The Upside-Down World
By Benjamin Moser
Liveright, October 10, 2023
Plunged into a strange land at twenty-six, Benjamin Moser began an obsessive, decades-long study of the Dutch masters to make his world right again.
Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser was flummoxed, as any newcomer might be, by the language, people, and culture. As he started exploring his newly adopted country, he stumbled upon the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, that galaxy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists—Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer among them—who seemed to be asking the same questions he’d been grappling with: Why do we make art? What even is art, anyway? Does it provide solace? Or something more necessary to human happiness? Year after year, Moser coaxed answers out of these old paintings, discovering in Rembrandt an affinity for the “unequivocally dead,” and in Ter Borch, an astonishing intimacy. Featuring seventeen artists and a beautifully designed, four-color text, The Upside-Down World, in the tradition of How Proust Can Change Your Life, seeks to explain how such resplendent beauty can—indeed must—flourish in a world so endlessly marred by tragedy.
Selected Praise
"Lively, ardent and intellectually rigorous." —The New York Times Book Review, on Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
"Why This World treats Clarice and her many mysteries very gently. Moser carefully unwraps the very raw, intimate character behind her very introspective books... An excellent feat of portraiture "—Los Angeles Times, on Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
"This is rich biographical material that gets only richer as Mr. Moser… begins to unpeel the layers of her complicated life. 'Why This World' sucks you into its subject's strange vortex." —The New York Times, on Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
About the Author
Benjamin Moser was born in Houston, Texas, and lives in Utrecht. He is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, and for Sontag: Her Life and Work, he won the Pulitzer Prize.