One of the greatest pleasures of my theatre-going life was seeing [b:Glenn|215932|Glenn|David Young|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1351098000l/215932._SY75_.jpg|209056] just after I returned from the biggest artistic risk of my life. I've now seen 3 different productions of this play. It's the sum total of my knowledge of Glenn Gould.

Both that play and this graphic novel are an attempt to understand this unique creative mind and use time jumps to navigate this. I found it really confusing for the first half of the book and that ultimately made it hard for me to buy in. Once I figured out it was a jumble of impressions and I saw my familiar Toronto landmarks I found I could settle in. I especially enjoyed the interlude with the CN Tower. The pages with hands on the keyboards were quite evocative.

In the end, I learned a few bits about his life but felt overall underwhelmed. I fully acknowledge it's probably because David Young's work inspired and touched me in a way that this book never came close to and not the quality of the graphic novel itself. Seriously, read the play. I wish there was a way people could see a production. Or failing that, I hear really good things about the François Girard film, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. ( )

Otra maravilla de Astiberri. La historia dulcifica la imagen de friki de Gould y los dibujos lo humanizan. ( )

Graphic novels / bios are a newer medium for me, but this one made me glad I'm giving them a shot. I enjoyed "Monet: Itinerant of Light," another title in this biographical series from NBM, and was delighted to find this one on the "wondrously strange" musician I admire tremendously. Just opening the cover to the beautifully rendered endpapers of the mysterious, smoky dark skies pulled me in. I appreciated Revel's choice to tell this man's story in fractured, impulsive, wandering fashion, perhaps approximating his own odd mental processes. This is not a bio, it's a portrait, and not a royal-personage-on-the-hall-of-fame-wall portrait. An anxious child becoming an anxious man, crunching through Canadian snows, pages of fluttering hands on the keys, pages of friends and acquaintances pithily describing what they knew about him... an appealing introduction to Glenn Gould. My husband, who has never looked at a graphic novel in his life, was quite captivated... and half way through, got up to put the CD of Gould's 1982 recording of Goldberg into the player (yes, we still use a CD player...). And I want to track down a copy of the lovely 1993 Canadian film, "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," whose balletic sequence of Colm Feore as Gould dancing like a white-winged angel around the studio plays in my mind often. ( )

Glenn Gould (1932-1982), genio de la música clásica, fascinó al mundo por su talento inaudito, la modernidad de sus interpretaciones y su extraña manera de tocar el piano, encorvado y tarareando con los ojos cerrados. Sandrine Revel recrea en viñetas la vida del pianista canadiense, tratando de comprender a la persona detrás del personaje, de acercarse a la vida interior de un genio solitario, frágil y atormentado, que afirmó en algún momento: “creía firmemente que todo el mundo compartía mi pasión por el cielo nublado. Me sorprendió mucho darme cuenta de que algunas personas preferían el sol”.

La autora francesa no enfoca su cómic como una biografía lineal, sino que hila el relato en tres tiempos: el presente, los recuerdos y la conciencia de Glenn Gould, creando un retrato-puzzle que busca descifrar el misterio que rodea al músico a través distintas épocas de su vida, los testimonios de quienes lo conocieron y sus propias declaraciones. “Lo que me fascina no son tanto sus excentricidades –apunta Revel– sino en qué modo se valía de ellas. Era un rebelde en un entorno clásico y muy codificado, un hombre libre. Tocaba de esa manera porque era así como mejor sentía la música”. Sandrine Revel recibió por Glenn Gould. Una vida a contratiempo el premio Artémisia 2016.