All in Line

A new edition of Saul Steinberg’s memoir-via-drawing of his escape from fascist Europe and of his transition into life as an American, capturing absurdities, delights, and the grim realities of war along the way.

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.

Saul Steinberg (1914-1999), famed worldwide for giving graphic definition to the postwar age, had one of the most remarkable careers in American art. While renowned for the covers and drawings that appeared in The New Yorker for nearly six decades, he was equally acclaimed for the drawings, paintings, prints, collages, and sculptures he exhibited internationally in galleries and museums. His book The Labyrinth was reissued by New York Review Books in 2018.

Iain Topliss is a Senior Lecturer of English at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he is a cultural historian of the twentieth century and specializes in the study of comic art. He published his scholarly study The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addam, and Saul Steinberg in 2005.

Liana Finck is a regular contributer to The New Yorker and the author of several books of comics, most recently the graphic novel Let There Be Light.