1992
March, sends longtime friend John Updike a drawing for his 60th birthday inscribed “John UP 60!”
June, Sigrid Spaeth attempts suicide with a drug overdose in the Amagansett house; ST finds her and calls for an ambulance.
July, Tina Brown becomes editor of The New Yorker and convinces ST to contribute inside color features and covers.
August, tells Aldo Buzzi that he fell off his bicycle but was not seriously hurt. “In my mind I see the disasters I avoided—teeth, bones, eyes—and I understand the concept of the Ex-Voto.” He makes an apotropaic drawing of the event, which recalls a moment he had described to Buzzi in 1983.
Fall, publication of The Discovery of America, with introduction by Arthur C. Danto. The book presents a lifetime of his drawings of American people, places, and architecture. The reviews are good, but he calls it a “celebrity book,” with reviewers treating him like “a celebrity at sunset.”
October, Buzzi visits him in Amagansett.
December 5, opening of “Saul Steinberg: The Discovery of America,” at The Pace Gallery, Greene Street, an exhibition celebrating the publication.
December 8, death of William Shawn, former editor of The New Yorker and ST’s good friend. ST had sent him a copy of Discovery of America. Shawn’s admiring response, penned three days before he died, reassures ST that Shawn bore no hard feelings about his decision to resume New Yorker contributions.