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All in Line

All in Line

by Saul Steinberg, introduction by Liana Finck, afterword by Iain Topliss

$34.95
$34.95
American Literature Comics & Graphic Novels
Format

To escape fascist Europe, the artist Saul Steinberg drew his way to America. He made it to New York in 1942 already in contract with The New Yorker, but was soon called up to serve in the US Naval Reserve in World War II. This book, All In Line, is a memoir-via-drawing of this key time in Steinberg’s life, when he began to find his line and his way as an American. 
 
In works for The New Yorker and others, Steinberg depicted delightful absurdities and quiet moments: a painter saws a long canvas into smaller, sellable portions; a child draws a gigantic face on the sidewalk to the confusion of passersby; American soldiers stroll through exquisitely detailed streets in China, India, North Africa, and Italy.
 
But Steinberg didn’t shy away from the grim realities of his era. There are withering anti-fascist drawings, as well as glimpses of war: skies crowded with bombers, families on the run, army convoys, broken-down jeeps, and smoldering battlefields.

This new edition of All in Line includes an introduction by cartoonist Liana Finck, an afterword by Steinberg scholar Iain Topliss on the making of the book, and full captions with notes. It will resonate with both lifelong Steinberg fans as well as those who are encountering his work for the first time.

Additional Book Information

Series: New York Review Books
ISBN: 9781681378626
Pages: 160
Publication Date:

Praise

[Steinberg is] one of the towering creative forces of the twentieth century.
—Françoise Mouly, art editor, The New Yorker

For the six decades, [Steinberg’s] amazing work levitated this magazine; here was a major twentieth-century artist who also possessed an unmatched gift for the magazine page, especially The New Yorker’s.
—Ian Frazier, The New Yorker

Is there any subject—or object, for that matter—that Saul Steinberg didn’t have at with his swordlike pen? Cartoonist-artist extraordinaire, he was a veritable Leonardo of graphic drollery.
—Grace Glueck, The New York Times

Steinberg certainly produced his share of classics, and in the process he helped pave the way for a culture of boundary-blurrers. . . . He showed that literature can be created without using a single sentence.
—Deborah Solomon, The New York Times Book Review

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