Chapter thirty-one: the desire for fame

“I was doing so well”: ST to AB, August 17, 1966, SSF.

“camouflaged as a cartoon”: Stein, unedited transcript of interview.

“a form of brooding”: Ibid. ST continued: The doodle “contains only a combination of reflexes, a combination of things that the hand knows, the brain knows, but it’s all half asleep and it’s mechanical.” He said doodling was responsible for what he called “mechanical drawings,” such as the one in The New World on p. 13, which he called “A man reasons. The man thinks.”

“say something interesting”: ST, datebook, November 4 and 13, 1965, YCAL, Box 3.

After this he wrote: ST, datebook, January 20 and 30, 1966, YCAL, Box 3.

He had met Tillich: Invitations to meet Anshen in New York are in YCAL, Boxes 3 and 15; invitations for ST and SS to dine with Hannah Tillich in East Hampton begin in the autumn of 1965, shortly before Paul Tillich’s death, YCAL, Box 15.

All were asked to write: This is a loose paraphrase of the jacket copy. All the contributors were men, but future contributors were to include Lillian Smith and Margaret Mead.

Tillich was well suited: Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, with drawings by Saul Steinberg (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967). The jacket copy describes Tillich and ST as “close friends.” It is true that they knew each other and had tremendous affinity and rapport, but it is probably an exaggeration to make the friendship any stronger than that. After Tillich’s death, ST continued to call on his widow, and he remained friendly with her and with Anshen for many years afterward.

“this game of autobiography”: Stein, unedited transcript of interview.

“in what might be called”: Anshen, “Prologue,” My Search for Absolutes, p. 20.

“strong and penetrating”: Hannah Tillich to ST, October 9, 1966; Hannah Tillich, Christmas card to ST, n.d. 1966; both in YCAL, Box 16.

When Anshen sent Steinberg a copy: Ruth Nanda Anshen to ST, September 5, 1967, YCAL, Box 16.

“a great title which says nothing”: ST, The New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Jean Stein, undated edited version of 1966 interviews with ST, YCAL, Box 69.

In preparation for the book’s launch: The interviews are collected as typescripts under the names of Jean Stein, Jean Stein vanden Heuvel, and Jean Vanden and are in YCAL, Boxes 15, 16, 38, and 69. In some of them, Harold Rosenberg is a participant and occasional interviewer. Portions of these interviews were published under the name Jean vanden Heuvel as “Straight from the Hand and Mouth of Steinberg.” Some of Rosenberg’s dialogues are in “Saul Steinberg’s Art World,” pp. 51–54, 67–68.

Now he made the conscious decision: ST to AB, August 17, 1966, SSF.

“the biography of a man”: Although the the book is unpaginated, ST worked from a paginated proof during this section of the interview and referred to this drawing as being on p. 93.

In Steinberg’s translation: All quotations that follow, until noted otherwise, are from Stein, unedited transcript of interview, transcripts 10A and 10B, August 19, 1965, YCAL, Box 15.

“some sort of idea”: Glueck, transcript of interview.

When it appeared in The New Yorker: I refer here to the many letters scattered throughout the uncatalogued boxes of his archives.

She was hurt: SS, diary, YCAL, Boxes 108 and 111.

He went alone to Paris: ST to SS, February 23 and undated letters, 1966, YCAL, Box 109.

“very hysterical”: SS to ST, “wed. 9” [ February 1966], YCAL, Box 15.

All his friends were there: A copy of a partial list of guests he personally invited is in YCAL, Box 15. It lists Alain, Buzzi, Barbara (Chase Riboud), Sandy (Calder), (Robert) Doisneau, (Robert) Delpire, Folon, Hélion, Hayter, Ionesco, James Jones, Knoop, Lica, Matta, Rowohlt, Michéle Rosier, Man Ray, Geer van Velde, Zao, Soulages, Max, (Jean) Riopelle, “Stella,” and C. I. Roy. Véra Nabokov sent her regrets and her husband’s, saying that he had too much work to finish before going away for the summer. She expressed “enormous pleasure” that ST had flown overnight on March 12 to Montreux to see them. A copy of his bill from the Montreux-Palace Hotel and her letter are in YCAL, Box 15.

