Coming Through Slaughter

By Michael Ondaatje

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307776617

Michael Ondaatje

Booker Prize-winning novelist Michael Ondaatje is the author of many collections of poetry and several books of fiction, including In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient. He and his wife live in Toronto.

Reviews for Coming Through Slaughter

[lucthegreat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Only book by Ondaatje I haven't finished. Could have been an age/stage sort of deal, perhaps try again.

[msf59 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[cail_judy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dark, experimental prose that plays with form and language, mirroring Buddy Bolden's descent into madness. Ondaatje has lines that reach up and smack you across the face in this one.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I found this book a bit of a struggle. Set in Storyville, the red light district of New Orleans at the start of the twentieth century, it promised a lot but failed to deliver. The novella tells the story of Buddy Bolden, accomplished cornet player by night, though by day he supported himself working in a barbershop. Recognised as a gifted musician, Bolden has plenty of demons to deal with and is subsiding into alcoholism alongside a gambling addiction. Hitherto devoted to Nora, his wife, he suddenly also finds himself madly in love with Robin, wife of his fellow musician Jaileen Brewitt. The emotional intensity of his situation grows too much for Bolden and he disappears, leaving his friends and family to try to pick up the pieces and discover where he has gone.I have enjoyed some of Ondaatje's other books, and particularly 'The Cat's Table' though I also remember finding 'The English Patient (both the book and the film) unnecessary drawn out, even to the extent of thinking "Please just die!". Reading this book was not, however, an enjoyable experience. The story was disjointed and the characters extremely remote: I don't need to feel great affection for characters in order to enjoy a book, but I do normally need to feel some interest in their fates. I couldn't summon the strength of spirit to feel anythi9ng at all for any of the figures in this book, and was merely conscious of a ggreat sense of relief when I finally finished it.

[polaris4_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In June 1907, Charles "Buddy" Bolden is 'escorted' by Civil Sheriffs McMurray and Jones en route from New Orleans to an insane asylum in Jackson, Louisiana. He has suffered a complete breakdown while playing with Henry Allen's Brass Band ('Red' Allen's father), marching in the Crescent City. He had broken blood vessels in his neck, and they had come through a small town called Slaughter on their way. These are some of the few hard facts known of the life of one of jazz's earliest pioneers, a life that has become the stuff of ethereal myth, legend for some. Bolden's sad story has captured the imagination of Michael Ondaatje. He tells a version of the story in a way that leaves a fuzzy glimpse of a time, a place, and a flawed musician's mental instability that leads to self-destruction. Not the last time that a force of creative talent might succumb like this.I'm not so sure that this is "the best jazz novel ever written" (as one blurber has it), but it is certainly a moving suggestion of a New Orleans at the dawn of the 20th century. Bolden was jazz's first 'cornet king'. Apparently at the forefront of improvisation, sadly no recordings of his music exist (if any were ever made), and only the one known photograph survives - used as the book's cover (Bolden is back row with his band, 2nd from the left). The first 'celebrities' of that music cite him as the great unknown influence who shaped the earliest departures that melded gospel with ragtime and the blues.Ondaatje writes poetically. This was his debut novel and the writing is memorable in passages. The structure here is a jazz performance. Sometimes rhythmic, but sometimes jarring, or perhaps even discordant. He shows us Bolden's view, but also those of his wife, and his friends: Webb - a detective who is trying to find what happened to him, and his tragic associate Bellocq who photographs Storyville prostitutes. We move in time back and forth, and sometimes can't be sure - until the refrain returns. There is a narrator in the shadows, watching over proceedings. There are love triangles: Bolden, his wife Nora and her former pimp Pickett; then another while in a self-imposed exile of two years at out of town Shell Beach. It can be confusing. But an impression undoubtedly emerges. Buddy is unpredictable and volatile - tender and subdued, intense and impassioned - alcoholic and then sometimes violent. The book pieces together episodic vignettes. From those who knew him, and those that link together the scant facts concerning his life."'Then I hear Bolden's cornet, very quiet, and I move across the street, closer. There he is, relaxed back in a chair blowing that silver softly, just above a whisper and I see he's got the hat over the bell of the horn...Thought I knew his blues before, and the hymns at funerals, but what he is playing now is real strange and I listen careful for he's playing something that sounds like both. I cannot make out the tune and then I catch on. He's mixing them up. He's playing the blues and the hymn sadder than the blues and then the blues sadder than the hymn. That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together......The picture kept changing with the music. It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil. Something tells me to listen and see who wins. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins.'"Although the brief chapters can be beautifully rendered, it is the piecemeal approach of the narrative that let the book down a little for me, and will doubtless dishearten some. Near the end is an afterword of sorts, set in the modern day as the author searches for traces. It weaves itself in with the final points of view:"The street is fifteen yards wide. I walk around watched by three men farther up the street under a Coca Cola sign. They have not heard of him here. Though one has for a man came a year ago with a tape recorder and offered him money for information, saying Bolden was a 'famous musician'. The sun has bleached everything. The Coke signs almost pink. The paint that remains the colour of old grass. 2 pm daylight. There is the complete absence of him - even his skeleton has softened, disintegrated, and been lost in the water under the earth of Holtz Cemetery. When he went mad he was the same age as I am now."

