Vintage Ondaatje

by Michael Ondaatje

In his novels, poetry, and memoirs, Booker Prize winner Michael Ondaatje moves from the blasted landscape of Billy the Kid in 1880s New Mexico to the New Orleans jazz world of the legendary Buddy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400077443
• ISBN13: 9781400077441
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

And the best is yet to come.

I wish there was a way I could give a copy of this book to everyone who wants to write in America. I don't know how many years I've been reading Ondaatje's books, but it must have been in college I picked up a copy of his BILLY THE KID book and plunged in, getting high on the strangeness and weirdness and, what I didn't immediately perceive, its Canadianness. The poetry of the book made its story come alive in dazzling ways, like great gardens of tumbleweeds springing up from the sand and beginning to roll at a word. VINTAGE ONDAATJE brings together a lot of work from the beginning of his career to excerpts from his latest novel, ANIL'S GHOST, which I'm sure will rank as one of his finest achievements, even though it didn't have perhaps the cultural oomph of its predecessor, the Booker Prize winner THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Even from the limited sections printed here in VO, ANIL'S GHOST reveals itself slowly, deliberately, as though emerging from a film of water, or through the smoke of burning sandalwood. If throughout his body of work Ondaatje has celebrated and critiqued the modern world's nomadism, ANIL'S GHOST reworks some familiar concepts and makes them new again. Cunningly the poems sometimes serve as a sort of garnish for the longer prose works, and at other times the poems themselves seem like the polished, rafined quintessences of glorious mystery. I think of him as I think of D H Lawrence, a marvelous poet whose artillery, or arsenal of poetic effects and knowledge are even better put to serve in the making of a series of brilliant modern novels. That's not to say I'd throw out BIRDS, BEASTS AND FLOWERS to make room for, say, WOMEN IN LOVE, I'm just saying you couldn't have the latter without the former. I can't believe I'm the first to speak up about this book. As I say, I hope that in the future everyone will receive a copy of this book at birth. It should be an essential human right like access to clean water and no more circumcision.