Through this process, Said unravels the narrative, geographical, and formal consistency of canonical works, contrasting this consistency with divergent contemporary histories and focusing particularly on the resistance to the imperialism that undergirds conventional narrative structures of the nineteenth-century European novel. In these contrapuntal readings, Said questions the formal economy of the novel and spatializes the economy through which its characters thrive, to encompass the geopolitical coordinates of colonial power. The term \u201ccontrapuntal\u201d is more widely used in music, however, to refer to a composition in which two or more independent melodic parts play simultaneously. Evoking these musical origins and their metaphoric potential, Said claims that his \u201cglobal, contrapuntal analysis should be modelled not (as earlier notions of comparative literature were) on a symphony but rather on an atonal ensemble.\u201d This model also tellingly reflects a shift from synthesis and linear narrative to rhizomatic spatializations, as Said calls upon it to include \u201call sorts of spatial or geographical and rhetorical practices\u200a\u2014\u200ainflections, limits, constraints, intrusions, inclusions, prohibitions\u200a\u2014\u200aall of them tending to elucidate a complex and uneven topography.\u201d^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> -  Ibid., 318.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Idea of North<\/em>, described as a \u201ccontrapuntal radio documentary\u201d by its creator, the Canadian composer and concert pianist Glenn Gould, was broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1967, as part of the country\u2019s centennial celebrations. Gould conceived this hour-long radio documentary, the first work in his \u201cSolitude Trilogy,\u201d as a research-based evocation of the Canadian North, which he described as a place that was convenient for him to \u201cdream about, spin tales about,\u201d yet ultimately avoid.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - \u201cGlenn Gould Radio Documentary\u200a\u2014\u200aThe Idea of North,\u201d Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, accessed October 12, 2015, http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/Radio\/More+Shows\/Glenn+Gould+-+The+CBC+Legacy\/Audio\/1960s\/ID\/2110447480\/.<\/span> The Idea of North<\/em> includes six voices\u200a\u2014\u200athose of an anthropologist, a sociologist, a prospector, a government employee, a nurse, and a surveyor\u200a\u2014\u200athat alternate and overlap throughout the composition, in which Indigenous perspectives from the Arctic are glaringly omitted. As a collection of first impressions introducing a vaguely delineated space, the voices seem to cultivate the experience of conversing with guides to understand a mystifying region, as much as they contribute to an image of the North as a solitary, daunting place through which southern Canadians can nevertheless romantically fulfill themselves. More overtly, however, The Idea of North<\/em> echoes the disjunction between perceptions of a geographical consistency in a national imaginary and the reality that the vast majority of Canadians live, as Gould did, along a thin sliver of less than two hundred kilometres in the southernmost part of the country.^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> -  This disjunction is reflected in the term 49^{th<\/sup> parallel<\/em>, which metonymically refers to the entire Canada-U.S. border, a paradoxical limit in the Canadian imaginary, since almost three quarters of Canadians live south<\/em> of the 49th<\/sup> parallel north.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n}

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