SOURCE: Malcolm, Douglas. “Solos and Chorus: Michael Ondaatje's Jazz Politics/Poetics.” Mosaic 32, no. 3 (September 1999): 131-49.

In the following essay, Malcolm explores how the metaphorical and structural uses of the jazz concepts of solo and chorus inform the narrative strategies of In the Skin of a Lion.

Given that jazz is a relatively recent musical form, it is not surprising that studies of its connection to literature are few in comparison to the discussions of the relations between literature and classical music, where indeed the proliferation of such discussion has developed to the point of occasioning some specialists to define and insist upon criteria for “valid” comparisons. Thus in the section on “Literature and Music” in the 1990 Modern Language Association manual entitled Teaching Literature and Other Arts, Robert Spaethling has emphasized the need to distinguish between literary works/studies in which music functions as a metaphor/allusion and those...