[Book review] A Romance on Three Legs

[Book review] A Romance on Three Legs. July. 09, 2016 07:24. by 손택균기자 sohn@donga.com. Japanese manga artist Takehiko Inoue made an unexpected choice in "Vagabond," a manga series that he started publishing in 1998. He completely hid Musashi Miyamoto, the main character who just started gaining popularity, for a considerable period of time. Musashi’s rival Kojiro Sasaki, who emerged from the interim part of the series, was described as another main character rather than an assisting character. The author’s ambition, which made him attempt to display as equals in parallel the acts of the two main characters who are heading for their final duel, the climax of the series, remains collapsed due to indefinite suspension of publishing.

The first section of the new book "A Romance on Three Legs," written by American journalist Katie Hafner, looks similar to the manga Vagabond. In the second chapter that follows a brief story on pianist Glenn Gould, the book sheds light on the life of Sharel Verne Edquist, a blind piano tuner who was born one year earlier than Gould. The main character of the next chapter is a piano, which was created at a remote factory when Gould was at the age of 10. The author made the 10 years, which the trio encountered after some 20 years and performed unprecedented special sound, as the climax, and introduced their respective life. Just as Edquist who tuned a piano thousands of times for Gould was the case, Steinway piano "CD 318" is described as a taciturn living organism in the book.

The original title "A Romance on Three Legs" refers to the three legs of the grand piano and a short encounter by three different paths of life. Of course, Gould is the focal point.

The book could be interesting reinstatement of Gould’s finicky life that has become boring because it has been told too much by adding new materials. Shedding light on the only piano that sensitively reacted to orders Gould’s fingers are placing without the background of low-pitched town, and the clever tuner who brokered the two broadens by several feet the scope of sense of happiness one feels while listening to Gould’s music.