Noel Malcolm
At the age of 32, when he was recognised as one of the world's most talented pian- ists, Glenn Gould gave up live concerts altogether and retreated to the recording studio. His records continue to dazzle and perplex (and irritate, with his frequently audible humming over the music); contrary to popular belief, he was not batty though he obviously didn't mind giving the impression that he was. His writings on music, The Glenn Gould Reader (Faber, £12.50), cover a whole range of likes and dislikes, fantasies and fallacies from Bach to Schoenberg: a must for music-lovers. Also from Faber comes a long-awaited reprint of one of the funniest and cleverest of all novels of university life: Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell (£4.95). It does for the American liberal postwar intelligentsia what Lucky Jim was to do for some of their English campus counterparts a few years later. Another book I have spent years looking for in secondhand bookshops is Richard Luck- ett's The White Generals; Routledge are at last re-issuing it in a revised edition (£18.95). Spectator readers have not been overburdened with articles celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution unlike the subscribers to Marxism Today who were all invited to join a party (I mean a drinks party) under the slogan 'Don't be a red square'. The Bolsheviks' real achievement was not their initial coup in a power vacuum, but the way they held onto power during the next seven years. This book explains why and how the White armies lost the Civil War: sobering reading for long, cold winter nights.
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