Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [45]
They had gone through the country that Audubon drew. Twenty miles from the green marshes where he waited for birds to fly onto and bend the branch right in front of his eyes. Mr Audubon drew until lunchtime, sitting with his assistant who frequently travelled with him. The meal was consumed around a hamper, a bottle of wine was opened with as little noise as possible in order not to scare the wildlife away.
*
I sit with this room. With the grey walls that darken into corner. And one window with teeth in it. Sit so still you can hear your hair rustle in your shirt. Look away from the window when clouds and other things go by. Thirty-one years old. There are no prizes.
Credits
Dude Botley’s monologue appears in Martin Williams’ Jazz Masters of New Orleans and appears with permission of the Macmillan Publishing Company.
The picture of the dolphins’ sonograph with explanatory note is reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons from Mind in the Waters, Joan Maclntyre, editor. Copyright © 1974 Project Jonah.
Louis Jones interview, John Joseph interview, Bella Cornish interview and Frank Amacker tape digest used with permission of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University Library.
Sections from ‘A Brief History of East Louisiana State Hospital’ used with the kind permission of Lionel Gremillion.
The photograph of Bolden’s band originally belonged to Willy Cornish, is now in the Ramsey Archive, and is reprinted with permission from Frederic Ramsey jnr.
Acknowledgements
Many points of historical information were found in ‘New Orleans Music’ by William Russell and Stephen Smith, from Jazzmen, edited by Frederic Ramsey jnr and Charles Smith (Harcourt Brace, 1939). And in Martin Williams’ Jazz Masters of New Orleans (Macmillan, 1967).
Al Rose’s Storyville, New Orleans (University of Alabama Press) also contained interesting social and historical information.
E.J. Bellocq’s photographs in Storyville Portraits (Museum of Modern Art), edited by John Szarkowski, were an inspiration of mood and character. Private and fictional magnets drew him and Bolden together.
Credits and Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those at the Jazz Archives at Tulane, especially Richard Allen who helped me a great deal when I was there. The original work done on the tape digests at Tulane was by Paul R. Crawford.
I would also like to thank Lionel Gremillion, Superintendent of the East Louisiana State Hospital, who was of much help to me, showing me files and letting me read his history of the hospital.
There were, for me, the important landscapes of Holtz Cemetery, First Street, and Baton Rouge to Jackson.
Of interest is a rare 10″ LP, ‘This is Bunk Johnson Talking …’, issued by William Russell’s American Music Label, which has Bunk Johnson whistling the way he remembers Bolden playing.
While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.
— M.O.
About this Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter. We hope they will give you a number of interesting angles from which to consider this lively, haunting and seductive novel.
1. Although he is one of jazz music’s legends and the finest cornet player of his time, little is actually known about Charles “Buddy” Bolden or his life. Why do you think Ondaatje chose Bolden as his protagonist? What does the author mean when he says, “Did not want to pose in your accent but think in your brain and body—”? (this page)
2. The story is told in many fragments and many voices: Actual accounts of Bolden’s life and performances, oral history, lists of songs, biographical facts, narrative, dialogue, interior monologues, psychiatric reports, bits of poetry and lyrics,