Chapter thirty-six: sadness like an illness

“I’ve found and taken a good look”: ST to AB, October 9, 1975, SSF.

Lica’s death at the relatively young age: ST to AB, July 19, 1975, SSF; Dana Roman and Stéphane Roman, interviews, January, 2008.

“sadness was like an illness”: ST to AB, July 19, 1975, SSF.

“depressed, scared in the morning”: ST to AB, March 5, 1975, SSF.

All the while she had been with him: ST to AB, May 24, 1975, SSF.

A number of interesting projects resulted: Some of SS’s other commissions included Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton; Richard Eberhart, Fields of Grace; William H. Pritchard, Lives of the Modern Poets; and Peter Conrad, Imagining America. All in YCAL, Box 32.

“ideas were more developed”: Letters of rejection from the Whitney’s personnel department and from Barbara Toll, director of Hundred Acres Gallery, February 1973 and 1975, YCAL, Box 108.

“Of course I still love you”: ST to SS, July 9, 1976, YCAL, Box 104, Folder “Paris Milano 1976 Jan 27–July 10.”

Before Anton could do the actual packing: To help ST decide, Anton took photos of the studio so that ST could re-create various arrangements where he wanted them. The photos are in van Dalen’s personal collection.

“the brutal image of the end of life”: In an interview with Mark Stevens, Newsweek, April 17, 1978, pp. 124–26, in conjunction with his 1978 WMAA retrospective, ST is quoted as saying that he is “a voyeur of himself.” Some of the stamps he collected include birds, JFK, and reproductions of art. These and various brochures are found in YCAL, Box 32, and also in some of the other uncatalogued boxes.

He asked anyone traveling to Bucharest ST to Bert Chernow, interview for Christo and Jeanne-Claude; W. D. Snodgrass to ST, October 13, 1973, YCAL, Box 22; “Humphrey” [Sutton?], photographs of Strada Palas, 1973, YCAL, Box 22; Norman Manea, interview, June 11, 2008.

“an emotional orgy”: ST to Henri Cartier-Bresson, February 28, 1999, YCAL, Box 73.

Ada’s letter was especially poignant: Ada to ST, n.d., YCAL, Box 38; ST to AB, May 24, 1975, SSF. Other letters from (among many) Sidney Janis, Cartier-Bresson, the Ionesco family, and Bram van Velde are scattered throughout YCAL boxes, among them 38 and 75.

With Lica gone, he grew closer to Ada: Lica’s term is found throughout her correspondence with ST, SSF; Ada’s “ olino ” is a diminutive of “Saulino.”

He stayed on in Springs: ST to AB, November 10, 1975, SSF.

“who keeps writing wonders”: ST to AB, March 8, 1975, SSF. ST was probably referring to Hammett’s The Big Knockover (New York: Random House, 1966), edited by Hellmann, and to her first memoir, An Unfinished Woman (New York: Bantam Books, 1969).

“Joyce’s illegitimate son”: ST to AB, August 15, 1976, SSF. ST had just read The Buenos Aires Affair, which he called “a novel disguised as a detective story.” He also recommended Betrayed by Rita Hayworth and later, in the 1990s, he liked The Kiss of the Spider Woman, both the book and the movie. Mainly he preferred European biography and fiction, such as the two novelists whose work he was currently exploring, Elsa Morante and Heinrich Böll.

His recommendations often came: Claire Nivola, “Menu,” atop which ST has affixed two rubber stamp impressions of Millet’s Angelus; collection of Claire Nivola.

“more contemporary and more historical”: Claire Nivola, telephone conversation, April 29, 1908.

His most recent suggestion: ST to AB, May 10, 1976, SSF, in which he tells AB that Barthes is to write the introduction for the next DLM but that he had not yet read anything by Barthes. He planned to go to Paris in June 1976 specifically to meet Barthes and discuss what he would write. Although the two met as friends then and on other occasions, Barthes did not write for DLM, but he did supply the text for the 1983 book All Except You. In Claire Nivola to ST, May 17, 1975, she tells him that she forgot the title he wrote when he told her to read something of Barthes’s so they could talk about it; YCAL, Box 104. On May 26, 1976, postcard in possession of Claire Nivola, he thanks her for an unnamed Barthes book: “—very difficult to understand. The obvious (to me) as explained by him—It’s his art.”

