Imagining Glenn Gould

["Robert C. Kunath" <kunath@hilltop.ic.edu>]

Dear Bruce,

	Silvio passed your radio drama on Gould to the f_minor list, and I have
only very belatedly caught up with it.  I just wanted to say that I thought
that it was beautifully done, and I wish very much that I could have heard
it.

	I have no criticisms to make, but I do have a hypothesis: what makes your
play so moving is not just the knowledge that it was not to happen, but
rather the feeling--the awful feeling--that it couldn't have happened.  By
50, GG was so locked in to what he was that there was no escape.  I am
reminded of one of my favorite litttle vignettes from Kafka (presented as
one of two opening parables in the Schocken edition of the collected
stories).  It's called "An Imperial Message," and describes how the Emperor
of China has, on his deathbed, dictated a message to you, the lowest of his
subjects, far off in the provinces.  The messenger is a powerful man, with
unquestioned authority, who starts immediately.  But he finds his way
blocked by endless retainers, inner and outer courts of the palaces.  He
will never get through the palaces, never, but even if he did, he would
find himself in the heart of the imperial capital, crammed to bursting with
its own sediment: "No one could get through there, even with a message from
a dead man.  But you sit alone at your window as evening falls and dream it
to yourself."

	We all dream of that miracle that will transform us, and Glenn must have
dreamed of it too.  Sad and beautiful.  Thank you for sharing the play with
us.

Robert