Coming Through Slaughter (Picador Books)
by Michael Ondaatje
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This a fictional story based on the rich, the tragic, and true life of the New Orleans Jazz Musician Buddy Bolden. A historical figure of whom we know very little, of whom there is only one extant photo, and no recordings. Yet we know he eventually goes mad.
Michael Ondaatje weaves a captivating story from only shreds of evidence through a form of prose that I have never quite seen before. The narrator is constantly shifting, as is the chronology, as is the word form. Parts of this read...more
Michael Ondaatje weaves a captivating story from only shreds of evidence through a form of prose that I have never quite seen before. The narrator is constantly shifting, as is the chronology, as is the word form. Parts of this read...more
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Read in September, 2007
Huh. There are some books that your brain thinks it should like and some books where your gut just says "fuck yeah!" My brain liked this book a lot more than my gut. Which was good, because at only 160 pages my gut didn't have enough time to put the thing aside forever
Although the last five pages were a slog. In bed, after midnight, forcing myself through extreme drowsiness to finish. Figured I'd gotten too far to give up just five pages to the end. Now I can recommend this in a p...more
Although the last five pages were a slog. In bed, after midnight, forcing myself through extreme drowsiness to finish. Figured I'd gotten too far to give up just five pages to the end. Now I can recommend this in a p...more
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Read in April, 2008
Wow, what a book!
I haven't read Ondaatje before, or at least not much, and I don't know what I expected, but the level of lyricism from page to page, paragraph to paragraph was really stunning and made this a really rather incredible read.
There are places where I have issues with it, or at least think I do (what happens to Webb, or the fact that the insanity seems so, I don't know, underconsidered-- maybe it's just me, but the link between these romantic triangles Bolden found himself in...more
I haven't read Ondaatje before, or at least not much, and I don't know what I expected, but the level of lyricism from page to page, paragraph to paragraph was really stunning and made this a really rather incredible read.
There are places where I have issues with it, or at least think I do (what happens to Webb, or the fact that the insanity seems so, I don't know, underconsidered-- maybe it's just me, but the link between these romantic triangles Bolden found himself in...more
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What is this? A poem? Nonfiction (whatever that means)? It certainly can't be a novel, can it? Be it what it may, this book is good.
Ondaatje's Buddy Bolden, a gifted Jazz musician who loses his mind, could spur an extended conversation on the relationship of genius to insanity. Here, with MO's use of a novelist's pov, Buddy's story is pieced together, but not to elicit some type of moral or, really, to explain anything. There is no plot. No cause and effect. Instead, the book is a coll...more
Ondaatje's Buddy Bolden, a gifted Jazz musician who loses his mind, could spur an extended conversation on the relationship of genius to insanity. Here, with MO's use of a novelist's pov, Buddy's story is pieced together, but not to elicit some type of moral or, really, to explain anything. There is no plot. No cause and effect. Instead, the book is a coll...more
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recommended to Caroline by:
Matt Dube
This was recommended to me at a perfect time (just coming out of a Ken Burns Jazz phase). I wouldn't say that as a whole this book *blew me away*, but I would say that individual sections and single phrases absolutely did. I often found myself so dazzled by his language that I forgot to think about how that particular section fit into the overall story.
I have the utmost appreciation for Ondaatje's approach and play with form--the book itself reads kinda jazz-like (multi-tonal, mult...more
I have the utmost appreciation for Ondaatje's approach and play with form--the book itself reads kinda jazz-like (multi-tonal, mult...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Lovers of Jazz/Blues/Lovers of Experimental Fiction
Damn I loved this book. Everybody is big on `English Patient' and `Anil's Ghost' but I feel there is something more vital, less distant and more creative in his early work. This book captured the rhythmn of early 20th Century New Orleans, and the poorer denizens of the City. I particular it follows Buddy Bolden, unsurpassed coronet player, yellow journalist, family man and stone drunk. Like he did in `Collected Works of Billy The Kid', Ondaatje works in poetry, dreams, song lyrics and straight f...more
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Read in December, 2007
This fictionalization of the life of Buddy Bolden--the unrecorded cornet-playing genius who many argue is New Orleans' first "real" jazzman and who went bat-shit insane while blasting on his horn as he led a parade through the streets of New Orleans--is pretty hotdamn fantastic. Ondaatje is both poet and novelist, and here he strikes a near perfect balance. It's only 150 pages, but I took my time, rereading passages two and three times before moving on and reading large chunks of th...more
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Read in June, 2008
I've read all of Ondaatje's more recent books and loved them, so I decided to go back and read his early stuff. I definitely prefer his more recent novels, which, while not linear, seem more straightforward. This one follows the story of Buddy Bolden, a New Orleans jazz musician who had a nervous breakdown while performing in a parade and then was institutionalized and drifted into obscurity. The novel is made up of vignettes from the point of view of a variety of characters, as well as songs, p...more
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Read in January, 2008
There are few books that I say I will read again that I actually do (my opinion is that there are far too many books to re-read), and even fewer that I actually do read them again. This is one book that I believe will be one of those select few.
