1986

Writing to Aldo Buzzi in January, he confesses that “For the last few years, the New Yorker has already been less important to me as a presence—although still a touching one, like tante Sali, the last aunt in my life until a few months ago. I’m exaggerating, perhaps to avoid frightening myself.”

February, begins a series of interviews with Adam Gopnik, intended for publication in The New York Review of Books. The interviews continue into 1991, but no publication materializes; excerpts are published in French in the magazine L’Egoïste, December 1992.

March, spends a week in Guadeloupe with Sigrid.

September, opening of solo exhibition at the Galerie Maeght Lelong, Paris, and another at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

September 25, he tells Buzzi: “I’m creating a library of books I’ve read. Books made out of wood, Russian books in Romanian, French books in Italian etc., a kind of autobiography….I should end up making at least fifty or so books.” These carved and painted books become the three-dimensional sculpture titled Library.