cover image Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels

Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels

Toby Ferris. Harper, $29.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-293175-7

Ferris, creator of the Anatomy of Norbiton online series of essays inspired by Renaissance art, blends memoir with philosophic meditation on art criticism in his thoughtful debut. In 2012, shortly after his father dies and leaves behind journals full of blank pages—a metaphor of a “life unfulfilled’—the largely unemployed Ferris embarks on a 19-city international tour to see all 42 paintings by Dutch Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, to create something meaningful in his own life. But this is not a straightforward travelogue; by examining life through Bruegel’s “ethnographic eye,” Ferris seeks relief from middle-aged uncertainties: while viewing The Census at Bethlehem in Brussels, he thinks, “We make spreadsheets, trace genealogies, embark on projects, write essays. All this must and will be made to mean something.” Throughout his three-year tour, Ferris finds elements within the paintings that fuel ruminations on his father’s death, which he saw as “a temporary loss of our own identity.” As time passes, he becomes only more uncertain: while studying Bruegel’s several detailed crowd scenes, Ferris concludes “one of us is lost in a crowd.” By book’s end, he realizes “I do not know if I became my father, simply because I do not know who my father was—what those blank pages might have contained.” Ferris shows a gifted eye for detail throughout, and fans of Renaissance art will appreciate his thought-provoking insight. (Feb.)