Audience Participation Required: Engaging Techniques in Coming Through Slaughter © 2003 Devon Koren According to many writers, such as Stephen King (King 160) and Anne Lamott (Lamott 56), the process of writing is more an act of excavation than one of actual creation. The job of the writer is to carefully unearth the stories that are deeply buried within the subconscious mind. Michael Ondaatje.s own creative technique could be described in a similar manner. .He doesn.t look for a subject,. explains his editor, Ellen Seligman, .the work finds him. And often the whole novel can begin from a single image that visits him. (Richler B1). When Ondaatje stumbled upon a newspaper article describing jazz musician Buddy Bolden and his sudden, mysterious dive into madness during the early years of the twentieth century, the story became an obsession (Barbour 3). In this manner, Ondaatje became the first member of the audience for the novel Coming Through Slaughter, driven by a fervent energy to research the remnants of information concerning Bolden.s past, and to flesh out his character by filling in the blanks with inventions of his own. This general atmosphere is accentuated by Ondaatje.s experimental literary forms and his personal artistic influences, managing to keep the reader engaged as an active participant during the novel.s progression. Michael Ondaatje may not consider himself part of the Canadian postmodernist set he is often associated with due to his connections to Coach House Press (Barbour 5); nevertheless, the intricate, captivating tapestry of Coming Through Slaughter employs many postmodern techniques. Ondaatje seems very fond of the use of pastiche, which is the combination of different genres and contradictory voices incorporated into a single work. Ondaatje also addresses the inherent problem of objectivity as related to reality, history, and identity . all of which are ultimately influenced by personal perception. He creates a novel that allows the audience to put together the pieces of the work and determine its meaning. As Douglas Barbour states in Michael Ondaatje, .Invention is at the core of the writing act out of which they emerge. Such invention will always seek new forms that refuse conventional narrative and ask readers to participate in putting all the disparate pieces together anew each time they read. (8). All of these techniques are traits commonly associated with postmodern literary form (Geyh x). Coming Through Slaughter is littered with various experimental narrative forms, combined with an intense .visceral emotional energy. that has managed to entertain an international audience (Barbour 1). Employing such postmodern techniques as revisiting history and smudging the lines between fact and fiction, Ondaatje forces the reader to experience the mood of the writing itself, as well as to question the veracity of the reality it portrays. The reader is not permitted to be lazy or not to think . instead, Ondaatje sets up an unsolvable mystery to prompt the reader to turn each page, to read each paragraph with extreme care. .Ondaatje.s poetic language tends to push scene after scene into the margins of verisimilitude, away from the realistic documentation history depends upon. (Barbour 102). The reader.s curiosity surrounding the mystery of Bolden is personified in Webb.s ongoing investigation throughout the novel. Webb enters .the character of Bolden through every voice he spoke to. (Ondaatje 63), as does the reader while plowing through the pages of Coming Through Slaughter. Ondaatje.s blatant use of anachronisms (such as listening to a radio that hadn.t been invented in the early 1900s in the first three paragraphs on page 93 of Coming Through Slaughter) serve the purpose of .blurring the sense of historical distance between now and then. (Barbour 101). This helps to dismantle the traditional literary framework, as well as to invoke a hazy, dream-like quality, accenting the disjointed narrative of the piece. The distance in time between when the events actually took place and when the reader is presently drinking the images becomes much smaller and more obscured, like staring down a hall of mirrors through the past ten decades. Ondaatje attempts to dissolve the boundaries between reader and writer, inviting the reader to become an active participant in the action, emotion, and general feel of the novel. .In Coming Through Slaughter, Ondaatje raises the relationship of artist and audience partly by entering the text himself and becoming an observer of Bolden.s life in the final third of the book. He also approaches the audience as a matter of community; he explores how much we can identify with others, how much we need to keep them separate as audiences as we fashion our own lives. (Cooke 196). The short, curt dialogue of Coming Through Slaughter is delivered in such a manner as to keep the reader actively involved. Ondaatje works without quotation marks, introducing the reader to the