Chapter thirty-nine: the defects of the tribe

“I realize that for many years”: ST to AB, June 7, 1980, SSF.

“It’s clear that the desire for stamps”: ST to AB, August 18, 1980, SSF.

Steinberg believed that one of the best ways: ST to AB, February 4, 1980, SSF; Mary Frank, interview, January 25, 2009.

One of the first was his adult “mania”: Information about stamp collecting is from ST to AB, May 1 and 19 and June 7, 1980, SSF.

“thin blonde WASP women”: SS, diary, n.d., YCAL, Box 111; HS, in conversation with DB and Karen van Lengen, November 3, 2007; Karen van Lengen, interview, November 4, 2007.

He was not embarrassed to tell Aldo: ST to AB, June 7 and 9, 1980, SSF.

Perusing the postcards led him: YCAL, Box 100.

“Majorcan Pearl, Josefine”: ST to AB, August 18, 1980. There he puts the name “Josepha” in parentheses after her name, and in correspondence and diary jottings in YCAL she is alternately called Josefine and Josefa, but her legal name was Josephine Buttles. For consistency, I call her “Josefine” as that is how he usually wrote it. She kept such order in his household that he boasted of how she “lined up the socks like soldiers.” When she became infirm and temporarily unable to work, ST supported her and her family with generous gifts on a regular basis.

“as usual, full of qualms”: ST to AB, January 12, 1981, SSF.

“love one another”: ST to AB, December 1, 1981, SSF.

“symptoms similar to those”: ST to AB, April 4, 1981, SSF. He refers to Gaspare Guidice, Luigi Pirandello (Turin: UTET, 1963). Pirandello’s wife, Antonietta Portulano, had severe psychological problems that eventually resulted in her institutionalization. ST was referring to incidents of catatonic depression, obsessive jealousy, and sometimes violent physical behavior toward herself and others.

As they exchanged greetings: Ellen Adler, interviews, May 4 and 5, 2010. Adler and Steinberg had been friends “sort of forever” because she was the daughter of Stella Adler and Harold Klurman, to whom ST was close for many years.

“This is the tragedy”: On an undated file card in YCAL, Box 65, SS wrote: “Why (do you think) did I never have any friends?” She probably wrote it in 1986, because it is attached to an article on friendship from the New York Review of Books on which she has written “Jean de Florette. Depardieu,” referring to the recently released movie.

Although Saul begged Sigrid: ST to AB, January 30, 1981, SSF.

“drunk out of habit”: ST to AB, March 18, 1980, SSF.

Among them were his dear friends: Karl Flinker to ST, June 9, 1981; Ray Eames, n.d. 1981; both in YCAL, Box 60.

He planned to stay in Los Angeles: ST to AB, January 12, 1981, SSF. The incisione include engravings, etchings, drypoints, aquatints, etc.

The only specialists whose names never appeared: In YCAL, Box 110, SS lists the doctors she was seeing from the early 1980s through 1992: Arnold Rosen (psychopharmacologist), Armin Wanner (psychotherapist), Melvin Horwith (endocrinologist), Daniel Shapiro (neurologist), Martin Carmins (neurosurgeon), David Hendell (dentist). She has crossed out the name of Dr. George Feldman, gynecologist, adding the comment “arrogant bastard.” In a separate note in YCAL, Box 111, she gives her first appointment with Dr. Wanner as October 30, 1984.

He did, however, throw himself enthusiastically: “Two Women,” start date 1981, signature and publication dates 1993. One color black (copper-drypoint) etching, 53.3 x 50.8 cm. (21 x 20 in.), edition of 56 plus 10 AP. Other titles include images of “Gogol” (1–5), “Cedar Bar,” “North Dakota,” “Provincetown,” and “Legs.”

“I do wish I had been more stoic”: Mark Rosenthal, Artists at Gemini G.E.L.: Celebrating the 25th Year (New York: Abrams, 1993); also Both Art and Life: Gemini G.E.L. at 25, exhibition catalogue for Newport Harbor Museum, Newport Beach, California, September 22–November 29, 1992.

He ended negotiations: ST to AB, April 4 and 26, 1981, SSF. The exhibition was probably the one proposed for the Walker Art Center; the Japanese venue is unknown. Correspondence pertaining to the Walker is SSF.

