Time & Perspective Quote by Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje’s “cubist novel” pitch is a quiet rebellion against the old tyranny of the single, sovereign narrator. Cubism didn’t just show an object from a new angle; it splintered the idea that there is one angle that matters. By calling the perfect novel “a cubist state,” Ondaatje signals a form that treats perception as collage: overlapping planes of memory, motive, rumor, and private confession, all visible at once.

The intent is craft-forward and ethical. Craft, because he’s describing a technique for building density without pretending to omniscience: you don’t smooth the seams between voices; you let them clash. Ethical, because “everyone’s point of view at the same time” resists the novel as a conquest narrative where one perspective absorbs the rest. It’s a stance that fits Ondaatje’s recurring subjects - war, migration, intimacy under pressure - where truth arrives fractured, mediated by trauma and desire, and where the past is less a timeline than an argument.

The subtext is also a warning: total perspective is impossible, but simultaneity can approximate the mess of lived experience better than linear certainty. In a culture trained by feeds and group chats to process parallel narratives, Ondaatje isn’t endorsing noise; he’s proposing composition. The “cubist novel” becomes a way to make multiplicity legible, to turn competing testimonies into a single, restless image that feels truer precisely because it refuses to settle.