Rating: 
Summary: Give this book to a deaf person.
Review: Who can talk truthfully about the borderlands between the wilderness of insanity and the Eden of genius? Well, Michael Ondaatje, for one. Fans of "The English Patient," and later works should not pass this by. The most prosaic of M.O.'s fiction is poetic to say the least, but here, as in "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid," Ondaatje skirts the borders between poetry and novelty just as deftly as he does the two realms I earlier mentioned.The fictionalized history of Buddy Bolden, cornet-player, jazz pioneer, and psychopath comes alive in this tale of turn of the century New Orleans. It is a tawdry, violent, heat-soaked world, full of passion and lust, suffering and early death, brightly kindled in the reader's imagination by the spare, impressionistic images Ondaatje provides. But more than anything else, it is the jazz, the frenetic ferocity of the music that comes alive in the writing. If I had to explain the joys and powers of music to a deaf person, I would give up, and give him this book instead. Give this heady experience a try. And if you have any doubts about the trendiness/currentness of the topic, rest assured. Discussion and wonder regarding Buddy Bolden is very much alive today, and interest in this period in general endures. To give you an example, I noted recently an advertisement featuring the exhibition of photographs in an Uptown gallery by E.J. Bellocq, another (historical) character in Mr. Ondaatje's story.
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