NUMBER: 90

Genre: Fiction; Origin: Canada; Pages: 150

Satisfaction rating: 10.0

OVERVIEW:

At the turn of the century, the Storyville district of New Orleans had some 2,000 prostitutes, 70 professional gamblers, and 30 piano players. It had only one man who played the cornet like Buddy Bolden. By day he cut hair and purveyed gossip at N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor. At night he played jazz as though unleashing wild animals in a crowded room. At the age of thirty-one, Buddy Bolden went mad.

MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:

In this stunning semi-biographical take on the myth that is Buddy Bolden, Ondaatje employs a writing style that embodies equal parts jazz and schizophrenia in piecing together the story of this lauded musician from New Orleans, circa 1900. Through vignettes of drunken rages and prostitution to music and madness – and the relationships that bind it all together – the reader is presented with a manic narrative, fractured by alternating perspectives, likened by many pundits to jazz riffs and syncopated beats.

Sure, Ondaatje is a formidable poet, and in hindsight his creativity in prose is to be expected. However, in this his first novel, he remains true to the cerebral aesthetics of poetry while also somehow writing a detective story, a bleak romance and even similarities to a thriller as it approaches its climax. All this in under 150 pages.

In drawing together two historical figures, the cornet player Bolden and photographer EJ Bellocq, the novel explores the destructive urges of creativity, albeit done through mythical accounts of each man as opposed to the ‘proven’ facts. But, authenticity in writing is always up for debate, be it fiction or otherwise.

The most surprising thing about my love of this book is that a year or so ago I read Ondaatje’s 1987 novel, In the Skin of a Lion. I found this novel to be excessively dry in places and, although beautifully written, unengaging. I had expected to move straight onto its sequel, The English Patient, but was put off. In fact, had my partner not picked up a copy of Coming Through Slaughter in a bargain bin I may never have revisited Ondaatje. I thank her for pointing me again in the right direction.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

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Last Modified :August 5th, 2008 Filed under : The Log: novellas Navigate : Previous post / Next post