A pleasing review by Marc Vincent in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the elegant new book Steinberg at The New Yorker:

Like many other readers of The New Yorker, I look at all the cartoons before reading the articles. And no other artist in this genre left such an indelible mark on the magazine as Saul Steinberg, who is justly celebrated in this handsome volume.

It is perhaps an exaggeration (but Steinberg would have loved its cheeky irreverence) to state that just as Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel are irrevocably linked, so are Saul Steinberg and The New Yorker. Joel Smith, a curator at Vassar College, tells the enthralling story of the artist and the magazine, and of their symbiotic relationship.

Steinberg's long career at The New Yorker (1941-1999) coincided with the magazine's increasing cultural influence and visibility. It also ran parallel to America's embrace of modernity with its concomitant social, political and cultural dislocation.

Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg left for Milan, Italy, in 1933 to study architecture. In 1941, shortly after receiving his degree, Steinberg escaped war-torn Europe for the United States.

From then until his death in 1999, Steinberg's drawings regularly graced the pages of The New Yorker. For the magazine alone, his output was prodigious: 89 covers (all fully reproduced in color at the back of the book), more than 650 solo cartoons and drawings, and almost 500 drawings connected to articles.

The book is divided into two parts: a 35-page critical essay followed by drawings grouped according to theme. The highly informative essay, with well-chosen supporting illustrations, examines Steinberg's life and career at The New Yorker. It elucidates his artistic goals and style, while placing the artist in the broader context of American art and culture. Unique among major postwar American artists, Steinberg reached his audience not via the gallery or museum wall but through the printed page, which arrived weekly on the newsstand or in the mailbox. His astute commentary on American life made him an eagerly awaited guest every week for six decades.

The thematically arranged drawings focus more narrowly on Steinberg's favorite themes, with titles such as At War, American Allegories, Cat People, The Sexes, On a Pedestal, and Mean Streets. Both his art and his nation were wrestling with issues such as materialism, bureaucracy and power. Steinberg's favorite subject, close to the heart of an immigrant like himself, was what it meant to be an American or, more specifically, a New Yorker.

His most famous—and most often parodied and misunderstood—drawing, the March 29, 1976, New Yorker cover, "View of the World from 9th Avenue," is typical of Steinberg's irreverent, mischievous and ambiguous homage to his adopted home. Far from celebrating Manhattan, which appears without its canonical skyscrapers and bridges, Steinberg portrays an ordinary neighborhood of people going about their everyday tasks. To be smug about any locale —even New York City—is itself a mark of provinciality and bad taste. The joke is, of course, that New Yorker magazine readers would never fall into that trap.

But there was a gentler and less piquant side to Steinberg, who also celebrated the joys of reading, love, gossip and gardening, or delved into the mysteries of language, memory, or reason. Thus his drawings are populated by an array of improbable characters such as cats, pedestals, rubber stamps, buildings, letters and numbers, all of which come in various artistic garbs ranging from the exuberant and colorful to the sparing and austere.

Steinberg's drawings in "Steinberg at The New Yorker" will reward the eye for their visually arresting lines, colors, and shapes, as well as provoke the mind with an array of intellectual and mental gymnastics. Laughter, wonderment and puzzlement are sure to emanate from the reader—and that is exactly what Steinberg would have wanted.

Vincent is a professor of art history at Baldwin-Wallace College.

To reach Marc Vincent: books@plaind.com

For those who have been away on religious missions to the South Seas for the last 15 years or so, the series featured a core cast of 4 characters: Elaine, George, Kramer and the eponymous Jerry Seinfeld. All were single New Yorkers with checkered job histories, who seemed incapable of developing lasting and caring relationships with others, either in their careers or their romantic lives. While different on the margins, they all shared certain attributes around which much of the humor of the show pivoted.

They were, to use the term now in vogue, Metrosexuals. Their perspective as Manhattanite city dwellers was expressed by the famed New Yorker cartoon by Saul Steinberg, in which everything beyond the Hudson looks tiny and insignificant. They never evinced any desire to travel or live elsewhere. They all lived in rented apartments and never expressed any home-owning desires.

When they did take excursions outside of Manhattan, they often used these trips to belittle and alienate the rural or suburban people they met. George’s trips to the outer boroughs were usually to visit his parents, and what usually transpired was an argument. Other trips lead to the Bubble Boy episode, cabins being burned down, accusations of lobster stealing, and parking garage travails in a suburban shopping center.