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Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
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Coming Through Slaughter (1976)

by Michael Ondaatje

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894139,013 (3.78)27
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    The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros (whitewavedarling)
    whitewavedarling: Both these novels are built from poetic prose and intoxicating atmospheres of jazz, New Orleans, mystery, and emotion. Maistros' work is of a darker material and allows the supernatural a large part in its' path, but both works are eerily tangible and fascinating once you allow yourself to get sucked in, and the atmospheres are strangely similar, however different the stories are.… (more)
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Only book by Ondaatje I haven't finished. Could have been an age/stage sort of deal, perhaps try again. ( )
  lucthegreat | May 10, 2013 |
Not my cup of tea. First book I have ever even looked at by Ondaatje. I will be taking a look at another one today and hope to have a better time of it. The book, and or subject, just couldn't keep my interest or attention. I did look at every page and read bits in pieces I found enough of as I skimmed the surface, never getting below it, never finding the deep end of the pool. ( )
  MSarki | Mar 29, 2013 |
Unfortunately the many virtues that others see in this book were invisible to me. I found it disjointed, pretentious in its style and unengaging in its characters. ( )
  dazzyj | Jan 10, 2013 |
Coming Through Slaughter is the imagined life story of the early jazz musician, Charles "Buddy" Bolden. Bolden was born around 1876 in New Orleans. He played they coronet, led his own band, and developed a musical style that blended ragtime and gospel music into an early form of improvisational jazz. In 1907 Bolden went insane from alcohol poisoning and was institutionalized for the rest of his life.

Ondaatje's unorthodox novel presents Bolden's story from several perspectives, with short blocks of text alternating narrators, occasionally in first person, and occasionally with documentary interjections. Near the end of the novel the author summarizes what little is actually known about Bolden's life and career, revealing that much of what we have read is Ondaatje's invention.

The Bolden of the novel is eccentric, erratic, usually drunk and occasionally violent. But he is also sensitive and compassionate, especially with women. Most of the women in Bolden's life are prostitutes, and they are part of a vivid picture the author provides of turn-of-the-century New Orleans.

Coming Through Slaughter would probably appeal most to those interested in jazz pioneers. Not having any background in that musical genre, I was interested chiefly in the place and time, but found the narrative too fragmented to develop much interest in Bolden or the other characters. ( )
1 vote StevenTX | Nov 25, 2012 |
Short and in short sections that I found easy to read. Based on a true story about Buddy Bolden, a cornet playing Jazz pioneer that ends up in the lunatic asylum. This is a somewhat artistic take on history and an adult read that can be enjoyed by those of strong and open mind. ( )
  agdturner | Jun 28, 2012 |
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0679767851, Paperback)

Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.

In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel--one where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its fullness. Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:38:45 -0500)

(see all 3 descriptions)

Buddy Bolden, a New Orleans barber, cornet player, and full-time editor of a gossip sheet, disappears for two years, and when he returns, he goes berserk and spends his final years in the East Louisiana state hospital.

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