![]() ![]() ![]() This attraction is embedded in a larger awareness of the ways in which historical forces have shaped these character’s lives, in particular the complex legacies of colonialism. But it is also apparent in his empathy for female characters such as The English Patient’s Hana, Divisadero’s ‘person formerly known as Anna’, and the forensic anthropologst Anil in Anil’s Ghost. ![]() Sometimes that refusal is foregrounded, as it is in Coming Through Slaughter’s erotic fictional reimagining of the life of New Orleans jazzman, Buddy Bolden, a portrait that dances and skitters to the rhythms of Bolden’s music and, just as importantly, his unravelling mind. But more often their separation has more to do with their refusal to inhabit the roles society demands of them. Oftentimes those outsiders are separated from the world they move through by experience and inclination, operating in the netherworld of criminality, like In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient’s thief turned spy, Caravaggio, or the titular outlaw of his still-electric verse novel, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Simultaneously though, the almost casual gorgeousness of Ondaatje’s prose can divert our attention from the deeply political dimension of his work, the degree to which these interests inform his fascination with the lives of outsiders. Not just its beauty, the deep sensuality of the prose, nor even its structural and narrative daring, its temporal leaps and use of techniques drawn from film, but the way it privileges incompleteness and the provisionality of the self, the ways in which we are made and unmade over and over again. Still, it is difficult not to feel Ondaatje’s notebooks capture something essential about the work of their author. ![]() Most novels are created from fragments, their outlines emerging gradually. To the strains of bouncy music the hands of an unidentified person flick through a series of four hardback notebooks, sumptuously bound in richly elegant paper, revealing page upon page of handwritten words, interspersed with cards and pictures and photographs.Įven – perhaps especially – in a world in which most writing and research takes place in the domain of the virtual, I suspect most writers employ techniques that parallel the process the video captures. In September last year, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas celebrated its acquisition of Michael Ondaatje’s archives by releasing a short video showcasing Ondaatje’s notebooks for The English Patient. ![]()
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