Ottawa, June 18

After arriving in Ottawa early this afternoon (Porter Air, the only way to fly), I met up with my friend Ian Austen, who is a gifted photographer disguised as a New York Times correspndent. It was Ian who took the beautiful photograph of the piano and the pygmy chair for the front of the dust jacket. Ian drove me out to Kanata, an Ottawa suburb a good 25 minutes from central Ottawa, where the big-chain bookstore, called Chapters, had asked me to sign their inventory. Yes indeedy, this turned out to be the Canadian equivalent of the big-box bookstore, conveniently located next to an outsized Best Buy. In the car, I envisioned a good dozen or two books that I’d be signing. There were four.  I was crestfallen, but Ian tried to stay cheerful, “Oh, then it won’t take too long!” he said.

Next came a live interview with the CBC. This time, I wasn’t so sure the host had read the book, but it didn’t matter, because he covered himself beautifully. And I got to choose one of my favorite Gould pieces for him to play for the “extro.” I chose one of the Brahms Intermezzi, which I love.

The big Ottawa event was to be a reading and signing at the National Arts Centre downtown, co-sponsored by Nicholas Hoare, a well respected independent bookstore. When Ian and his wife, Sally, and I arrived, we were greeted by quite the eager crowd. The National Arts Centre had been planning to make it a stand-up affair, with cocktails and mingling. But this crowd would have none of that. They began hauling in chairs from wherever they could find them, and sat themselves down, waiting for the show to begin. It wasn’t at all what the organizers had in mind, but they went along with it. First, a  group of young musicians played Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio, for piano, viola and clarinet, and then a lovely man, Paul LeFebvre, a musician from Montreal with a very thick Quebecois introduced me with a few choice jokes (“Gould used to say that Mozart died too old”). The audience was very receptive, loved the reading, and the line for signing the book was long.

Yet again, I was struck by how readily the Canadians accepted me into their circle of Gould reverence. Many people in the audience were older, and told me they had seen Gould play. A few had even been in orchestras that he played with. So I felt doubly, triply honored that they showed up to hear this American ramble on about their cherished icon. They seemed genuinely pleased, and entertained. And many of them thanked me for what I had done. 

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