He was speaking in French at the same time. "This was an interview I gave sort of over the shoulder. I was having a conversation, in French, with a colleague while this young woman was doing this interview. So these were very much tossed-off remarks," he said. He added that at the time, he probably got careless with his words because he was "more concerned about [his] French accent than [he was] in actuality what [he was] saying to her."

He teaches Truman Capote: "I’m the only guy in North America who teaches Truman Capote, and Truman Capote was not what you’d exactly call a real heterosexual guy. So I really don’t know what this is about." Later, Gilmour adds: "I think anybody who teaches Truman Capote cannot be attacked for being an anti-anything."

Blame the journalist: Gilmour was interviewed by a woman, and he brings into question her motivations here, claiming that the remarks above were, mostly or partially, a joke. "This is a young woman who kind of wanted to make a little name for herself, or something," he says. "I assumed that the journalist in charge knew when I was joking, and knew when I wasn’t."

"Almost all my students are girls." But Gilmour says that this experience won't make him reconsider his syllabus. "If someone wants a course on Margaret Atwood or Alice Munro, I could put it on my curriculum, but I won’t teach it as well and as passionately as some of the teachers down the hall." Meanwhile, someone has responded as Gilmour's woman down the hall. She's not interested in teaching books by David Gilmour. Gilmour, when pressed, names exactly two female authors he likes: Alice Munro and Virginia Woolf (notably, that omits fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood).

Like some other high-profile professionals who have said careless or sensitive things in a public forum, Gilmour would just like us to get to know him better before judging. "There isn’t a racist or a sexist bone in my body, and everyone who knows me knows it," he explains. The intent of his words, he emphasizes again and again, were misunderstood. But there's little room for Gilmour to talk around his very direct remarks on the value of female writers, and what that says to his apparently woman-filled classrooms. His comments touch a nerve, in his industry and outside of it, one that his call for understanding here will likely do little to correct.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.