Many readers still claim this haunting, atmospheric novel of Michael Ondaatje's as their first love - a novel as sensual and erotic today as ever it was. At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. But it had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden - he who cut hair by day at N. Joseph's Shaving Parlor, and at night played jazz, unleashing an unforgettable wildness and passion in crowded rooms. Self-destructively in love with two women, he embodied all the dire claims that music places on its acolytes. At the age of 31, Buddy Bolden went mad. From these sparse facts, Michael Ondaatje has created a story as beautiful and chilling as a New Orleans funeral procession, where even the mourners dance.
Coming Through Slaughter
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Michael Ondaatje has said that his 1976 jazz novel, Coming Through Slaughter, began with a chance phrase in a newspaper: "Buddy Bolden who became a legend when he went berserk in a parade." Cited by many as the father of jazz trumpet, Bolden's legendary fall from improvisational virtuosity to a lingering demise in a mental asylum propels this incisive novel of artistic and emotional passion. Coming Through Slaughter reanimates the Storyville district of New Orleans, where "2000 prostitutes were working regularly" and where "black whores and musicians [were] shipped in from the suburbs and the black customers [were] refused." Amid sin and segregation, Bolden is "obsessed with the magic of air, those smells that turned neuter as they revolved in his lung then spat out in the chosen key."
Slaughter is very much a novel of obsessions. In addition to a music of "pure" notes and "long squawks," Bolden's passions include his wife, Nora, their children, the local tabloid he edits (and fills with stories of death), and the lover for whom he eventually abandons his family (and possibly his music). Minor characters are equally fixated. The photographer Bellocq (another Storyville character Ondaatje lifts from history) agonizes over his portraits of prostitutes. The detective Webb meticulously hunts for the missing Bolden. But while each of Ondaatje's later novels splits its attention equally among a quartet of characters, Slaughter rarely shifts its focus from the manic Bolden. Here, then, is Ondaatje's clearest picture of the self. Clear, loud, and bursting with passion, the self he pictures isn't always pretty. --Darryl Whetter
Review
"Anybody who cares about good writing ... should get this book and luxuriate in it." — Minneapolis Tribune
"One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time." — Geoff Dyer, The Observer
"A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written." — The Sunday Times
"Coming Through Slaughter ... is so stuffed full of the dolour and lust that both buoys and blemishes a life, it reads like a story dying to be told." — Books in Canada
"One of the most innovative and liberating writers of our time." — Geoff Dyer, The Observer
"A beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written." — The Sunday Times
"Coming Through Slaughter ... is so stuffed full of the dolour and lust that both buoys and blemishes a life, it reads like a story dying to be told." — Books in Canada
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By Lauren
Format:Paperback
I am really disappointed by all the vapid, negative reviews for this novel that were submitted to date - it is pretty pathetic to critisize a novel because it was difficult to read. Ondaatje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' is vivid and overpowering. An amazing read - for people who like to be challenged by literature and who enjoy works that cannot be made into tv movies.
Format:Paperback
Who can talk truthfully about the borderlands between the wilderness of insanity and the Eden of genius? Well, Michael Ondaatje, for one. Fans of "The English Patient," and later works should not pass this by. The most prosaic of M.O.'s fiction is poetic to say the least, but here, as in "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid," Ondaatje skirts the borders between poetry and novelty just as deftly as he does the two realms I earlier mentioned.
The fictionalized history of Buddy Bolden, cornet-player, jazz pioneer, and psychopath comes alive in this tale of turn of the century New Orleans. It is a tawdry, violent, heat-soaked world, full of passion and lust, suffering and early death, brightly kindled in the reader's imagination by the spare, impressionistic images Ondaatje provides. But more than anything else, it is the jazz, the frenetic ferocity of the music that comes alive in the writing. If I had to explain the joys and powers of music to a deaf person, I would give up, and give him this book instead.
Give this heady experience a try. And if you have any doubts about the trendiness/currentness of the topic, rest assured. Discussion and wonder regarding Buddy Bolden is very much alive today, and interest in this period in general endures. To give you an example, I noted recently an advertisement featuring the exhibition of photographs in an Uptown gallery by E.J. Bellocq, another (historical) character in Mr. Ondaatje's story.
Format:Paperback
A lyrical fable cast in New Orleans in the early 20th century, based on the short mad legendary life of cornet player Buddy Bolden. Ondaatje writes, about the bright withering mind of a passionate man, with dueling strokes of light and shadow, in rusted southern language. A remarkable prose poem; a silent whirring glance of an artist falling down. Highly recommended.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible book for high school students and casual readers
I was 25 pages into this book before I wanted to chuck it into a firey pit and never look at it again. Read more
Published on Mar 19 2007 by Adriana
2.0 out of 5 stars
Overhyped and Overdone
Ondaatje is best known for "The English Patient," which gave me high hopes for "Coming Through Slaughter. Read more
Published on April 17 2006
2.0 out of 5 stars
Zippity-do-dah-crap
I've been forced to wade through a lot of boring crap in my life: Thomas Hardy, Jane Urquhart's Changing Heaven, Leviticus, and this book was one of the biggest bores of them all. Read more
Published on Feb 5 2004
3.0 out of 5 stars
From an Enlish Literature Perspective...
As I read Ondaatje's book, I became frustrated and synical. I found Coming Through Slaughter to be a relatively hard read, yet still invigorating. Read more
Published on Oct 30 2000 by "nadz_74"
3.0 out of 5 stars
Jazz lovers take note
Although Buddy Bolden never made a record and the historical evidence surrounding his life has remained slight, he is a legend and remembered by virtually every contemporary... Read more
Published on April 27 2000 by Ian Muldoon
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction, not Fact
A good novel. This is not, however the true story of Buddy Bolden. I say this not as a critisism of talented writer Mr. Read more
Published on Mar 25 2000
4.0 out of 5 stars
Diffenent yet good
I am a first year student studying at the same campus where Michael Ondaatje does teach and I think that this book is one which is a must read for everyone. Read more
Published on April 9 1999
2.0 out of 5 stars
poetic
A sad, composed book about a joyous improviser: the approach does not fit the subject.
Published on Jan 2 1999 by Darkest America
5.0 out of 5 stars
Listening for Lost Notes
Michael Ondaatje writes yet another stunningly original little book--in this case, a fictionalized meditation on Buddy Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz. Read more
Published on Jun 8 1997
5.0 out of 5 stars
Voices Calling Out To Me From Fog
I am a writer, a poet, a singer and musician. I first read "Coming Through Slaughter" seven years ago, and it has haunted me since. Read more
Published on May 7 1997
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