This assertion led him to: Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), p. 208. ST’s copy is in YCAL, Box 32. ST was also reading Shattuck’s Proust’s Binoculars (New York: Random House, 1963).

“closed, complete”: ST to AB, March 8, 1975, SSF.

“completely lost faith”: ST to AB, June 19, 1976, SSF.

After not having a single cover: ST to AB, October 23, 1976, SSF. The exhibition, “Steinberg Cartoons,” opened on November 17 and ran through December 4 (Parsons) and 11 (Janis).

“Manhattanite dystopias”: S:I, p. 67; see also fig. 69 on that page, for Steinberg, Papoose, and the wall of drawings. Note also that he has regrown the mustache he cut off shortly after he met Sigrid and she objected to it. The TNY cover for October 20, 1975, is a compilation of his grotesque head shots.

He took renewed pleasure: A collection of these drawings was published as Dal Vero (New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1983).

While Ruth seethed: This account is based on interviews with Hedda Sterne, Aldo Buzzi, Ruth Nivola, Claire Nivola, Dore Ashton, Ivan Chermayeff, Vita Peterson, and many others. Chermayeff offered the most succinct appraisal of the difference between the two men: ST “was a bit of a shit. He was a self-oriented guy and he was not nice. Tino and Saul were exact opposites. Tino was outgoing, friendly, encouraging to others, a great person. Saul behaved to lots of people in the same snotty manner as he treated Tino. Genius or not, [ST] was not a nice guy. He had certain things missing from his life, which is probably why he loved Tino and Ruth. They are sophisticated, too, but they are simple, warm, and direct people. I think Saul was envious of their ability to go forward and do their own work. I think Saul was jealous. He was aware of the life they led and that they represented something he was not capable of being.”

Tino invited Saul to help him hunt: This was something ST and Nivola had done for many years: in a letter to Claire Nivola, October 25, 1976, in her possession, ST relates how they went mushroom hunting “across the dunes from the fish factory.”

“in boarding houses in Milan”: ST to AB, May 10, 1976, SSF.

One of the things he liked best: ST, diary, June 12, 1991, YCAL, Box 75. ST was also reading Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and unnamed books by Wittgenstein and Canetti.

“I’m following your advice”: ST to AB, August 15, 1976, SSF.

To thank Aldo for his concern: ST to AB, January 29, 1976. He also told AB that Rosa Esman, a gallery owner in New York, would be sending checks for $600; he was to keep half and send the rest to Ada, who had broken her arm. On March 25, 1976, he wrote again to tell Aldo that a $4,000 check would come to him; he was to keep $1,000 and the rest was to be sent to Lica Roman’s children, Stéphane and Dana. On June 19, 1976, he wrote that he would tell Aldo about his “dependent niece and nephew.”

He was engaged by a text: First published 1979 by Adelphi Edizioni, S.P.A. Milano; translated by Guido Waldman for Bloomsbury, New York, and not published until 2005. Fourteen drawings by ST that he sent to AB from the 1950s on were all reprinted with permission from SSF.

“I’m a little depressed”: ST to AB, October 23, 1976, SSF.

“next year with pleasure”: ST, telegram to Aimé Maeght, September 1976, copy at SSF; ST to AB, October 23, 1976, SSF.

Maeght instructed them to go to Springs: ST to AB, November 16, 1976, SSF.

He told Aldo he wanted: ST to AB, January 19, 1976, SSF.

But instead of cheering him up: The YCAL boxes contain articles about how to have sex after ninety, medical folders about which positions to assume after hip surgery or if suffering from chronic arthritis, and, when he was in his eighties, numerous articles and pamplets about the use of Viagra. There are also many guarded references to women who probably rebuffed his advances, but he does not commit the actual details to paper.

“many emotional reactions”: ST to AB, November 16, 1976, SSF.

“comfortably and naturally”: ST, Alexander Calder memorial service, Whitney Museum of American Art, December 6, 1976, copy in SSF files.

“getting tongue-tied”: ST to AB, December 12, 1976, SSF.

He thought Calvino’s preface: ST to AB, March 24, 1977, SSF.

The show was to open on May 11, 1977: He referred to the adult children of his aunt Sali Marcovici, who were his contemporaries The Romanian letters in the YCAL boxes, copies at SSF, verify that he still sent them all regular financial stipends.

“big worries”: ST to AB, April 1, 1977, SSF.

“A retrospective usually comes”: Alexander Lindey to ST, May 1, 1978, YCAL, Box 61.

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