Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [46]
3. New Orleans and vicinity at the turn of the century is the setting for the novel. Consider the places where the action occurs: N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor, the river, Shell Beach, the Brewitts, Webb’s cottage, the streets of Storyville, Bellocq’s studio, Bolden’s home with Nora and the children, the mental hospital. Consider some of the metaphorical or symbolic aspects of these settings. What do they reveal about Bolden’s journey and his inner life?
4. Bolden’s life “had a fine and precise balance to it, with a careful allotment of hours.” (this page) He was barber, publisher of The Cricket, cornet player, good husband and father, and an infamous man about town. Do you agree that his life was balanced? What upset the balance?
5. “This is the power I live in— They trust me with the cold razor at the vein under their ears. Dreams of the neck. Gushing onto the floor and my white apron.” (this page) Does Bolden wield this power, or is he, like his audience, under its sway?
6. “Robin and Jaelin and me. I saw an awful thing among us. And that was passion could twist around and choose someone else just like that—. We had no order among ourselves. I wouldn’t let myself control the world of my music because I had no power over anything else that went on around me, in or around my body.” (this page-this page) Consider the complex relationship between power, control, fear, and desire in the novel. What role do each of these play in Buddy’s ensuing madness?
7. “He watched himself go back to the Brewitts and ask if he could stay with them. The silent ones. Post music. After ambition.” (this page) Do you see Bolden’s move to the Brewitts as positive or negative? “The silence of Jaelin Brewitt understood them all.” (this page) How do Jaelin Brewitt and Bolden differ? What do they have in common? Does Bolden admire Jaelin?
8. “Then Bolden did a merciless thing. For the first time he used his cornet as jewelry. After the couple had closed their door, he slipped in a mouthpiece—. With every sweet stylised gesture that he knew no one could see he aimed for the gentlest music he knew—Music for the three of them, the other two in bed, not saying a word.” (this page) What does it mean that he used his cornet as jewelry, and why was it merciless?
9. “The Pickett incident had made him unpopular. Buddy didn’t leave at the peak of his glory you know.” (this page) Explore what happens to Bolden during the Pickett incident. Is it a turning point for Bolden?
10. Water in all its forms—liquid, rain, mist, ice—is a recurring image in the novel. Think of the ice and the mist on the windows of N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor and what happens after the fight with Tom Pickett. Or of Bolden’s departure by boat. Or how, at the Brewitts, Bolden immerses himself in the bath at the beginning and end of his stays. What does the water imagery tell us about what is happening to him? Is water a safe element for Bolden?
11. “E.J. Bellocq’s photographs—were an inspiration of mood and character. Private and fictional magnets drew him and Bolden together.” (from the author’s acknowledgements, this page) Bolden says of Bellocq, “He was the first person I met who had absolutely no interest in my music.” (this page) Why was Bolden attracted to Bellocq? Why does Nora blame Bellocq for what happens to Bolden? Do you think she’s right?
12. What does Bolden mean when he says, “We were furnished rooms and Bellocq was a window looking out”? (this page) Why does Bolden want to break windows? And why does a “wall of wire barrier glass” go up between Robin and Bolden after Webb comes to get him “with all his stories about me and Nora, about Gravier and Phillip Street”? (this page)
13. Nora’s mother’s favourite Audubon birds: the Purple Gallinule with “thoughts of self-destruction”; the Prophet Ibis, “obviously paranoid”; the Cerulean Wood Warbler, “drunk on Spanish Mulberry”; and Anhinga,