Michael Ondaatje will face an inquisitive crowd when he appears at Union College this week: A group of students there are devoting a whole term to studying his poetry and prose, including the critically acclaimed novel “The English Patient.”
Thirteen students are in the Ondaatje seminar, offered for the first time at Union this spring.
One of the bonuses for the students in this contemporary author course is the chance to talk to the author about his work and get a different perspective on the literary arts.
“That's a great experience – to be able to meet the author of something you've read,” said Greg McClung, a 21-year-old who is majoring in Latin American studies and minoring in English.
McClung is fascinated by the fact that the people in Ondaatje's work come from a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, countries and time periods. His central character is as likely to be Billy the Kid out West as it is to be a black cornet player in New Orleans.
“What makes him great is how good he is at going into the human experience and talking about the human experience in a way that's real,” said the junior from Amherst, Mass. “He makes you think about all the contradictions . . . He likes to examine how chaos and order battle and co-exist.”
After meeting with Union students Tuesday, Ondaatje will read from his work in the Nott Memorial on campus. The 7:30 p.m. event is free and open to the public.
Ondaatje, a native of Ceylon, Sri Lanka, who has lived in Canada since 1962, gained fame after his novel “The English Patient” was published. The novel won England's prestigious Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into a movie that won best picture at the 1996 Academy Awards.
Ondaatje (pronounced on-DAH-chee) is best known as a novelist, but he's also a poet. He teaches at York University in Toronto.
HYBRID BOOK
“He started out as a lyric poet,” said Ed Pavlic, who teaches literature at Union College. “Little by little, he moved toward being a novelist . . . His third book, 'Coming Through Slaughter,' is poised daatje poem. In it, a group is watching home movies on a white sheet hanging from a tree outside.
“At some point, this sheet falls from the tree and it lays in the grass,” Pavlic explained. “The film flies through the air and appears on tree branches . . . the pictures land on a dog as it walks by . . . images from the film go from being portrayed against a blank white screen to being portrayed against the world in natural form – fractile branches, a couple walking by . . .” between poetry and novel . . . It's really between a mode of fiction and a poetic mode.”
Pavlic says that “Coming Through Slaughter,” which revolves around the life of a jazz musician in New Orleans in the early 20 th century, is his favorite of Ondaatje's five novels. He even has a favorite page in the book: 92.
“What I appreciate about Ondaatje is the clarity, the well-chosen-ness and cared-for-ness of his sentences, his amazing and troubling level of intimacy,” Pavlic said.
When a reporter asked what is so impressive about page 92 of “Coming Through Slaughter,” Pavlic typed up the passage and e-mailed it so that she might judge for herself. And you, too, dear readers, will have to check that out for yourselves.
Pavlic, a 38-year-old poet who earned his bachelor's in economics, master's in Afro-American studies and his Ph.D. in folklore, conceived of the Ondaatje seminar and titled it: “Pictures Fly Without Target: The Prose-Poetics of Michael Ondaatje's Writing.”
POEMS DISCUSSED
One afternoon last week, the serious young readers in the Ondaatje seminar sat around a large conference table and for two solid hours discussed poems, including “Pig Glass” and “Sweet like a Crow,” and the poetic novel “Coming Through Slaughter.”
They discussed the theme of fragmentation in 20 th century art and literature in general and Ondaatje's work in particular.
“I don't know about anyone else, but I can relate,” said Ben Heaslip, after someone read the poem “Late Movies with Skyler” aloud to the group.
The central figure of the poem The phrase “pictures fly with- – a restless 21-year-old who lacks out target” comes from an On- direction – stays up late watching bad movies, playing guitar and consuming “hot coffee, bananas and cheese.” The last four lines of the poem: “In the movies of my childhood the heroes after skilled swordplay and moral victories leave with absolutely nothing to do with the rest of their lives.” The Union students expressed some disappointment in book reviews they'd read on Ondaatje's work because they felt the reviewers had failed to fully grasp the author's ouevre in the way they are coming to understand it. They look forward to meeting the author in the flesh, and they've got a few questions for him. “I've been writing questions down across the top of my notes,” said Heaslip , a 22-year-old who is majoring in both art history and English.
Heaslip, who had never read Ondaatje's writing before taking the seminar, is curious about how much of the author's own experiences inform his writing. For example, does the farm imagery in his work come straight from his own experience of living on farmland near Toronto?
“I'm interested in his overall influences,” Heaslip said.