the one who gave a philo-
sophical framework for the question of ‘textuality’. In his view, it
was a matter of some urgency to gather together Derrida’s articles,
which for him were a source of ‘a never-ending series of refl ections’,
and to put them together as a volume for the series ‘Tel Quel’.
He was convinced that only a book would be able to give such an
original way of thinking the impact it needed. Sollers often felt that
Derrida was saying something that nobody really understood, that
‘nobody can understand’, and that Derrida himself was fi nding
it very diffi cult to ‘explain to others’. This resistance played some
part in his own admiration, at a time when he had just embarked
on the diffi cult venture of a new fi ction to be called Numbers. He
wanted to get Derrida to imagine a text ‘that would bear on what
we “think” on the level of myth, being its crazy trace... I won’t be
telling you anything new if I say (without complaining) that it’s a
real hotchpotch.’^30
At the end of summer, Derrida was still in a ‘depressive state’, over-
whelmed by an exhaustion that he could not pull himself out of, and
that rekindled his hypochondriacal tendencies. Trying to work, and
not making much headway, he waited impatiently for a new lease
of life. And when he started teaching at Normale Sup again, he also
groused about the ‘interminable and often tense “conversations”
with young people who devour [my] liver’.^31
On 16 September, Derrida explained to Jean Piel that he had
bitten off more than he could chew. The project was taking off , but
actually writing it was taking longer than he had hoped, especially
since he had needed to spend part of the summer working on a text
about Husserl, which was to become Speech and Phenomena. So the
book he had promised would be at least two months late. The editor
of Critique gave him a friendly, understanding reply. Above all, he
did not want to harass Derrida; ‘when it’s an essential text that’s
being composed’, the project needed time to ripen. But he should
not delay too long, either: the exceptional interest with which the
fi rst part had been greeted justifi ed Derrida concentrating all his
eff orts on fi nishing this impatiently awaited book.^32