“Do you know the old painting,” he said, “that shows dozens of children playing games in some town square?” “Hundreds actually. Two hundred anyway. Bruegel. I find it unwholesome. Why?” “It came up in conversation.” “I don’t know what art history says about this painting. But I say it’s not that different from the other famous Bruegel, armies of death marching across the landscape. The children are fat, backward, a little sinister to me. It’s some kind of menace, some folly. Kinderspielen. They look like dwarves doing something awful.”
