Michael Ondaatje: Word, Image, Imagination

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Because this is the first full-length study completely devoted to the work of Michael Ondaatje, one might have expected a conventional introductory survey. What Leslie Mundwiler offers, however, is something very different. In his “Introduction” he dismisses interpretation “in terms of biography or literary debts” because Ondaatje himself has “indicated dissatisfaction with these approaches” — a fact which might have encouraged a more skeptical critic to look into such matters. On the other hand, he has not provided “an evaluation of the place of Ondaatje’s work in our culture,” though he agrees that such an approach “would be valuable.” Instead, he raises some rather oblique questions: “What have been the apparent social determinants of his choice of subject matters? How has the publication of his work fitted into the institutional and economic character of Canadian publishing? What institutions and social formations are represented by Ondaatje’s reviewers and critics?” The result is a little dry.

But I must confess at this point that much of Mundwiler’s discussion went above my head. He is primarily interested in philosophical matters, and much of his space is taken up with quotations from and discussions of Schiller, Collingwood, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, etc. He is concerned less with Ondaatje’s poetry than with the mental and social processes that give rise to it. Personally, I found this rather hard going. Moreover, what readership he anticipates for his book is by no means clear. Those who expect a literary treatment will be frustrated and disappointed; those interested in more abstract thought are not necessarily going to be familiar with Ondaatje’s work.

When Mundwiler tries to explain the special effects of Ondaatje’s imagery and syntax, he succeeds in doing so intellectually rather than poetically. In approaching Coming Through Slaughter, he seems more concerned with the impact of racial tension on Buddy Bolden than with Ondaatje’s technical virtuosity in presenting him. There is much to be said for discussions that raise the larger intellectual issues (literary criticism is always in danger of withdrawing into its own somewhat claustrophobic ivory tower), but one wonders whether this book is not a little premature. Most readers need help in meeting the challenge of Ondaatje’s artistic effects; Mundwiler’s study may have the effect of forcing them to run before they can walk. Those who already know their way around Ondaatje’s writings, however, may well find it useful.