most important part of the dialogue . the words as they are actually spoken. The eye passes over the words as quickly as the voice would say them, though the mind is forced to evaluate which characters are speaking what. Ondaatje also uses blank spaces in the text . both in their physical form between poems and phrases, such as on page 60, as well as the gaping holes and lingering questions suggested by the narrative itself . to force the reader to respond to the raw, emotional nature of the text, instead of trying to uncover the details of the storyline. .Buddy Bolden is an open site . not so much for documentation as for filling in psychological and emotional blanks. (Barbour 103). As the reader attempts to deal with gaps and the discontinuities of the text, he/she is confronted with the direct nuances and impressions of the words. He/She becomes an active participant with the text, instead of passively receiving the details of a story. The reader puts the pieces of the puzzle together, imprints an order on Ondaatje.s chaos, and weaves this disjointed narrative into a much larger story . Ondaatje simply provides the tools necessary for this process (Barbour 110). In Coming Through Slaughter, Bolden explains his relationship with Bellocq: .He was offering me black empty spaces. (91). In a sense, that is exactly what Ondaatje does with this novel . offers the readers black empty spaces to fill with their own imaginative light. Michael Ondaatje was undoubtedly influenced by many forms of art and music, such as old jazz and blues, while writing Coming Through Slaughter. One of the major influences in his work, however, was the artist Henri Rousseau (Cooke 189-190). Rousseau seemed interested in obscuring the boundaries between various worlds, much like Ondaatje does with his smoky prose . for example, Bolden living different lives with everyone he knew, .their stories. like spokes on a rimless wheel ending in air. (Ondaatje 63). Both Ondaatje and Rousseau seem to be fascinated by the duality of man and animal. Ondaatje shows evidence of this in Bolden.s identification with the dog, peeing on the tree after the dog had done so (90), while many of Rousseau.s paintings display man and animal in various situations, such as in The Sleeping Gypsy which depicts a lion nosing a gypsy asleep on the ground beneath him. Ondaatje completely obscures the boundary between fiction and fact in his novel, embellishing the biography of Buddy Bolden to a grotesque degree . much like Rousseau has done with figures and settings in his artwork. Most importantly, however, both Ondaatje and Rousseau seemed rather preoccupied with mixing artistic forms . Ondaatje.s work is a blend of prose and poetry, often carrying the tone of a film or a newsreel, developing images akin to photographs or paintings. Likewise, Rousseau has been a difficult artist to categorize, his dream-like paintings creating a genre all their own (Henderson .The Imaginary World of Henri Rousseau.). Both Ondaatje and Rousseau have dabbled in surrealism, dismantling the traditional labels the world attempts to force upon them. There is an inevitable danger in trying to pick apart Ondaatje.s work, in trying to uncover the various literary, political, social, and symbolic .truths. of Coming Through Slaughter. Postmodernism tends to blur traditional conceptions of factual .truth,. and encourages the audience to experience the raw, emotional truth of any given piece. Postmodern theory postulates that personal perceptions alter any .factual account,. and that true objectivity is a myth. Therefore, emotions and impressions ultimately carry as much (if not more) weight than the actual given facts of a situation. Such approaches should be considered when reading and experiencing Ondaatje.s work. .The various voices make sure that no single meaning gains supremacy. Meaning is not the point. Writing is. (Barbour 135). In such a way, Michael Ondaatje has managed to create a dynamic script that is changed and altered by the perceptions of each reader, with each fresh reading of the text. Works Cited Barbour, Douglas. Michael Ondaatje. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993. Cooke, John. The Influence of Painting on Five Canadian Writers: Alice Munro, Hugh Hood, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. Geyh, Paula, Fred G. Leebron, and Andrew Levy, ed. Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. Henderson, Anne. .The Imaginary World of Henri Rousseau.. School Arts. Mar. 1999, v98 i7: 29. General Reference Center. InfoTrac. Middle Tennessee State University Library. 17 Sep. 2003. King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2000. Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Ondaatje, Michael. Coming Through Slaughter. New York: Vintage International, 1976. Richler, Noah. .Ondaatje On Writing.. National Post. 1 Apr. 2000, v2 i136: B1. General Reference Center. InfoTrac. Middle Tennessee State University Library. 17 Sep. 2003.