question from a neophyte

["C. Dunne" <cdunne@u.washington.edu>]

I have only recently become a serious Gould fan, and am new to this
newsgroup, so forgive me if I am asking a stupid or sacreligious question.  

I just read Otto Friedrich's biography of Glenn Gould which is very
amusing and informative for someone like myself who has a more
journalistic/ literary sensibility than a musical one.  I love Gould's
music but because I don't have an analytical facility with music, I
can only relate to the more general descriptions of what
Gould does, e.g., his ability for crystalline "articulation" on the piano.  

Anyway, I appreciated the book because it was  a very amusing, intelligent
collection of interview excerpts, antecdotes that illuminate Gould's
complex "character;" however, I was a bit annoyed by "the Private Life"
chapter which deliberately perpetuates the "mystery" of Gould's intimate
life.  Rather than saying the man was monastic or had trouble with
intimacy, he stirs up questions of homosexuality/ heterosexuality/
asexuality.  This is fine, but at the same time, he is also responsible
for cloaking some of the details.  OK, there are journalistic ethics and
there are journalistic ethics, but it's just hard for me to beieve that
Gould had a 6+ year affair with the wife of a FAMOUS musician, who even  
moved her two kids to Toronto, for chrissakes, and no one is willing to
tell who this is?  I don't get it.  Have journalists and paparazzi become
a lot more aggressive/ resourceful/ unethical in the 80s and 90s?  Is
Gould from a generation that has more respect for the "private" life of
public icons?  Did someone less "ethical" than Friedrich name names?  


Colleen