Saul Steinberg

October 1, 2012
National Book Award winner Bair (Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over, 2007, etc.) exhaustively explores everything related to Steinberg. It is well into the book before the author digs deeply into the thoughts behind his art. Born in Romania and educated in Milan, Steinberg was an extremely private man who was terrified of exposing himself by discussing his work, but he had an extremely active social life and a desperate need to seduce any woman who took his fancy. His wife, the artist Hedda Sterne, as well as his lovers, let him get away with it. Perhaps his generosity assuaged their furor. Like so many artists of that age, he seemed to be able to escape to rest his mind for large parts of the year. Bair chronicles all of Steinberg's trips, noting every flight, sailing, hotel, train and bus ride. His dealings with galleries are interesting; travel plans and his digestion are not. Steinberg produced a wide array of work, from cartoons, books, murals, stage sets, fabric designs and even greeting cards. Call to mind View of the World from 9th Avenue, which appeared on the cover of the New Yorker in 1976, and you'll see how his mind allowed him to lead us through his free-association world. His works with "5" and "E" are masterpieces of wordless comedy, and his images were so intense that words were never needed. Bair's book, though overlong, will help readers understand the breadth of Steinberg's talents. Followers of the postwar art world will love this book but may be disappointed by the lack of examples of his work.

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June 1, 2012

The creator of fabulously spiky, satirical drawings and cartoons--everyone knows the iconic New Yorker cover that makes the rest of the country look like a really little slice of the pie--Steinberg was born in Romania, educated in Italy, and became a U.S. citizen, a commissioned navy officer, and a member of the OSS in a single day. National Book Award winner Bair got to rummage through 177 boxes of never-before-seen materials to write this biography.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2012
In this lavishly researched, pointillistic, and revealing biography, National Book Awardwinning biographer Bair seeks to decode the pleasure and puzzle of Steinberg's witty and profound creations and the paradoxes of his life. She finds clues to Steinberg's instantly recognizable visual lexicon in his childhood as a thoughtful, introspective Jewish boy in anti-Semitic Romania. A passionate reader and first-class noticer, his major preoccupations then and always were girls and drawing, and his approach to both was complicated and contradictory. Steinberg's nightmarish exodus from Nazi Europe was followed by a bizarre, world-roaming stint as a U.S. Navy psychological warfare artist. Once established in New York, and on the pages and covers of the New Yorker, Steinberg, with his keen eye for absurdity and injustice, perpetual drive to create, questing intelligence, metaphysical imagination, and sharp sense of humor, became one of the world's most industrious, successful, and conflicted artists. A self-described writer who draws, he was torn between commercial and fine art, his hunger for attention and fame and his need for privacy. As Bair chronicles Steinberg's complicated marriage to painter Hedda Sterne and tragic 35-year relationship with a much younger mistress, and richly illuminates each creative leap and fall into depression, Steinberg emerges as a philosopher-cartoonist-artist of prodigious talent, vision, and duality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)