Based on the life of Buddy Bolden, one of the originators of New Orleans jazz, ["Coming Through Slaughter"] jumbles actual history, interviews with old jazzmen, snatches of local color, fictional reconstruction, three "sonographs" of dolphin sounds, primitive poetry and pretentious writing. Bolden's eventual insanity is romanticized, as if he blew himself beyond coherence on his horn. "Coming Through Slaughter" is written in several voices, none of them is satisfactory. Too many sentences float between cliché and bombast: "Swimming toward the sound of madness." "What he wanted was cruel, pure relationship." "The music was his dance in the auditorium of enemies." "In terror we lean in the direction that is most unlike us. Running past your own character into pain." "All suicides, all acts of privacy are romantic."

Now and then, when Mr. Ondaatje relaxes, "Coming Through Slaughter" warms up. The description of the mattress whores of New Orleans...