[kymmac · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Had wanted to read it in one sitting, but never found the time. Took me a while, but in the end I enjoyed it. Wish I had the time to reread it.

[blanderson-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A study on how style can effectively dominate narration. Ondaatje moves the story not with plot but with a keen sense of emotional description, as if you are watching a montage or viewing an expressionist painting. The music of this story comes from the interplay between art and life, history and myth, and genius and madness in the mind of Buddy Bolden. The various love arcs (especially Nora and Buddy, Buddy as cuckold, and Bellocq and the prostitutes) give the novel its only real narrative frames, besides Buddy's swift flow into madness.

[msarki_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[dazzyj_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The cornetist Buddy Bolden (1877-1931) is widely credited as being one of the creators of the music now known as jazz. He was born in New Orleans and formed a band in 1895, which was centered in the red light district known as Storyville and soon became one of the most popular ones in the city (Bolden is seen with his band, standing second from the left in this 1905 photograph). He was influenced by ragtime music, the blues and music from the church, and combined these elements into a unique form which was later termed "jazz". Bolden was a man of several trades, working as a barber and the publisher of a scandalous paper based on information he received from his customers and friends. Unfortunately he was also plagued by alcoholism and mental illness, and his health deteriorated in 1906, when his band was at the peak of its popularity. He suffered an acute mental breakdown the following year, and was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum, where he was confined for the remainder of his life.Michael Ondaatje, a confessed lover of jazz, provides us with a fictionalized account of the life of Buddy Bolden, in the form of an improvised riff led by a childhood friend, who became a police officer outside of town and came back to investigate Bolden's increasingly bizarre behavior and downfall. Ondaatje provides the reader with foggy and staccato-like glimpses of Bolden, his wife and mistress, and several other characters who were close to him, including the photographer E.J. Bellocq, who gained fame and notoriety by photographing the prostitutes of Storyville. Although this was an interesting technique, it did not work for me, as the main character became an elusive spirit who came into and out of focus, which prevented me from understanding the man, his music or his troubled life. This was a commendable effort, but one which frustrated and will quickly be forgotten by this reader.

[briandarvell_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't find this book as exciting or enjoyable as many others seem to have found it. It was a bit confusing and surreal in description. Perhaps this is a style design by Ondaatje but I would have trouble recommending this book to others.

