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The Collected Works of Billy the Kid Paperback – March 19, 1996

by Michael Ondaatje (Author)

32 customer reviews

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Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje's visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

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Product Details

Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (March 19, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 067976786X
ISBN-13: 978-0679767862
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1054 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry
- #9329 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

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Customer Reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars

5 star		38%
4 star		47%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
1 star		0%

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Top Customer Reviews

Billy the Kid Speaks!

By Gianmarco Manzione on April 24, 2003

Format: Paperback

Michael Ondaatje's sprawling sequence of verse interspersed with poetic prose exposes the persona poem as one of poetry's surest paths to honesty. Through unsettlingly precise detail and unsentimental empathy, the character of Billy the Kid is recreated-and revisited-in all its brutality and splendor. Ondaatje's unflinching commitment to honesty yields a persona that is as vibrant and realized as possible, resulting in a series of confessions that range from disturbing to revelatory.

The image, consistently startling, graphic and discomforting, carries the speaker through the entire sequence. Whereas most imagery depends on the eye for effect, Ondaatje utilizes all five senses throughout the book. We taste wine "so fine/it was like drinking ether," we feel Pat Garret's "oiled rifle" against Maxwell's cheek and hear it fire beside his ear, "leaving a powder scar on Maxwell's face that stayed with him all his life." We smell the smoke in Garret's shirt and taste the nicotine in his mouth. At times, the stunned silence of Ondaatje's unremitting narrative conjures a hush so palpable that we can "listen to deep buried veins in our palms." It doesn't take long for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid to immerse the reader in its own unique world, accessible now only through words and photographs.
Most memorable, though, are the intensely graphic images that sprout from the page throughout the book. The chicken digging for a vein in the dying Gregory's neck, the warts in Billy the Kid's throat "breaking through veins like pieces of long glass tubing," the blood caked in Tom O'Folliard's "hair, arms, shoulders, everywhere.Read more ›

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Ondaatje does an excellent job of western revisionism.

By A Customer on April 29, 1998

Format: Paperback

Michael Ondaatje begins The Collected Works of Billy the Kid with a caption to a blank space; the picture of Billy the Kid described in the caption is not included. This notion of rewriting the Old West, one character at a time, is an important theme in the book. Billy is cast in a new revisionist light, as a poet, lover, and observer, while still maintaining the traditional exterior of a western gunslinger.
Perhaps the most telling piece of the "reinvented" Billy stems from his relationship with Angie, his prostitute-turned-girlfriend that adds a different dimension to the traditional story. Through their relationship, Billy shows a side of himself missing from the history books-a man once seen as the quintessential cowboy is dependent and vulnerable to Angie, in his words, "caught like a butterfly...in her Tuscon room."

It cannot be said, however, that the Billy the Kid in Ondaatje's work is immune to cold-blooded violence. Billy openly writes of graphic and grotesque images, but they are dealt with in such a delicate and poetic manner that Billy's detachment is forgiven. He sees a separation between business and pleasure, and killing is strictly a profession. At the same time, though, he finds a beauty in violence-even violence against himself or Angie-that reinforces his position as a true poet. Even as he removes bullets from Angie's hand after she has been shot-by bullets meant for him-Billy calls the shots "rolled pellet tongues of pigeons," a subtle metaphor for a grizzly situation. Billy is a true warrior, but he has a clear set of priorities and can put his violent world into prospective.Read more ›

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A real tour de force--stunning in its effect.

By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER on July 11, 2000

Format: Paperback

This early (1970) "novel" by Michael Ondaatje is a collage of poetry, narrative, memoir, photography, journalism, and fiction surrounding Billy the Kid. Ondaatje poeticizes Billy's thoughts, giving us "insight" into the inner man, while, at the same time, creating a kind of suspense about the inevitable outcome. By constantly shifting the narrative focus and point of view from Billy to some of his cohorts, the women who loved them, and the "lawmen" who sought them, Ondaatje avoids the need for transitions which would normally challenge the biographer of a legend. And by allowing time to be circuitous, rather than linear, Ondaatje is able to give flesh and bone to the impressions he creates by enlisting the reader's help in "organizing" his material. In short, this is an impressionistic word-painting which gives freshness and vibrancy to an old saga of the Wild West.

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Memories of our shared western past

By Matt Beatty on August 16, 2011

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

There are slivers of the truth in Ondaatje's Billy the Kid, all the surrounding players and characters. The settings, the New Mexican snows and sands. The poetry of it all, at least now, in our modern world, looking back and reflecting on what it was, or what it wasn't.

Essentially this is historical fiction as poetry. Even the prose is poetry. He can't help it. It flows naturally and gives a voice, a sorrow, a reality to the antihero Billy the Kid.

I love the many vignettes, the intertwined poetic ruminations by Billy, then the story told a little more clearly, via multiple perspective and experimental forms (photographs, notes, newspaper articles, interviews, other characters' voices, chiasma, etc.). The backstories of Tom O'Folliard and Livingstone the mad-dog man are some of my favorites. Ondaatje paints Pat Garrett as cold and logical, driven, the perfect assassin.

Billy is romantic:

--- ---
she is crossing the sun
sits on her legs here
sweeping off the peels

traces the thin bones of me
turns toppling slow back to the pillow
Bonney Bonney (21)
--- ---

And he is characterized with a shrewd, watchful eye. Ever observant and capable. Not quite man, but not boy (just Kid, maybe):

--- ---
A river you could get lost in
and the sun a flashy hawk
on the edge of it

a mile away you see the white path
of an animal moving through water

you can turn a hundred yard circle
and the horse bends dribbles his face
you step off and lie in it propping your head

till dusk and cold and the horse shift you
and you look up and moon a frozen bird's eye

(26 -- this is one of my favorites)
--- ---

Brilliant book.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Billy the Kid was a great poet, very perceptive

Interesting, short read. Billy the Kid was a great poet, very perceptive, interesting sensitivity for a sharp-shooter.

Published 1 month ago by Amy Jo Diaz

More poetry than I expected.

Interesting read. I expected something more like the Cat's Cradle. This was full of poetry that I did not enjoy. However, I did enjoy the short stories.

Published 14 months ago by Shana

Two Stars

More amusing than enlightening!

Published 14 months ago by Leo Brigman

Five Stars

A work of genius!

Published 14 months ago by Jenni Wilson

Five Stars

great read

Published 17 months ago by poppa

Five Stars

Fascinating.

Published 18 months ago by B.E. Kahn

Confusing but beautiful

and I am finding as I read more of his books, is typical of this author. The Afterward ( which I ought to have read first) offers a generous and intimate view of this author's... Read more

Published 22 months ago by Sunrise Flower

Love this book

This is a great experimental piece. It's one of the best books ever written. It is so creative and interesting.

Published on January 30, 2014 by Riley James

A Book this Interesting should be Outlawed!

With his book "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" Michael Ondaatje (author of "The English Patient") brings us a unique hybrid of poetry and prose, mixed with... Read more

Published on November 15, 2013 by Amazon Customer

To each his own

The first time I read this book I had a difficult time paying attention and/or caring. After a class discussion I decided I wanted to re-read it, and it was much more enjoyable the... Read more

Published on May 2, 2012 by D. Gannon

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