Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature by Margaret Atwood (review)

been conditioned by the combative language and outlook of competition and of competitions. In these pages, Aide comes across as a generous colleague, writing admiringly about such fellow Canadian artists as Greta Kraus, Jane Coop, and Anton Kuerti. He knew Glenn Gould and clearly admired, even idolized, him. Both of them studied with the same teacher, Alberto Guerrero. In his heartfelt memoir of his teacher, Aide takes spirited issue with Gould and his biographers who have been content to assign a very minor role in Gould's artistic development to Guerrero. The idea that Gould was ·self. taught is an attractive myth: Aide shows how basic aspects of Gould's ' technique and repertoire are clearly the result of his study with Guerrero. Perhaps the most moving sections in this memoir involve the more personal relationships. There is, first of all, the accoW1t of his painful and sometimes explosive attempts to come to terms with the taciturn personality of his father, a survivor of Dieppe. His relationship to the poet Margaret Avison, who first inspired him to write poetry, leads to a rumination about the sometimes conflicting demands of art and religion. It is this section which makes one wish for a little more expansion. His references to organized religion are often troubled, and his feelings undergo a severe strain when, during the funeral of a student who has died of AIDS, and whom he had helped care for, there arejudgrnental and uncharitable words offered by Christian friends of the dead man's family. Yet Aide has remained a Christian throughout his life. Clearly he has more to say about the sometimes conflicting demands made by his religious beliefs and rus active intellectual life. Finally, the most powerful section in the book describes his struggles in dealing with his wife's chronic depression a disease which has sometimes plagued the author as well. His aCCOlll1t is harrowing, painful, unsparing, and deeply moving. ' William Aide comes across as very much a child of the 19305: he is practical, impatient with the excesses and reforming zeal of the 19605. He seems almost apolitical. Yet the voice we hear is intensely engaged: with art and other artists, with problems of teaching, with questions of conscience and identity. It is sometimes querulous, occasionally prey to literary convolution, but generous and distinctive. Oberon has done an important service in making this voice available. (BRUCE VOGT) .