Buddy Bolden created on his horn the spirit of jazz in New Orleans

Published in 1976, this novel, Ondaatje's debut, I believe, is a fictionalized look at Buddy Bolden, a pioneering New Orleans trumpet player, circa 1900. He is considered to be one of the first to play "modern" jazz. He also suffered from mental issues and had a severe breakdown while performing and spend the rest of his life in a sanatorium. The writing style is experimental, presented in a jazz style- fragmented, and syncopated. It may not suit all readers but I found it intriguing and beautifully done. ( )

Beautifully captures the essence, the vitality and death, of New Orleans, of Jazz. Ondaatje's prose style is perfect for his subject, Buddy Bolden. The way Ondaatje loves to play with time, narrative, and memory makes an ideal bedfellow to both the depiction of madness and the improvisational techniques of Jazz. Ondaatje fills negative space with his poetry the same way that Jazz legends have filled that space with their sound for more than a century now. Not only did CTS evoke and bring me the same joy, the same pleasure in devouring each sentence, as did Let the Great World Spin, it also led me to the realization that Ondaatje and Colum McCann are literary birds of a feather - none can make pain so beautiful, and beauty so painful, in the way that these two can. I love both dearly.

I digress. With nothing more than a ghost left behind for a legacy - as well as the pioneering/creation of America's greatest musical contribution - Coming Through Slaughter is the next best thing we'll ever have to honor Buddy Bolden. ( )

The story of Buddy Bolden is one that can only be cobbled together through myth and music. No recordings exist of his music, and there are so many tall tales about the man, no one can really say where the hyperbole ends and the real Buddy begins.

"Coming Through Slaughter" embraces this dilemma and rises above it, with a unique use of rather abstract language and phrasing - as well as shifting narrative - that are jarring at times, but ultimately work.

You don't have to love jazz to enjoy "Slaughter", but it does help. ( )

If you choose your partner-in-life wisely, then one of the great pleasures of combining two households is the rapid expansion of the home library. However, in the haste to unpack, it can sometimes happen in a household of many books that a treasure is overlooked, and thus it was not until 2016 that I noticed that — misclassified as a biography amid the jazz collection of The Spouse —  there was a novel, and it was by an author whose books I really like!

Coming Through Slaughter, by Sri Lankan-born Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, was the first of what would be a remarkable oeuvre of award-winning books:

• 1976: Coming Through Slaughter


• 1987: In the Skin of a Lion, see my review


• 1992: The English Patient, see my review


• 2000: Anil's Ghost, on my TBR


• 2007: Divisadero


• 2011: The Cat's Table


• 2018: Warlight on my TBR, recently reviewed by Kim at Reading Matters.

I was, however, mistaken in thinking that Coming Through Slaughter would have made a splash in the year it was published.  The Wikipedia entry for 1976 in literature doesn't even list it amongst books and authors I've mostly never heard of since most of them are genre fiction.  However, what is interesting is that the first book listed features the fictionalised life of a real person with a mental illness.  Hocus Bogus (Pseudo) is a 1976 novel by  Romain Gary, published under the pseudonym Émile Ajar.  One of its critics said that Hocus Bogus is an utterly convincing impersonation of an artistically gifted schizophrenic ...

Well, so is Coming Through Slaughter.  It's a fictionalised life of Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden (1877–1931), an African American cornetist, considered by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of New Orleans jazz.  In Ondaatje's novel, creativity and self-destructive behaviour are linked, culminating in Bolden's breakdown in 1907 and his death in an asylum in 1931.

Coming Through Slaughter is not the kind of book you read to find out about Buddy Bolden's place in the history of jazz.  From the jazz collection shelves, The Spouse very promptly came up with an authoritative bio: The Loudest Trumpet, Buddy Bolden and the Early History of Jazz by Daniel Hardie, (toExcel, iUniverse, USA, 2001).  Ondaatje's book OTOH is a pastiche of fiction, non-fiction, trivia, photos, news reports, a playlist, gossip, imagination, legends debunked long ago and a (perhaps authentic) medical report.  It's a book where the structure and style mimic Bolden's music, syncopated into fragments that represent his fame as well as his descent into madness.  The witnesses to Bolden's life are like soloists in a jazz band, offering quick glimpses of their personalities before they merge back into the collective.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/10/14/coming-through-slaughter-by-michael-ondaatje... ( )