Michael Ondaatje: Coming Through Slaughter

[Cocko]

Here's one from 1976:

In this stunning semi-biographical take on the myth that is Buddy Bolden, Ondaatje employs a writing style that embodies equal parts jazz and schizophrenia in piecing together the story of this lauded musician from New Orleans, circa 1900. Through vignettes of drunken rages and prostitution to music and madness – and the relationships that bind it all together – the reader is presented with a manic narrative, fractured by alternating perspectives, likened by many pundits to jazz riffs and syncopated beats.

Sure, Ondaatje is a formidable poet, and in hindsight his creativity in prose is to be expected. However, in this his first novel, he remains true to the cerebral aesthetics of poetry while also somehow writing a detective story, a bleak romance and even similarities to a thriller as it approaches its climax. All this in under 150 pages.

In drawing together two historical figures, the cornet player Bolden and photographer EJ Bellocq, the novel explores the destructive urges of creativity, albeit done through mythical accounts of each man as opposed to the ‘proven’ facts. But, authenticity in writing is always up for debate, be it fiction or otherwise.

The most surprising thing about my love of this book is that a year or so ago I read Ondaatje’s 1987 novel, In the Skin of a Lion. I found this novel to be excessively dry in places and, although beautifully written, unengaging. I had expected to move straight onto its sequel, The English Patient, but was put off. In fact, had my partner not picked up a copy of Coming Through Slaughter in a bargain bin I may never have revisited Ondaatje. I thank her for pointing me again in the right direction.

How's this for a paragraph:

On his last night Webb went to hear Bolden play. Far back, by the door, he stood alone and listened for an hour. He watched him dive into the stories found in the barber shop, his whole plot of song covered with scandal and incident and change. The music was course and rough, immediate, dated in half an hour, was about bodies in the river, knives, lovepains, cockiness. Up there on stage he was showing all the possibilities in the middle of the story.

[Funhouse]

I love all of Ondaatje's work, including In the Skin of a Lion, and I agree that Coming Through Slaughter is a stupendous piece of writing, beautifully wrought.

Funnily enough, one of my Year 12 students recently wrote a (very fine) piece about Bolden. He'd never heard of Coming Through Slaughter, so I lent him my copy. One of the best things about being an English teacher is introducing kids to great literature.

[ions]

Just finished Coming Through Slaughter and having read In the Skin of a Lion earlier this year my experience is the reverse of yours Cocko. I found the parsimonious style of Slaughter made it dry. I've never been one to appreciate sparse works where I am left to fill in the blanks, if you read this as laziness please confer it not upon me but the author I am reading because I am certainly not a lazy reader. I prefer to look for subtext in prolixity rather than emptiness. Anyway, before I digress too far I must admit that pulling off a work that is so schizophrenic, as Ondaatje has indeed pulled it off, takes considerable talent. It just didn't stroke me the right way overall but there are more than a handful of excellent scenes. I will continue with Ondaatje as I come across him.