The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

by Charles Neider

Nowadays, I understand, the tourists come for miles to see Hendry Jones' grave out on the Punta del Diablo and to debate whether his bones are there or not...

A stark and violent depiction of one of America's most alluring folk heroes, the mythical doomed gunslinger. Set on the majestic coast of Southern California, Doc Baker narrates his tale of the Kid's capture, trial, escape and eventual murder. Written in spare and subtle prose, this is one of the great literary treatments of America's obsession with the rule of the gun.

Genres: Fiction, Westerns, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, American, Classics

Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Charles Neider was an American writer, known for editing the Autobiography of Mark Twain and authoring literary impressions of Antarctica.

Reviews

[Max Gwynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeehaw! Damn, what a brilliant little novel this is! Neider really did write a corker here and this book may just take the ticket as my favourite Western novel!

His matter of fact writing following the perfectly human, ‘wrong side of the law’ gunslinger known only as ‘The Kid’ had me hooked from the start.

I will be sure to recommend this little gem of a book for years to come and can’t advocate it highly enough. So glad this one didn’t slip me by.

[WJEP · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of three outlaws: Doc, Dad, and The Kid. The Kid was a blond, teenage CA beach-bum -- circa 1883. They never turned outlaw, it just happened: "Who wants to be fenced in if you don’t have to be?" The story is narrated by The Kid's compadre Doc Baker. Doc's narrative is full of spoilers and not as action-packed as some Westerns. But Neider's writing is as stylish as the Kid's hand-tooled saddle. The story was thoroughly absorbing from start to finish. Neider likes to describe things with long comma-separated lists. For example:

"Some people have told me I ought to tell about the Kid’s early life, who was his mother, who his father, where he went to school, how he killed his first man, how he got to be so good with the gun, the great fighters he met and knew, the women he had, the men he killed, the way he cleaned out the faro bank in the Angels that time. But I see no point in going into all that."

I accidentally watched the movie first, because it had a different title: The movie was called One-Eyed Jacks. The problem I have with seeing the movie first is that I see the actors while I am reading instead of imagining things for myself. You would think this would be a big problem because Brando played The Kid (called Rio in the movie). But Brando didn't seem enough like The Kid to distract me. My problem was Carl Malden who played Dad. I couldn't stop seeing Malden's nose while I was reading.

[Jwt Jan50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a fan of Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks and read a number of accounts of William Bonney. I came across the Harper and Row paperback edition summer of 1972. You can find the original cover art in neglected books - second cover from the left of the horseman riding at dusk/dawn/gray. It appears to me that Neider took the known facts at the time about Bonney and fictionalized them into this tale. If you're a fan of western fiction and haven't read this, I highly recommend.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the book because Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) wrote the foreword. It was OK, but nothing special. The book. As well as the foreword.

[Jeff Takacs · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quicker read the second time. It's actually pretty difficult finding Westerns that have a bit more to them than simple morality tales, which is why I love this one. The Kid is apparently based on Billy the Kid but he shows up in text and I don't know if it's a wink but he's got nothing on this Kid. Narrated by his old partner Doc Baker, the book is told over a series of days from the Kid's escape from jail to his eventual death. Neider gives Baker and the Kid so much characterization with the Kid being this almost godlike figure and Baker given ample time to describe people and locations in sparse but rich detail. As is common in Westerns most dialogue is laconic little more than a sentence of two and casually describing their measure and how they meet their end, including the semi-villain of the piece Dad Longworth. Obviously the centre of the piece is The Kid, his personality, his quirks, his deadliness with a gun and his own effect on the world. The Kid is a dangerous but likeable person capable of remarkable cruelty with the chapters set in the jail showing this most effectively and tenderness with how much he loves his friends and ex-lover Nika.
It's a nice older western, was not out to change the genre and the author Neider was born in Odessa so he brings in a different perspective the old west one of affection and criticism of the golden age spread in the 1950s when it was first published.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

McNally Editions republishes out of print books. It does a wonderful job of finding lost classics and making them available. In the last six months I enjoyed their reprint of Dorothy Parker's book reviews in the New Yorker from the 1920s and Rebecca West's book on the treason trial in England of Lord Haw-Haw after WW2.

This is another good one from them. In 1956 Neider published this Western novel. It tells of the capture, escape and death of Hendry Jones, a gunslinger known as "the Kid". The story is told by Doc Baker, a gunslinger who rode with the Kid and his gang and who lived into old age to tell this story.

The book is remembered now mostly because Marlon Brando, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick were all involved, at different times, in making the movie "One-Eyed Jacks", which was based on the book. Ironically, the movie that was ultimately made, has little in common with the book.

The book is a deep take on the classic western gunslinger story. Doc is remembering in his old age. He knows that his readers have all heard the story before. There is no suspense. We know from the beginning that The Kid will escape from jail and that he will ultimately be killed by Sheriff Samuel "Dad" Longworth.

Doc seems to be trying to figure out how it went wrong. At the same time, he has a resigned fatalism that it was just going to happen no matter what. Doc has a plain-spoken style, but he slyly drops bombs every couple of pages. This is his description of The Kid's girlfriend Nika;

"She had beautiful hands, long and almost wristless, the lean forearms flowing darkly on to them and the fingers clean and long and straight. They were the hands of a murderer and he liked them."

Neider sets the story on the Northern California coast. It is jarring to have cowboys smelling the sea and watching the waves break on the beach. It feels exotic next to the Texas or Arizona desert flat lands where the typical cowboys play. At one point the gang heads south to Mexico to get away, but The Kid won't stay there. He has to go back to Marin County.