“I never fitted”: SS, diary, 1987, YCAL, Box 111.

Afterward, Saul went on alone: Travel receipts are in YCAL, Box 15.

Sigrid was mostly on her own: On May 23, SS wrote to ST from Trier, calling her visit “a nightmare” and “brooding about what next”; YCAL, Box 15.

“like an exam in a French Lycée”: ST to Aimé Maeght, August 5, 1966; ST to Aimé Maeght, November 15, 1966; copies of both in SSF. My translation, with assistance from Mary Lawrence Test, Myrna Bell Rochester, and Catherine Portuges.

The medal was conferred: ST to Aimé Maeght, October 22, 1966, YCAL, Box 22. A reception was given for ST on September 29, 1966.

“another medal of honor”: Vogue, January 1, 1967, p. 136.

“in that state of trance”: ST to AB, October 23, 1966, SSF.

“My fee today”: ST, telegram to “Mr. Adams,” director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, June 14, 1966, YCAL, Box 15.

“I sold eighty pictures”: ST to Aimé Maeght, January 4, 1967, copy in SSF.

“paternal satisfaction”: ST to AB, December 10 and December 30, 1967, SSF.

“ready-made for a Saul Steinberg cartoon”: Time, April 15, 1966, p. 46.

“an unsettling trip”: Pierre Schneider, “Steinberg at the Louvre: A Museum Tour,” Art in America, July/August, 1967; reprinted in part in Encounter 30, no. 3 (March 1968), 48–54.

Many interviewers came from Europe: Some of the networks that filmed him include Raiuno (Italy), Suddeütscher Rundfunk and Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany), Allan King Associates (England), and PBS and CBS (USA).

In the United States, in the heyday: Stein, “Straight from the Hand and Mouth of Steinberg,” Vogue, January 1, 1967; Hilton Kramer, “The Comic Fantasies of Saul Steinberg,” New York Times, December 4, 1966; Rosenberg, “Saul Steinberg’s Art World.”

“the line philosopher-artist-cartoonist”: Mrs. Gerald A. (Edith) Kay to ST, Denver, n.d., YCAL, Box 16.

The Romanian Socialist Republic: YCAL, Box 16. Although ST never joined SACO, he always gave permission for his drawings to be used whenever anyone with whom he served wanted to reproduce them in books or articles. Prominent among them was Admiral Milton E. Miles’s history-memoir, A Different Kind of War.

He had never hidden his support for civil rights: The SLC drawing was exhibited at MoMA from October 31 to November 3, 1968, YCAL, Box 32; the CORE documents are in YCAL, Box 16. Another group to which he contributed was Artists for SEDF (Scholarship, Education, and Defense fund for Racial Equality); see Robert Rauschenberg to ST, March 1, 1967, YCAL, Box 16. Elodie and Robert Osborn invited him to contribute to send young French filmmakers led by Gerard Calisti to North Vietnam, YCAL, Box 16. A letter from C. Conrad Browne, YCAL, Box 68, thanked him for a contribution of $260 that “helped make possible the termination of charges against the six campers arrested in the 1963 North–South work camp incident.”

When he ignored a letter from the Guggenheim Museum: Second Street Workshop Club to ST, n.d., YCAL, Box 16; initial Guggenheim invitation, January 27, 1967.

“I go on working”: ST to AB, December 30, 1966, SSF.

“Come see me:” ST to Aimé Maeght, January 4, 1967, copy in SSF.

He was not as welcoming: SS, nine handwritten looseleaf pages, the first entry dated October 22, 1965, YCAL, Box 68.

By February she was begging: SS to ST, “Feb 18” [1966], YCAL, Box 15; diary entries, YCAL, Boxes 99 and 111; SS to ST, February 8, 1965 to June 14, 1966, YCAL, Box 113.

“It is a complex fate”: ST noted this in various YCAL boxes; in YCAL, Box 38, Charles Simic quoted it to him in regard to his own writing. The full quotation is from Henry James’s letter to Charles Eliot Norton, February 4, 1872: “It is a complex fate to be an American and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.”

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