The Loser is a brilliant fictional account of an imaginary
relationship among three men--the late piano virtuoso Glenn Gould, the
unnamed narrator, and a fictional pianist, Wertheimer--who meet in 1953
to study with Vladimir Horowitz. In the face of Gould's incomparable
genius, Wertheimer and the narrator renounce their musical ambition, but
in very different ways. While the latter sets out to write a book about
Gould,...