Bringing
to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first
flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden,
the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of
jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the
king of that time and place.
In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of
Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the
central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining
felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly
lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the
novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel--one
where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its
fullness. Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English
Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the
renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.