“due to his avarice”: ST to AB, April 5, 1982, SSF. Betty Parsons had been incapacitated by a stroke in November 1981, and she died on July 23, 1982. Arne Glimcher represented ST at Pace-Wildenstein Gallery and then SSF at Pace Gallery.

a series of “small disasters”: ST to AB, July 8, 1981, SSF; Claire Nivola to DB, October 8, 2010. Nivola is not sure that her mother had a television set at that time, “but maybe so.”

variations on the Japanese printmaker Hiroshige’s bridge: “Rain on Hiroshige Bridge,” TNY, November 2, 1981.

They, like so much else: For a complete listing, see The Complete New Yorker, all issues and database on disks, 2005, published by TNY and distributed by Random House, New York.

He stopped trying to analyze: Both Gordon Pulis and Anton van Dalen said in separate interviews that they cautiously questioned ST about the wisdom of making so many, but he waved them off and continued to do so.

“intimate language”: ST to AB, September 29, 1981, SSF.

“regression, childish rages”: ST to AB, August 24, 1981, SSF.

Alexander Lindey, died that same year: Lindey’s widow, Ella, in a letter dated December 14, 1981, YCAL, Box 60, wrote that she had given ST’s files to Harold Daitch, the lawyer who represented her after her husband’s death, and suggested he do the same. ST declined and on June 8, 1982, ST asked Daitch to transfer the files to John C. Taylor at Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Taylor represented him until John Silberman became his lawyer and after ST’s death, an officer of SSF.

Leo Steinberg sent a caustic: Leo Steinberg to ST, March 21, 1980, YCAL, Box 58.

“total disregard for [his] gift”: Information that follows is from HS to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests early 1980s, YCAL, Box 58.

When Steinberg moved to 75th Street: Muriel Oxenberg Murphy to ST, September 27, 1973, YCAL, Box 104.

When Gaddis sent him work in progress: According to ST’s diary entry for January 21, 1991, YCAL, Box 76, the friendship became difficult over the ms. of Gaddis’s The Deposition, for which ST did not make the appropriate comments. ST told this to AB, who repeated it in an interview, June 2007, and he wrote it in a letter of August 18, 1983, to IF. In an interview, October 12, 2007, IF said ST told him, “I liked Gaddis as a person but I never finished one of his books.”

He was largely responsible: ST to Saul Bellow, n.d., YCAL, Box 99. He asks Bellow to be the conominator, with Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, William Gass, and John Barth as seconders.

Steinberg was one of the background figures: Documentation pertaining to recommendations for the MacArthur “genius” award is in YCAL, Box 69.

Steinberg and Saul Bellow had been good but casual friends: Saul Bellow to ST, April 25, 1980, YCAL, Box 33.

Whether it was a philosophical/political essay: Two typescripts that have edits in Bellow’s and Steinberg’s handwriting are in YCAL, Box 22. Bellow sent a letter on February 4, 1983, YCAL, Box 75, along with a journal/ledger in which he wrote a story, “Talking Out of Turn,” in longhand. It must have been meant as a gift, for there are no marginal comments by ST. There is also an early typescript of a story called “Cousins” in YCAL, Box 75.

“even if his style is naturally witty”: ST to AB, December 2, 1982, SSF.

And yet when she was dying: PC, in notes to DB, 2011.

“He could do this, just cut people”: IF, interview, October 12, 2007.

Steinberg contacted Sandy Frazier: “Dating Your Mom,” TNY, July 3, 1978. ST cut the article out of the magazine and kept it in YCAL, Box 99.

He did the same with Donald Barthelme: Information that follows is from Marion Barthelme, interview, May 18, 2008.

he became a frequent dinner guest: ST liked Marion Barthelme so much that he created a special drawing to celebrate her wedding to Don. As of 2012, it is in her collection in Houston, Texas.

He told the story of how Steinberg: HS told this same story in several 2007 interviews, always marveling at how “the dead, needleless, slightly off-center branches of the pine tree resembled a Steinberg.”

He and Steinberg discovered so many parallels: Saul Steinberg with IF, Canal Street (New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1990).

At the time she was working: Information that follows is from Karen van Lengen, interview, November 4, 2007.

So too were the few people: From interviews with HS, IF, Karen van Lengen, Dore Ashton, Ruth Nivola, Claire Nivola.

Only once did Steinberg speak of it: Mimi Gross, interview, March 9, 2010.

“Poor Sigrid,” Aldo said: AB, interviews, June 19, 2007, and July 27, 2008; AB to ST, April 29, 1981, YCAL, Box 60.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30