Higher than history: a study of the work of Michael Ondaatje

Abstract

This study explores history in the prose of Michael Ondaatje. From his earliest "novel", Billy the Kid, to his most recent, The English Patient, Ondaatje's interest in historical subjects and in the processes of recording and making history is clearly evident. Ondaatje does not take history and historical facts at face value. He views historical discourse as an individual's act of narrative, rather than as objective, authoritative information. In this view history is open to challenge and revision. Michael Ondaatje's approach to history helps to identify him as both a postmodern and a postcolonial writer. The introductory section of this study loosely defines both of these theoretical perspectives, particularly with respect to the way they challenge received assumptions about historical discourse. While neither postmodernism nor postcolonialism is the focus of this study, both are vantage points from which Ondaatje's work can be productively viewed. This study examines Ondaatje's novels one by one, looking at each alongside a particular form of "conventional" historical writing. Coming Through Slaughter, a "new fiction biography" of jazz musician Buddy Bolden, is looked at beside the traditional biography. Running in the Family, an autobiographical account of Ondaatje's search for his family history and for his own roots, is discussed in the context of autobiography. In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient are two related texts which explore areas of unrecorded history; they are viewed as revisions of traditional historical fiction. A final chapter proposes that Ondaatje's personal history has influenced his choice of subject matter and his interest in what he terms "mental landscapes".