To his acknowledgments at the end of Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje adds this final note: "While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts that have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction." He indicates here the intricate mingling of fact, fiction, and personal reference through which he records and invents the life of another of his heroes who sail to that perfect edge: Charles "Buddy" Bolden, a part-time barber and jazz musician in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. Ondaatje uses documents, quotations, and interviews combined with his own songs, poems, and narrative all in the service of the truth of fiction. By blending history and fantasy, he explores the inner life of his subject much as, in an earlier...