Variations on Real

Friday morning's Playing with Real People, featuring Thomas Trofimuk (Waiting for Columbus), Annabel Lyon (The Golden Mean) and Kate Braid (A Well-Mannered Storm: The Glenn Gould Poems) centered around a discussion of the process and challenges of writing historical fiction. Each of the books concerns real people - Christopher Columbus, Aristotle and Alexander the Great, and Glenn Gould. Though I'm currently in a can't-put-down rhythm with the other two books, I will admit that what drew me to this event was the opportunity to hear Kate Braid discuss how she came to write about Gould. I recently viewed the excellent Canadian documentary Genuis Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould at the Vancouver International Film Festival and discovering Braid's collection of poems a day later provided a necessary calm because, quite honestly, anything about Gould makes the author of this blog swoon, intensely.

One of the topics that host Andreas Schroeder delved into was about method: how to begin researching given the many resources available to an author who elects to write about a well-known figure. While he consulted ample studies on Columbus, Trofimuk's novel takes absurdist liberties (this is a compliment) with his material, so historical inaccuracies were less of an issue. Annabel Lyon says that she was fortunate because very little is actually known about Aristotle. What is recorded as fact can be found in primary sources by ancient biographers; what is myth has been distilled over hundreds of years. For this reason Lyon was able, as she puts it, to come to the end of the research and see before her a blank canvass to fill in.

Braid, on the other hand, responded that she did more research on this collection of poems than any other book she has written. She read all of the biographies and listened to the recordings - all the variations of each piece of music. Towards the end of her research she visited the CBC in Toronto and the National Archives in Ottawa where she read through Gould's own journals. It was the experience of seeing how disoriented so much of this writing looked - a sentence broken down word by word, page after page on a yellow foolscap notepad - that she fully understood the pain of the man's last years. It was this experience that inspired the book's final poems about Gould's mental and physical disintegration. In the end Braid believes that she had read the cues right, that she had trusted herself as a writer and trusted her relationship with Gould.

Following the event I asked Kate Braid whether she has had any response from what's sometimes referred to as the Gouldians - devoted fans who might be more concerned than the average reader should a new novel or film contain errors of chronology, recording repertoire, or misrepresentations of the man's radio listening habits. They are an impassioned lot and rightly so. If you are wondering if I asked this question because I am one, well, I'm in good company because it sounds like Kate Braid is too. (1:19)

I also spoke with a reader, Suzanne, who shared her thoughts on the discussion and also revealed her own personal memory of the day she learned Glenn Gould had died. (2:45)

Apologies in advance for the background din in both interviews - it was obviously an engaging event!