Homage to iconic jazz musician sings with magic realism
Oscar Peterson tale filled with emotional gravitas
Montreal writer Mauricio Segura’s magic realist novel
Oscar is an intriguing investigation into the life of one of Canada’s most iconic musicians, Oscar Peterson.
First published in French in 2016, and now translated into English by Donald Winkler, it’s an intriguing novel bound to confound aficionados of the great pianist who was arguably Canada’s first global superstar.
But anyone who thinks of “O.P.,” as he’s called in the book, as a benign musical genius will find the complex, conflicted man conjured here both compelling and confusing, thanks to the author’s use of literary fabulism to tell the Peterson tale.
Oscar is a fictionalized version of his life, but it is ostensibly based on fact, and that’s where fable becomes tricky.
Magic realism is defined as placing fantastical elements in an everyday setting.
It’s a literary style associated with Latin American writers such as Borges, Gabriel Marquez and Allende, and is clearly a literary genre that fascinates the Chilean-born Segura.
It’s the style that conveys the book’s more sinister elements and, for the most part, it’s a dimension of the book that works brilliantly.
As a kid, Oscar lived in Montreal, in the shadow of his older brother whose piano playing was so magical it literally changed weather patterns, but in the fictional Peterson’s life the most significant magical incident occurs when a mysterious, silhouetted figure appears just as young Oscar is about to take his own life, and asks, “How is it that the sky is so low today, as if it were going to fall into our heads?”
The person who has fallen into Oscar’s lap is Norman G., the world’s most famous jazz impresario.
Who knows if this incident really happened? What is true is that Norman G. is actually Norman Granz, Peterson’s longtime business manager and the most influential fig- ure in his life.
And their love/hate relationship lends the novel much of its emotional gravitas. Throughout the novel, characters such as Miles D., or Bud P., and most especially Art T., are stand-ins for actual jazz greats who people Peterson’s professional life. And Art T., or Art Tatum, is the most significant.
Ageneration older, Tatum was a major figure in the jazz world for whom Peterson harboured intense feelings of admiration and jealous disdain.
Indeed, Oscar was suicidal because his father introduced him to Tatum’s music to “stanch” his young son’s overweening hubris.
Oscar married four times, fathered numerous children and was a compulsive womanizer, but if Segura is accurate, there was only one true love in his life.
Or as his second wife, Marguerite, let fly as she stormed out of his life: “You don’t believe in anything but your music.”
That sentiment likely captures where the “magic” and the “realism” of Peterson’s life intersected.
Oscar is a fascinating work of fiction.
A style that conveys the book’s more sinister elements, and for the most part ... works brilliantly