February 28, 1994

On February 28, 1994, The New Yorker cover was, like many another, an art piece by Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 to May 12, 1999). The one below from the archives of this august magazine, has a cat in it.

Saul Steinberg: A Biography, by Deirdre Bair (2012), was reviewed in the New York Times by Deborah Soloman and she shared this from the book:

Who was Saul Steinberg? His acquaintances thought of him as an elegant dandy who seemed catlike in his refinement. In his prime, he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, dined out most every night and held forth at dinner parties with piquant erudition and wit. But behind the thick glasses and mandarin mask lay a haunted figure, a fearful man who visited indignities upon himself and those around him. As Bair reveals, his love life was a string of infidelities, and crabbiness was his default mood. He eschewed interviews and spurned the company of very young children.

It cannot have helped his mood that his listeners found his erudition "piquant". That adjective merely points to the fact of originating in a world everyone else has forgotten.