Neider (1915-2001) went on to be a literary critic and Mark Twain expert. He was best known for editing Mark Twain's autobiography. This was his only Western, but it is a classic. I guess he decided to quit while he was ahead, which, of course, was exactly what The Kid could not do.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s best to do what you’re good at. The Kid had a facility at gunslinging a person dead. Charles Neider can kill you with a word.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing book. A fictionalized account of the death of Billy the Kid (the basic source for two films: Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and Peckinpah's Pat Garret and Billy the Kid), Neider sets the story, not in New Mexico, but in Monterey, California, and it is his descriptions of the landscape and the characters that truly sing. The matter of fact story telling and characterizations that present the characters as real people, neither all good or all bad, create a real world and one can picture and smell and even feel the West of the 1880s. I won't forget this book for a long time.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise, violent poetry. First half is near perfection. The middle bogs down with melodrama and filler.

[David]

When Neider’s unsentimental, elegiac tale of a legendary gunslinger’s final days came out in 1956, the then ubiquitous Western genre was ripe for de-mythologizing, or for what Will Oldham describes in his excellent forward as ‘masculinity and violence approached with subtlety and gentility.’ Through the desultory recollections of fellow outlaw ‘Doc’ Baker, we follow the capture, imprisonment, suspenseful escape, flight to and quixotic return from Mexico, and storied end of Hendry ‘The Kid’ Jones, a smiling, charismatic desperado increasingly worn down and hollowed out by the constant proximity of death. Doc’s narration is casual, precise and poetic, alternating mordant wit with observations of Salinas and the picturesque Monterey Peninsula, and vivid thumbnail sketches of the men and women who call this remote promontory home. More omniscient passages of unforced, granular dialogue and behavior have a fascinating verisimilitude. Violence is abrupt and unflinching, keeping the storyline taut without tipping over into the ghoulishness of Cormac McCarthy and his ilk. Neider’s timeless novel sneaks up on the reader with a kind of elliptical genius that subverts and celebrates its mythos, anticipating and surpassing many of the revisionist westerns that were to follow.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who could pass up a nicely written coastal Californian western? Well, at least not me. As a lover of if the rugged ends of the Pacific Coast, there is much to enjoy here:

We had been having some good sunsets was and on this day we sat and watched one. The sky was empty except for a thin cloud on the right, with a tip like an arrowhead, and the top of this cloud was violet and the bottom pink. The colors kept changing all the time and under them the ocean was glassy and green and seemed to give off its own light. The country on the right was so dark you could make out no details except for some trees showing up against the neat blue sky.

We sat there and talked, and the long cloud turned gray, and the shadows and silhouettes got deeper, and the ocean looked like a huge abalone shell with the mother-of-pearl side facing the sky. There was a smell of seaweed in the air and the breakers looked like burning oil. Everything turned gloomy and blue, and the trees stuck out black against the ocean light.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am partial to this loose genre of western-themed narratives, and when I saw the book at my library I had to get it. That cover! Grand lead-in by Will Oldham, who I have heard of but don't know anything much about at all. He felt rather smitten by the story and its influences, and has some quite intelligent things to say about some other things too. Not much unknown about the book, as we are told the plot ahead of time, so one could argue why read this at all? As I mentioned, I am partial to these confabulations... An intriguing way to unspool Billy the Kid's short life, and I gloried in the telling. Neider writes superbly and his descriptions of the dusty, gritty, violent atmosphere, matched to a languid tempo fit perfectly to expectations. Less like Oldham's Intro assumed but just as well for it. I can pass on overwrought symbolism and inferred implications and simply revel in the well-trod tropes, especially when brought to the pages so skillfully. A treasure to dust off and immerse oneself in for a spell.

[Lee Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a completely random discovery I read based off of the simple fact that much of it takes place in the area of Monterey, California where I spent nearly three years of my life (learning Russian and later Arabic at the Defense Language Institute). That it turned out to be outstanding is one of my more pleasant surprises this reading year. I'm surprised it's not more widely read. Unfortunately, it appears to be out of print, so I had to get creative in finding a copy.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read the book thinking after reading a review that was the basis for " One Eyed Jack" which it wasn't. Some of the same characters names, but a totally different plot from the movie.
I enjoyed the novel nonetheless and am really glad the movies plot was different.
I totally recommend reading this novel.

[Susan Collinsworth]

This is the source from which the Marlon Brando movie One Eyed Jacks was adapted.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic Western noir (first published in 1956, in a new edition. Now, I need to rewatch Brando's "One-Eyed Jacks" and Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," both of which were based on it.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Western, set in Monterey, written by a Jew, with mostly Californio characters, and the inspiration for Blood Meridian. If you told me this book existed a month ago I would have laughed at you

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Great western whose influences are plain to see once you start looking.

[Bob Peru · Rating 4 out of 5]

billy the kid on the central coast.

[Lukas Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first revisionist western?

[Telvanni Bug Musk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the finest westerns I’ve encountered. It’s up there with Warlock and Blood Meridian. An understated, yet evocative meditation on the senselessness of men and guns and killing.

[Gurldoggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moody and violent western set on the California coast. Everyone is lonely and morally suspect. It's hard to say exactly why they're so intent on killing each other, but the dialogue has a charmingly naive bluntness and the descriptions of horses and landscapes are first rate.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great gray Billy the Kid-esque Western, set in coastal CA, an excellent precursor to Mr. Cormac McCarthy.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably long out of print, this loose re-telling of the Billy the Kid saga is one of the finest Western novels ever written, from an author better known as the editor of many collections of Twain's work. This was the source for (but is wildly different from) Marlon Brando's "One-Eyed Jacks", but you can also see where it must have inspired Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid".

[Robert]

Ned to finish one day.

[Nura · Rating 2 out of 5]

another story of Billy the Kid

[Solo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, the description passages took you right there. Though you know the ending from the beginning, the quality of writing and the characters you meet made it a worthwhile read.