MICHAEL ONDAATJE, DIVISADERO
“…for Lucien, writing was a place of emergency. He wanted what he had done those first few times, without awareness, when the page was a pigeonnier flown into from all the realms one had travelled through. There had been the gathering then, the thrill of diversity. There was no judgement.”
The more I read Michael Ondaatje, the more I think of him as a poet-novelist. Of course that’s what he is—he’s published several collections of poems–but what I mean to stress is the sense of fusion: I think of him as a nov-e-poet, a poe-vist: the novels feel so much like they breathe the same air as the poems…especially Divisadero. Which my good friend who is always handing me things to read handed me with a slightly circumspect look. And which sat for a year in the things-to-read pile; when at last I opened it in May I nearly gave it up, finding it an effort to get to its early middle. But—I rarely give up—a worthwhile effort. And not a climb, but an uncanny, magical kind of descent. A world is shattered early, in this story, and its big fragments breathe very gradually back to life. The pace slows, and softens, and the sentences exhibit an exquisite understanding of the oceanic quality of time. Think of wading into a lake, at evening, the water deepening with each step. The surface ripples out from you. In the end that’s what reading Divisadero is like.