Chapter forty-six: nature’s charitable amnesia

“I often surprise myself”: ST to AB, December 31, 1996, SSF.

“rich, noisy invitations”: ST to AB, November 28, 1996, SSF.

“the local Beaujolais”: ST to AB, November 24, 1996, SSF.

“profound sadness”: ST to AB, November 28, 1996, SSF.

Often she came to him: ST to AB, January 7, 1997, SSF.

He could not help but think: ST to AB, December 31, 1996.

“tremendous fear of dirt”: Mary Frank, interview, January 25, 2009.

He liked Jean Stein’s dinner parties: Jean Stein, telephone conversation, August 15, 2007.

“not thrilled to meet”: Norman Manea, interview, June 11, 2008.

“When did you leave”: Norman Manea wrote a version of this meeting in “Made in Romania,” New York Review of Books 47, no. 2, February 10, 2000. I quote from his interview of June 11, 2008.

At first the friendship was “tentative”: ST to AB, January 23, 1995, SSF.

“an impossible return”: From “Un Dadaist?” (the Romanian version of Manea, “Made in Romania”), Apostroph, 10, no. 12 (1999), special issue, “In Memoriam Saul Steinberg,” pp. 12–22. There were many cuts in the published English version, but the full text in a translation by Emil Niculescu is in SSF.

The magical feeling: ST’s boyhood home was still there in 1972, according to a photo in YCAL, Box 22.

Prudence found: The map is reproduced in S:I, p. 267, along with a drawing ST made from it. It is also mentioned in ST to AB, February 4, 1999, SSF.

“I’m passing my days”: ST to Henri Cartier-Bresson, February 28, 1999, YCAL, Box 73.

“the poor guy”: ST to AB, January 23, 1995, SSF.

“never be fightened or ashamed”: ST to AB, April 22, 1995, SSF.

Ada had died quietly: I am grateful to Elissa Bruschini, who found the Ufficio dello Stato Civile Certificato di Morte, Comune di Erba, Provincia di Como; to Signora Loredana Masperi, director of Casa Prina, who, although constrained by Italian privacy laws, was able to provide background information; to AB, interview, June 19, 2007. MTL provided a copy of the death certificate to SSF, which was also made available to me.

He knew they were serious: PC did not remember that he told her of Ada’s death, but her datebook for January 16 contains a note saying “Saul” followed by “Dr. Brooks,” who may have been one of the several psychiatrists Steinberg consulted that year; Prudence Crowther, e-mail, January 7, 2011.

Steinberg liked the tree so much: Ibid. The drawing was published in AB’s article “Key West,” Raritan 27 (Summer 2007): 160. Ann Beattie remembered ST’s fascination with the tree in a conversation with DB, Brattleboro, Vermont, September 30, 2007. Four drawings of the tree are in YCAL, Sketchbook 4846, and are reproduced in S:I, p. 266.

“strangeness more than anything else”: ST to AB, February 22, 1997, SSF.

“a blessing I regard”: ST to AB, March 6, 1997, SSF.

He asked Gordon Pulis to construct: ST to AB, April 13, 1997; Gordon Pulis, interview, September 22, 2007.

He was afraid to see people: ST to AB, June 17, 1998, SSF.

Searching for some explanation: References to Bernhard are found throughout ST’s letters to AB, 1997–98, SSF.

At first Steinberg made excuses: ST to AB, July 7, 1998, SSF.

He decided that the friendship stemmed: HS, conversation, December 11, 2008.

The phone calls worried Aldo: Internal evidence in ST/AB correspondence suggested this; AB verified it in an interview, July 28, 2008.

Even though he had not driven: The rusted body of his first Chevrolet, a 1953 model, is behind the garage of his property in Springs. In ST to AB, November 7, 1998, he wrote that Huang, his Vietnamese gardener, was clearing the underbrush that had been growing around it for many years. In a mss. note, 2011, PC affirmed that he bought the Volvo on Gaddis’s recommendation.

He expressed regret that he had not reached out: ST to AB, June 17, 1997, SSF.

He pretended to complain: ST to AB, August 14, 1997, SSF.

“maybe the terror will disappear”: ST to AB, September 10, 1997, SSF.

For more than a month at the end of 1997: ST to AB, October 14, 1997, SSF.

Like one of his favorite fictional characters: ST to AB, November 5, 1997, SSF.

Just as he sometimes thought Sigrid was there: ST to AB, December 12, 1997.

Ann Beattie gave several small dinners: Ann Beattie, conversation, September 30, 2007. She remembered that ST “smoked a little grass” and enjoyed it.

What he enjoyed most was the pleasure: PC, e-mail December 6, 2010.

“Strange how the letters”: ST to IF, July 3, 1998, original in IF’s possession.

“I took it as something crazy”: IF, interview, October 12, 2007.

Next he asked Prudence: PC, mss. note, 2011.

“tired of waiting for sanity to return”: ST to HS, “Monday morning” [May 20, 1955], AAA.

Sometimes it made him wake up: HS, interviews and conversations, September–November 2007.

By early December 1998 he feared: PC, e-mail, December 15, 2010. All information about ST’s ECT therapy is from this correspondence.

Just before they left, he wrote: ST to Henri Cartier-Bresson, February 28, 1999, YCAL, Box 73.

“many degrees of perfection”: ST to IF, March, 1999, SSF. ST wrote a similar message on a postcard to AB, March 10, 1999, SSF.

“Lost memory of part of life”: ST, daily diary, March 8, 1999, YCAL, Box 82.

“It is my opinion”: Dr. Frank T. Miller, M.D., to ST, April 11, 1999, YCAL, Box 71.

During the last week of April 1999: ST’s last note in the daily diary for 1999, YCAL, Box 82, is dated April 27, when he wrote: “Sign proxy bldg 102; call Teppler.”

“And then I went to the hospital”: PC, e-mail, January 7, 2011.

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