[dylanwolf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jazz. I don't proscribe to the view that you either love it or hate it. I dislike the big band sound, but am also unsettled by the complexity, wildness and fierce individuality of modern jazz. "Coming Through Slaughter" is a novella riffing around the life of early jazz performer Buddy Bolden. Ondaatje, the poet, utilises the few facts that are known about his protagonist and assembles a fiction of short, diverse pieces that abut like improvised scat. Some sections I found myself absorbed in, others generated a mild headache. Ondaatje is a master of rhythm and sound and his writing is never less than impressive. It's just that some of the jazzy discontinuity, wrestling with the indeterminate pronouns, left me a little frustrated.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a hypnotizing book written in prose that alternately sounds like poetry and feels like a soft blues song. It is dirty, sweet, heartbreaking, and candid all at once. Ondaatje has masterfully woven a reality of his own around the few bare facts known about the jazz player Buddy Bolden, creating fiction that feels like nonfiction that reads like fiction. In the end, this a book about life and about art, and what both can mean separately or taken together. It's not a traditional novel, and it's got more than its share of darkness, so it isn't for everyone, but if you're looking for a book that brings on a New Orleans atmosphere and explores the world of an unknown artist who lives with each moment, this is a phenomenal read that effectively takes you back in time with graceful playful language. Truly, this is also by far the most sensuous novel I've ever read---Ondaatje is here aware of all five senses on every page, and he commits to writing each of them, subtly, so that this is sure to reach any reader with its language if not with its character. I recommend this work whole-heartedly.

[anabellebf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A haunting book that's worth taking the time to decipher... but also just to enjoy the use of language, which is very poetical. Must read, and must read AGAIN.

[misirlou_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After reading an interview published in Blackbird where poet Beckian Goldberg cited the Collected Works of Billy the Kid as a major influence for her approach to the prose poem I went out and picked up both of Michael Ondaatje's historical novellas. Personally, I prefer the deliberate way the narrator ties in the legend of Bolden into his own life.Not much is really known about Bolden; he was creditted as the originator of jazz by people all wanting to claim the title themselves. Bolden couldn't really fight for himself since he'd never recorded any of his songs and he'd gone insane by the time jazz had gotten any attention. Locked up in a house of detention and lacking anyone who'd been with him his entire life, his story became built off of rumor and hearsay. He played whorehouses, he editted a gossip rag, he was a barber-- all that is known for sure is that he's the man who started jazz. In part, this story is about the origin of jazz. At a higher level, the book is trying to define what makes an American legend and in turn, explains what makes an American tragedy (and how suceptible anyone is to tragedy). I don't want to misrepresent the book, jazz plays a major role in the narrative but the value comes from the way which Ondaatje shows Bolden relying on his music to communicate. This man, Buddy Bolden, who's quintessentially lost seems to find himself whenever he puts a trumpet to his lips. The structure of the book makes it a fast read. By using short sections, Ondaatje makes the novella itself seem like a piece of gossip. The frame of the narrator trying to understand himself through the story of Bolden is incredibly important. Tonally, the sections play off one another the same way different instruments in a band might. An image which appeared in one section will tie that piece of the story into another piece. This novella is a lament. The attention paid to the language is unnusual for fiction. Ondaatje's background as a poet shines through in his narrative style. Every detail has a point, even if it's not an obvious one. For example, a timeline is included at the end of the book which includes the acquisition of an electroshock machine in Bolden's house of d. The most likely reason? It's the only machine in psychotherapy which has a mouthpiece. The book breaks free of jazz; by using other legendary figures like the invalid photographer Bellocq (who photographed many of the sex workers and prominent females of New Orleans during his lifetime), Ondaatje pays homage to people as mythical figures. If you're looking for a detailed account of the fact and fiction surrounding Bolden, you should check out "In Search of Buddy Bolden" by Donald Marquis (conviently reprinted in 2005). It outlines who the man really is. Ondaatje latches onto the mystery and tries to understand the inevitable fall which people seemed inexplicably doom to make.

[jensho · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not much is known about the real history of Jazz great Buddy Bolden and it is difficult to find a well written acount of his life and death. This is a great read even if you are not a jazz afficianado.

[jentifer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great novel about jazz, written by a poet. I've tried to describe this novel many times with no success. It really just needs to be read; gorgeous language and writing style.