In 1952, bored by her studies at the nearby Sorbonne, she began to frequent Chez Moineau, a bar at 22 rue du Four [fr].
With one of these, Patrick Straram, she toured Le Havre in August 1952, in order to see the places upon which Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea had been modelled.
[1] On 17 August 1954, she married another member of the group, Guy Debord, and took a more active role in contributing to its publications (primarily its bulletin, Potlatch).
[2] The Letterist International were primarily concerned with (i) transcending traditional artistic activities to produce 'situations' for themselves; (ii) to drifting aimlessly around urban environments in order to assess their psychogeography; and (iii) to diverting pre-existing texts and other materials to new ends.
In the journal's first issue, Bernstein wrote an essay entitled "No Useless Leniency" ("Pas d'indulgences inutiles") in which she argues for the complicated necessity of splits and schisms within the Situationist International.
[4] In All The King's Horses (Tous les chevaux du roi, 1960; republished Paris: Allia, 2004) and The Night (La Nuit, 1961; republished by Allia in 2013), Bernstein tells the same story in two different ways, adapting the plot of Les Liaisons dangereuses to create a 'roman à clef despite itself' featuring characters based on herself, Debord and his lover Michèle Mochot.
[5] All The Kings Horses deliberately mimics the style popularized Francoise Sagan in her novel Bonjour Tristesse (1954), which scandalized France when it was awarded the Prix des Critiques.
[8] Though Bernstein did work a variety of jobs (including in advertising) to support herself and Debord, she has claimed the comment about writing horses' horoscopes was a joke.