I put the title "Epilogue" here instead of "Prologue" as it should be, not to surprise with the reversal, nor from my well-known mania to title some of my lively and even secretly ambitious acts with tears.
I preferred it because the publication of these texts is indeed the epilogue of a pending matter that remained in the drawer for forty long years without asking me anything, but also without giving up on its maintenance.
Three of the things that I used to mock in the past were lacquer, shoulder pads, and the publication or republication of texts that one has written either in their declining youth or in their flourishing despair. I polished all three. [...] From the volume of writings, I selected very few, somewhat revised by necessity, along with very few that existed as reserve material for the next issues, but they did not have time to be published.
To the gullible and the sentimental, I suggest attributing this act of publication to the pressure of the need that some people feel as they grow older, to add new forgettable elements to what their biography has already accumulated.

(from the "Epilogue" of the book)