1987

January, S.I. Newhouse, new owner of The New Yorker, dismisses longtime editor William Shawn. In protest, ST withholds new work from the magazine.

January 31–February 7, spends a week on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

February, Prudence Crowther contacts ST while compiling a volume of S.J. Perelman’s letters; she will become an important friend to both ST and Hedda Sterne.

April 24–May 6, brief trip to Paris, Brussels, and Bruges, with Sigrid. Such trips to Europe are becoming infrequent; most of his traveling is now to beach resorts in Florida and the Caribbean. “The winter has become my real enemy,” he tells Buzzi.

June, Judge Louis L. Stanton hands down a decision in favor of ST’s 1984 suit against Columbia Pictures for the illegal use of View of the World from 9th Avenue. ST savors the decision as “a true, primitive pleasure, the glorious dream of every humble individual persecuted by invincible forces.”

October 13–November 28, “Steinberg: Recent Work,” at the Pace Gallery, New York.

October 27, death of French artist Jean Hélion, a longtime friend, for whom he had made a record-label portrait as the frontispiece to a 1966 exhibition catalogue of Hélion’s work.