Jean Baudrillard's last book was about America. His new one is about cats, Foucault, Alfa Romeos, leukaemia, Catholicism, the Berlin Wall, mattresses, Laurent Fabius, Jean-Paul II, roses, Antartica, Lech Walesa, mud wrestling, Zinoviev, porn films, snow, feminism, Rio, Jacques Lacan, Stevie Wonder, Palermo, DNA and terrorism. 'Cool Memories is the side of America, the disillusioned side, presented in the form of a diary, though hot in the classical sense. I'm trying to grasp the world when you're no longer tied to it by some kind of ideological enthusiasm, or by traditional passions? Can things "tell" themselves through stories and fragments? These are some of the questions posed in a book which may seem melancholic. But then I think almost every diary is melancholic. Melancholy is in the very state of things.'