GG: Search for Petula Clark

[junichi miyazawa <jmjmj@attglobal.net>]

Hi f_minors,

(I have long been silent: apologies to whom
I was supposted to reply to off-list.)

I am now thinking about a topic:

"GG as a writer,"

on which I will be making a presentation
at a conference of Canadian studies in Tokyo soon.

The presentation will be a brief survery covering
GG's writing activities, but
I have been wondering if he could be called a novelist
or a playwright for some of his aritcles, such as "Mode
Harbor," for his self-interviews, and for radio documentaries,
including "A Glenn Gould Fantasy."

I stick to the point because there is an anthology
of short stories including one of GG's works:
_The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian
Stories_, edited by Michael Ondaatje (London:
Fabor and Fabor, 1990).
You will find there "Search for Petula Clark."

Do you regard it a fiction?  Does it deserve to be included
in such an anthology?

Ondaatje says in the preface:

> And as for Glenn Gould's comic deconstruction of
> Petula Clark, it seems to me as fictionally playful
>  and literary-wise as the fiction of
> Julian Barnes in _Flauber's Parrot_ or
> the "Drover's Wife" stories by contemporary Australian
>  writers. Gould's fictional critique is not that far away
> in intent and style from George Bowering's outrageous
> version of the explorer George Vancouver--who in his
> travels is surrounded by Indians who speak like
> eighteenth-century Englishmen.

It is an interesting comment just made me rush to a library
and a bookstore to get _Flauber's Parrot_ and an anthology
of an Australian novelist Henry Lawson, including his own
"Drover's Wife,"both of which I am now reading.

What is Goerge Bowering's version of George Vancouver?

Anyway, do you regard "Search for PC" a fiction?
Let me know your ideas depending on or not depending on
Ondaatje's comments.

My tentative conviction is that
the piece is a speculation of identity seeking
projecting his own "search"for his inner world
to Petula Clark's songs to reconstruct them
into a quasi-autobiographical achievement.
But I cannot decide it could be called a fiction
(perhaps depending on the definition, anyway),
and GG could be called a fiction writer.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Junichi

Re. Henry Lawson:
> http://www.ballarat.edu.au/units/fs502/drovers.htm

Re. drover's wife:
> http://arts.abc.net.au/drysdale/paintings/30.htm

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Junichi Miyazawa, Tokyo
jmjmj@attglobal.net (main)
http://www.geocities.com/jmoffice
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