Saturday, July 11, 2020

An Illegible Inscription in Saul Steinberg's The Passport

What do you make of this inscription by Saul Steinberg?


A Friend of the Blog sent along two photographs of a copy of Saul Steinberg's The Passport (1949). This copy was signed in 1954 with an indecipherable inscription. My first reaction was to think it must be in Romanian but, no, that is not the case, as this friend informed me. It is, rather, one of Steinberg's famous false documents, albeit executed on a very small scale as a book inscription. It strikes me that I have never seen Steinberg do such a thing in this context. After all these years of following his work, I continue to be astonished and confounded by him.



Note:  My thanks to A Friend of the Blog for this fascinating submission.

Saul Steinberg's brilliant false documents are examined by the Saul Steinberg Foundation here.

Uniquely signed copies of The Passport and other books by Steinberg would always make welcome submissions to this blog. Examples of Steinberg's false documents would of course be acceptable too.

What keywords should I use for this post? It's clearly a signed book. Can it be said to have an inscription if the words are all nonsense? Can it be said to contain an original drawing, or is it just wayward handwriting? At a genuine loss, I included all three keywords.



Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Saul Steinberg


Signed Books


Attempted Bloggery's Unreadable Index

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