The Story

Glenn Gould’s life as a musician begins as a fairy-tale, as his very first recording – the Goldberg Variations – skyrockets the young Canadian to the top of the music world, as a must-see and must-hear concert-pianist with sold-out performances all around the world. And then, at the height of his powers and his popularity, he makes a decision about his music and his life which splits the music world right down the middle, and remains controversial to this day.

The Making of Glenn Gould: Light and Dark

This journal records the author’s reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning Glenn Gould: Light and Dark

During the writing of the novel, the author  kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the twenty-second installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century.