Words and music
Somebody - I don't know who - once described writing about art as like "dancing about architecture". So, I guess that goes for writing about music too. In the Guardian, Joyce Hackett, US author of a powerful novel about a young, female cellist ? Disturbance of the Inner Ear, which has just been published on this side of the Atlantic ? chooses her top ten favourite novels with a musical theme. The number one is incontrovertible. Not that I've read any of the others (and, incidentally, I would put Mann's Doktor Faustus in second place). The Loser is the novelistic equivalent of Glenn Gould's piano playing. And the loser of the story ? Wertheimer ? is the one who goes under in the face of Gould's terrible virtuosity. We're all Wertheimers now.
