A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano - Rilegato

“Hafner has clarified some old mysteries and turned up many fresh details, even some genuinely newsworthy scoops.”
— Kevin Bazzana, author of Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould

This book is about the oldest human intoxicant, the quest for perfection. Katie Hafner describes in fascinating detail the entire human apparatus — teachers, tuners, piano builders, sound engineers, impresarios — that made possible Glenn Gould's singular art. With the narrative force of fiction she explores the uncertain territory where unbridled artistic imagination meets the limits of an instrument, and shows us the emotional costs."
— Thad Carhart, author of The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

“Plucky New York Times correspondent Hafner ...weaves together three stories — of the pianist, the tuner and the piano itself — into a single cohesive narrative, the musical version of Seabiscuit.... Drawing on hours of recorded interviews, she filters out the redundant and inconsequential to lucidly grasp the essential: the complex interaction among an artist, a craftsman and the precious tool they both revered. Written with authority and enthusiasm, a treat for armchair musicologists, Gould fanatics and even those who never heard a note he played."
— Kirkus

“[An] evocative, detailed account of the compulsive search for a sensitive, highly responsive concert piano by Canadian musical wunderkind Glenn Gould....Hafner presents a fascinating biography of Gould.... The book will greatly appeal to those intrigued by the history of the influential German-bred Steinway piano company, but it is the close interaction of Gould and Charles Verne Edquist, the nearly blind piano tuner, with a Steinway CD 318 concert piano, that lift the book above the usual biography....”
— Publishers Weekly

“Reading Hafner on Gould is sometimes as much fun as listening to him play. And that’s saying a lot.”
— Newsweek

“Hafner’s book belongs to that gee-whiz genre perfected by writers such as John McPhee, Susan Orlean and Mary Roach.... A Romance on Three Legs is a source of delight and illumination.”
— San Francisco Chronicle

Katie Hafner, reporter for the New York Times, comes from a family of truly gifted musicians and is a clumsy, but dedicated pianist. She grew up listening to her father, a physicist and talented pianist, play the piano and expound on Glenn Gould’s interpretations of Bach. Hafner is the author of four books: Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (with John Markoff), The House at the Bridge: A Story of Modern Germany, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (with Matthew Lyon), and The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community.