Writing Itself 1965–1966 169
the pharmakon, letter, origins, logos and mythos: He was pre-
paring a text for Tel quel. [.. .] Once again, [Lacan] announced
how curious it was that he too had already spoken of the same
themes. His students could vouch for it. Derrida spoke to
the psychoanalyst and told him the following anecdote. One
evening, as his son Pierre was beginning to fall asleep in his
mother’s presence, he asked his father why he was looking at
him. ‘Because you’re handsome.’
The child reacted immediately by saying that the compliment
made him want to die. Somewhat troubled, Derrida tried to
fi gure out what the story meant.
‘I don’t like myself,’ the child said.
‘And since when?’
‘Since I’ve known how to talk.’
Marguerite took him in her arms, ‘Don’t worry, we love
you.’
Then Pierre broke out laughing, ‘No, all that isn’t true; I’m a
cheater for life.’
Lacan did not react. Some time later, Derrida was dumb-
founded to read the anecdote in the text of a lecture by his
interlocutor delivered at the French Institute in Naples in
December 1967. Lacan recounted it as follows: ‘I’m a cheater
for life, said a four-year-old kid while curling up in the arms
of his genitrix in front of his father, who had just answered,
‘You’re handsome’ to his question, ‘Why are you looking at
me?’ And the father didn’t recognize (even when the child in
the interim pretended he had lost all taste for himself the day
he learned to speak) the impasse he himself was foisting on the
Other, by playing dead. It’s up to the father, who told it to me,
to hear it from where I speak or not.^43Deeply hurt by the almost vindictive exploitation of this private
conversation, Derrida would not pursue any personal relationship
with Lacan. But he made sure he read his Écrits very closely.