BILLY?S BLUES, recipient of the 1995 Jerome DeJur Award (previously granted to Oscar Hijuelos and Walter Mosley), is narrated by Walter, a modern day shut-in who suffers from numerous phobias. Safely removed from the late 20th century, Walter spends the day sleeping, reading, and eating, until be becomes obsessed with a famous figure from the late 19th Century: Billy the Kid. The infamous ?Boy Bandit King? of the old Southwest, shot dead at the age of twenty-one by Sheriff Pat Garret, who was once a friend. As his life spins out of control, his story is interrupted by increasingly elaborate interpretations of Billy the Kid until it becomes difficult to separate myth from reality and fiction from fact. As Billy the Kid leapt into the pages of history from old dime novels and western folklore, BILLY?S BLUES might become an enfant terrible of literature.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Combining fact, folklore and a shopworn twist of revisionist history, Meltzer's eccentric debut joins the legion of books about the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid. Although Billy's tale may be a rerun, the storyteller's is a hoot. The narrator is Walter, a reclusive 1990s New York City apartment dweller. An unemployed, obese shut-in burdened by countless phobias, Walter is afraid of people, germs, daylight and healthy food. As he snarfs down Hershey Bar marshmallow fluffer-honey-nutter sandwiches topped with Redi-Whip, Walter becomes obsessed with the Old West's most notorious, pint-sized killer. He desperately wants to purge Billy of his brutal myth, to prove the Kid was really just misunderstood, not withstanding the 21 notches on his pistols. But even as Walter escapes in dreams to the Lincoln County War of 1878, the urban travails of his waking hours are closing in on him. Annotated and liberally sprinkled with quotations from penny-dreadfuls, the Bible and old movies like Billy the Kid vs. Frankenstein, this odd, bittersweet novel features troubles more complex than those The Kid ever had to face.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
An urban shut-in's lugubrious narrative of a life without purpose, spliced to a lengthy deconstruction of the career of the historical killer Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Though he characterizes himself as ``built for comfort,'' Walter, the enormously fat, sugar-addicted agoraphobe of this tentative first novel from Meltzer, is anything but comfortable. A prisoner of his dead parents' New York City apartment, his expenses paid by their trust fund, Walter's waking hours are spent nursing paranoid obsessions about the neighbors he encounters on brief journeys to his mailbox or the basement laundry machines. A fidgety sleeper, Walter repeatedly dreams of a spectral figure who may or may not be the Kid, then resolves to find out as much as he can about the historical figure from books, movie videos, and other materials he orders by mail. What follows is a ragged assembly of annotated quotations (reproduced in varied typefaces) from memoirs about the Kid, Kid biographies, Kid film scripts, songs, dime novels, and other effluvia, all cluttered by Walter's fretful analysis of American culture, in which the Kid serves as a mythic icon. After demonstrating, at tedious length, how much can never definitively be verified about the Kid's existence, Walter wrestles with the possibility that the legendary hero may not have died from Pat Garrett's shooting and could be his impossibly old great-grandfather, who has been making ominous calls to Walter's answering machine. Inspired by his research, Walter comes to terms with his own purposeless life and sets forth on an antiheroic quest to ``rescue'' his great-grandfather from a rest home. A satiric gloss on the postWW II urban coming-of-age novels of Bellow and Roth, padded to book length with material drawn from a variety of exotic sources. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meltzers book is wonderfully and innovatively written.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Billy's Blues (Hardcover)
One of the last books I read before coming to Mongolia for 2 years, Billys Blues was an education in American folklore and an adventure in reading. Meltzer uses different voices, source materials and innovative techniques to tell a story at times exhilirating and at times depressing, but at all times interesting and beautifully written A great read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
...One of the weirdest and most captivating books I've read.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Billy's Blues (Hardcover)
Billy's Blues is not really a western. It's more in the genre of a mystery. What I like most about the book is the way you discover that Billy the Kid was not the horrendous bad guy as portrayed in history. Billy never held up stages or trains or even robbed a bank. Rather, he fought against the powers-that-be: an evil monopoly of corrupt politicians & businessmen who stole the land away from the people that settled it. Walter, who lives in the present--albeit claustrophobic--day, is the detective whose life is strangely linked to the infamous boy bandit. This is the type of novel that makes you feel like there's something left undone until you finally finish it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two compelling anti-heroes past and present,
By A Customer
This review is from: Billy's Blues (Hardcover)
For those of you who are tired of the same old western plots told over and over again, this southwestern-flavored tale is a pleasant surprise. Although the outlaw Billy the Kid plays an important role in the book, it's Walter, an overweight urban coward, who puts the desperado's life in perspective. As Walter's and Billy's stories criss cross, we sense how both characters have become imprisoned by the America of their time. In a kind of literary time travel, their lives intertwine as they seek to break those chains building into a rousing climax. Each story line enhances the other for a unique reading experience that I found satisfying from start to finish.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
