Coming Through Slaughter

Coming Through Slaughter is a novel by Michael Ondaatje published in 1976. Using the fragmentary, inspiration-guided style of jazz music as a model for the narrative, Ondaatje uses fictionalized versions of real historical figures to tell a story about creativity, sanity, and self-destruction.

The novels opens with a scattered portrait of Charles “Buddy” Bolden, a real, historical cornet player credited with being one of the founding fathers of jazz with a powerful influence on later musicians. Buddy is shown to be a fierce presence in the Storyville neighborhood of New Orleans, once renowned for its brothels. Buddy is a barber and musician, living with his common-law wife Nora. He also edits The Cricket, a gossip paper that also recounts lurid crime stories. He is depicted as unpredictable, often giving in to impulses and causing damage to property and others. Although a skilled barber, Buddy’s customers are often anxious because of his reputation for erratic behavior.

Buddy learns Nora has been having an affair with a man named Tom Pickett, and he loses control and slashes a customer in the barber chair, then fights with him before disappearing. Buddy has disappeared before, but when several months go by with no word from Buddy, Nora contacts Buddy’s childhood friend Webb, who works as a detective. Webb takes on the case and through interviewing several people, discovers that Buddy is living in a town called Shell Beach with a married woman named Robin, living with her and her husband. Their lives together are uncomfortable because Robin’s husband resents Buddy but feels powerless to expel him.



Webb visits with the photographer E.J. Bellocq (another real, historical person) at his studio, where he finds a photo of Buddy. Buddy assists Bellocq by convincing prostitutes to pose for photos; Bellocq produces photos that are intimate and personal, inspired by his own lust and desire. But Bellocq refuses to act on his desires and experiences self-hatred, then compulsively damages the photos by scratching them. He discusses art and music with Buddy, pushing Buddy to go beyond his music and live a life more fully committed to creativity. Bellocq, unstable himself, sets his studio on fire and stands in the midst of the flames.

Webb finally makes his way to Shell Beach after Buddy has been missing for two years. He convinces Buddy to return to his home in Storyville, and Buddy finally agrees, traveling to Webb’s cabin to spend some time alone. There, Buddy misses Robin’s companionship and frets over music and art.

When Buddy arrives back in New Orleans, he finds that a former member of his band, Willy, has begun living with Nora. He accepts this and moves in with them. Nora is disturbed by the changes she sees in Buddy and blames Bellocq for negatively influencing Buddy. Buddy works to regain relationships with his children, with some success.



Buddy joins the Henry Allen Senior Brass Band as a cornet player, but his behavior becomes increasingly strange as his schizophrenia worsens. While playing in a parade, he hallucinates that a woman is dancing to the notes he plays; his playing drifts further and further from the composition as he sinks into his own sense of timing and rhythm. He then suffers an injury when he blows into the cornet too forcibly and blood vessels in his throat burst.

This is a breaking point for Buddy. Although he is treated at the hospital for his physical injuries, his behavior is alarming and he is committed to a mental institution, where he remains for the next 24 years. Initially, Buddy makes the best of his new situation, working as a barber for his fellow inmates and is seemingly at peace. But a mental hospital of the early 20th century is a brutal place where violence and oppression are seen as tools of healing, and Buddy slowly turns inward, no longer speaking to anyone and living his entire existence trapped in his own mind. When Buddy dies in the early 1930s, there is no one left who knows him and he is buried in an unmarked grave.

The narrator has only been telling part of the story. The point of view has been in the hands of other characters, including Buddy, at different times in the story. The narrator now recounts his attempts to learn more about Buddy’s life, but discovers that aside from a single photograph, there is almost no record of Buddy Bolden at all—no recordings of his music survive because Buddy himself refused to be recorded even at the height of his fame.



With a narrative that leaps between multiple points of view, time, and place, Ondaatje manages to reference jazz music as well as the disordered mind of his protagonist.