Coming Through Slaughter
by Michael Ondaatje
published
August 2nd 2004
(first published 1976)
by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
edit
binding
Paperback, 176 pages
isbn
0747572623
(isbn13: 9780747572626)
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
Where's the love? Add this book to your favorite list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 846)
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
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
3 comments
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
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
1 comments
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.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
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.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
After reading certain books - especially ones based on historical accounts, I tend to do research. Did this really happen, what was going on in the city at the time, did this place exist, did this person exist?, I ask. This was one of those books where you get led to other topics/books. From it, I found a great photobook of Bellocq, the disfigured photographer who took pictures of the women from the red light district. I then became fascinated with him too and immediately watched "Pretty Ba...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I like fictionalized biographies a lot. There are subjective accounts from multiple viewpoints here, which lend a feeling of never really knowing "what happened" with any certainty, but that makes it a pleasure to read.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
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
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
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
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
