What is the cause and drive of the impulse to create art? What happens to an individual gifted with talent, but finds himself thwarted? Does that creative spark become some kind of death wish? These are the questions Sky Gilbert explores in The Blue House.
Taking the form of a memoir, the novel relates the story of Rupert Goldmann, a cello virtuoso by the age of twelve, who becomes a composer, and whose life collapses into depression and possible madness when no orchestra will perform his symphonies. Rupert’s musical life includes years of lessons from the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who flirts awkwardly and ineffectually with Rupert, and a full-fledged romance with the celebrity composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
But as his life narrows, Rupert finds himself immersed in dreams and fantasies, which are interrupted by a superficial and talentless gay rights activist and theatre director, and Simon Reycraft, an early explorer of artificial intelligence, who offers the suicidal Goldmann a legacy of computer-generated music ― posing a significant question for our times: can art be created by a machine, technology without a soul?
Sky Gilbert is a writer, director, and drag queen extraordinaire. He studied at York University and the University of Toronto before co-founding Buddies in Bad Times, a Toronto theatre dedicated to 2SLGBTQ+ drama. Author of eight previous novels, more than thirty plays, three volumes of poetry, and three works of non-fiction, he has been awarded the Margo Bindhardt Award, three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Pauline McGibbon Award, the Silver Ticket Award, and the ReLit Award (for his fourth novel,An English Gentleman(Cormorant Books)).
Canadian Read