Often the heart is the one thing about poetry I actually understand. In this novel Ondatji's poetic heart comes through in a form I can relate to. Matters of genre-defining aside, this is truly a beautiful book of words and story.
I was moved...more
Often the heart is the one thing about poetry I actually understand. In this novel Ondatji's poetic heart comes through in a form I can relate to. Matters of genre-defining aside, this is truly a beautiful book of words and story.
I was moved...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Ondaatje fans
I read this in an attempt to understand a little more about New Orleans. I haven't been. And to read more of Ondaatje, who I love. And because I was 32, a year older than Buddy Bolden when he went insane.
Set in the Storyville district of New Orleans in the early days of the Jazz era, CTS unravels Bolden's life, (barber by day, cornet player by night) his sorted love life, madness, death-obsession, and jazz. Lyrical prose. Did I say lyrical? Sorry.
"And as told in Coming Through S...more
Set in the Storyville district of New Orleans in the early days of the Jazz era, CTS unravels Bolden's life, (barber by day, cornet player by night) his sorted love life, madness, death-obsession, and jazz. Lyrical prose. Did I say lyrical? Sorry.
"And as told in Coming Through S...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
post-modern fiction enthusiasts
interesting creative project to imagine the life of an early jazz pioneer, about whom little is known, in the fascinating milieu of new orleans at jazz's incipience.
...
i abandoned this book because it's too self-indulgently florid, verging on onanistic. maybe some people will dig on this postmodern pastiche of prose-poem daydreaming about poor black folks in new orleans at the dawn of the jazz age. it didn't work for me. then again, i don't much go for the highfalutin grandiosity in my...more
...
i abandoned this book because it's too self-indulgently florid, verging on onanistic. maybe some people will dig on this postmodern pastiche of prose-poem daydreaming about poor black folks in new orleans at the dawn of the jazz age. it didn't work for me. then again, i don't much go for the highfalutin grandiosity in my...more
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Read in January, 2002
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 jaz...more
"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 jaz...more
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Read in June, 2007
Mythical account of New Orleans Jazz legend, Buddy Bolden. This book is a fast read but huge, beginning with his rise and subsequent madness. He died in an asylum in northern Louisiana. I wanted to hate the main character a womanizing, arrogant type, but it is not possible to not be sympathetic and interested. The story has to be mostly fiction, since most of the people and places metnioned no longer exist. But Michale Ondaajate writes with conviction and beautiful detail, that you won't d...more
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Read in February, 2000
I found this book absolutely haunting. As I've said before no other writer that I know of writes so damn... emotionally as Ondaatje. I was put inside the soul of jazz man Buddy Bolden - and his mind. This book is in turns maddeningly austere, and in others florid with intensity. Portions of this novel also have a pasted together feel, like overly humid newspaper clippings laid in collage upon a New Orleans light post. It lends itself well to a man who was said to have lost his mind.
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good book but i found it to be very emotional and difficult to read because at the time i was studying jazz piano intently. The subject of the book is Buddy Bolden, a jazz trumpeter before Louis Armstrong, who has a difficult time dealing with his creative side and has fantasies of cutting off his hands so he can no longer play, so he no longer has to live with the curse of being consumed by music.
I don't reccomend this book to anyone. Too dark. But it was well written.
I don't reccomend this book to anyone. Too dark. But it was well written.
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Read in August, 2006
recommends it for:
Brendan
This book kicked my ass. Maybe 'cause of personal experience, but at the time i read it, its fractured, perspective-by-creative-impulse structure spoke to me biggee timee. It's a beautiful example of intuitive composition, of poetry integrated with prose, a raw, guttural illustration of Ondaatje's imaginative response to an all-but-forgotten personal history. Occasional sentences that take your breath away. Read it when it's hot outside.
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
artistes
Humid, bizarre, distanced, and written like jazz. A director or choreographer could learn a bit from Ondaatje's structural experimentation; it's deliberate but lush, emotive, a very abstract approach to the biography. Oh my god I almost typed "biopic" again. Reminds me of the "visual" or "expressionist biography" that Einstein on the Beach purports itself to me. This one, however, is not particularly overwhelming.
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Read in March, 2006
One of the more post-modern use of writing in a novel I've read. Difficult to follow storyline, but that was sort of the point. Bolden is less of a main character and more of a thread to bind the story of a man gone crazy with passion. The poem like verse and interlaced biographical tidbits provide for a more than fun read, but also detract from a story that could have been more profound and concrete.
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Read in January, 1998
A brilliant imagining of the life of jazz founder (?)/legend, Buddy Bolden . . . 2 photos of him survive, none of his music was ever recorded but to those who heard his trumpet it (including Louis Armstrong, Count Bassie, and forebearers of the great Marsalis jazz family) said his talent was mystical, divine and helped found the first form of truly American music, jazz.
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Read in August, 2002
recommends it for:
fans of Ondaatje, Kundera, Louisiana, jazz
a partially real life tale of a jazz musician in Louisiana, this book has one of the most erotic descriptions of a woman I have ever read. Not dirty at all, but very suggestive in few words. It's a short book, but vivid. He uses few words where other writers would use many more; this book is one of the best examples of his ability to convey images with those few words.
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