The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

by Michael Ondaatje

Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.

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.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Canada, Literary Fiction, Literature

121 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, and essayist, renowned for his contributions to both poetry and prose. He was born in Colombo in 1943, to a family of Tamil and Burgher descent. Ondaatje emigrated to Canada in 1962, where he pursued his education, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts from Queen's University.
Ondaatje’s literary career began in 1967 with his poetry collection The Dainty Monsters, followed by his celebrated The Collected Works of Billy the Kid in 1970. His poetry earned him numerous accolades, including the Governor General’s Award for his collection There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1973–1978 in 1979. He published 13 books of poetry, exploring diverse themes and poetic forms.
In 1992, Ondaatje gained international fame with the publication of his novel The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize and was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film. His other notable works include In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Anil’s Ghost (2000), and Divisadero (2007), which won the Governor General’s Award. Ondaatje’s novel Warlight (2018) was longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Aside from his writing, Ondaatje has been influential in fostering Canadian literature. He served as an editor at Coach House Books, contributing to the promotion of new Canadian voices. He also co-edited Brick, A Literary Journal, and worked as a founding trustee of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.
Ondaatje’s work spans various forms, including plays, documentaries, and essays. His 2002 book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film earned him critical acclaim and won several awards. His plays have been adapted from his novels, including The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter.
Over his career, Ondaatje has been honored with several prestigious awards. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, upgraded to Companion in 2016, and received the Sri Lanka Ratna in 2005. In 2016, a new species of spider, Brignolia ondaatjei, was named in his honor.
Ondaatje’s personal life is also intertwined with his literary pursuits. He has been married to novelist Linda Spalding, and the couple co-edits Brick. He has two children from his first marriage and is the brother of philanthropist Sir Christopher Ondaatje. He was also involved in a public stand against the PEN American Center's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo in 2015, citing concerns about the publication's anti-Islamic content.
Ondaatje’s enduring influence on literature and his ability to blend personal history with universal themes in his writing continue to shape Canadian and world literature.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a portrait of Billy the Kid as reflected in a thousand pieces of a shattered mirror. The book is composed of vignettes, poems, photos, and fragments of prose, each of which is a little stroke of brilliance and all of which together paint an incredibly rich, violent, and moving portrait of this young man and his legend. Ondaatje is quite a conjurer here.

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

avant-garde, postmodern, revisionist, a deconstruction, self-conscious and self-aware, prose from another planet, beautifully brutal, the kind of spikey poetry you see in some of the books of Hawke or even some DeLillo (i'm thinking Libra), the kind of book that you read and reread and remember forever. at least this reader did.

all of the above does nothing to sum up the yearning and strangeness and rightness of this underrated modern classic.

i mentioned 'poetry' but i am talking about the prose. poetic prose, yes a cliche and yes wonderful when it is done right. and hey, there's actual poetry here too. 'poetry written by Billy the Kid' apparently. obviously not, but this is postmodernism or whatever so does it even matter? the poetry captures the character perfectly. perfect poetry.

Billy the Kid, vicious animal
Pat Garrett, so sane he's insane
Billy the Kid, the mythology removed and built up again

the fragmented, cut-up style is ingenius. historical records, first person accounts, news blurbs, photographs, poetry, pulp fiction... it all comes together to paint a picture of a timeless place populated with timeless characters enacting a timeless dance with fate and death. fate and death, fate and death, fate and death. is this really a Western? i suppose so, but it is so much else as well.

i'm looking through my old photocopy of the novel (thanks, Interlibrary Loan of 20 years ago) and i'm feeling a need to read this a third time. maybe i can then write a better review. oh you beautiful novel, i want to put my hands all over you again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6eSks...

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

A melancholy chapbook of some sort- a hybrid of prose, poetry, songs, and ballads that flesh out the life of one of America's most controversial outlaws. Mr. Ondaatje writes with heartstopping gorgeousness that when you finish this, or any other work of prose he's written, you find yourself feeling exhilarated and heartbroken at the same time. He is a genius.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Get away from me yer stupid chicken."

Oh man I love this book. There's a blurb from Larry McMurtry where he admits that it "strains one's powers of description" which pretty much sums it up. The Collected Works explores the interior life of Billy the Kid and his relationship with Pat Garrett. It's raw, funny, and frightening all in one go. Because 1) it's so interior, 2) Ondaatje excels at this sort of characterization, and 3) Billy is bat shit crazy, the exteriors are hyperbolic and grotesque. Billy might as well be on Mars the scenes are so strange and distinct.

It's like getting a phone call from a relative from the hospital when they're hopped up on pain medication and all this beautiful/scary talk comes tumbling out. It doesn't mean anything, but then again maybe it does.

There's a scene where Billy is puking during a sandstorm where the vomit is a "pack of miniature canaries" torn out of his body, buffeted by the wind, and all the while he's trying to keep the dog from going after it eating up his mess. It's sad and brutal and hilarious and there are many more scenes just as sharply layered and angled against expectations. So throw away all the received wisdom you may have picked up regarding BTK over the years and saddle up for a ride that's slick and weird.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
By Michael Ondaatje
This was fairly short but put together nicely. I've read a lot about him, and there isn't much I have found written by Billy himself. So having this much and fashioned into a story to make it flow is very nice.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Cue the Dylan soundtrack from the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. A little scratchy, a little 'first-take'. Go sepia. Remember the first time you heard: Billy, you're so far away from home.)

Ondaatje was a kid in Sri Lanka -- a kid in Sri Lanka -- and he fell in love with the legend of Billy the Kid. Never kicked it. Then he started to write -- he had to write. He wrote a collage: of poems and poem fragments, prose, documentary testimonies. It's uneven, a broken western sky. But we're at the point where only impressionists can write Billy, who here says, Blood a necklace on me all my life.

This is a book where a dying man's last words are, indelibly, get away from me yer stupid chicken.

----- -----

Sallie had a cat that got bit by a rattler; was gonna die. They went to kill it, to put it out of its misery; but it jumped and fled. Ran under the house. Couldn't get it out, but imagined the pain. Billy said he'd kill him. You should read this to find out how. If you want to know.

----- -----

A poem:

You know hunters
are the gentlest
anywhere in the world

they halt caterpillars
from path dangers
lift a drowning moth from a bowl
remarkable in peace

in the same way assassins
come to chaos neutral

----- -----

To writers, Ondaatje says this:

/while I've been going on
the blood from my wrist
has travelled to my heart
and my fingers touch
the soft blue paper notebook
control a pencil that shifts up and sideways
mapping my thinking going its own way
like light wet glasses drifting on polished wood

----- -----

Billy was the pink of politeness and as courteous a little gentleman as I ever met. And yet, Even though dead they buried him in leg irons.

It's easy to be misunderstood.

----- -----

Dylan again, Billy, they don't like you to be so free.

----- -----

Get away from me yer stupid chicken.

[April Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book years ago, and it is definitely one I won't forget. I love the legend of Billy the Kid, so to see it told through prose and candor and photographs was really interesting.A great Canadian read.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd say this book is like a Terence Malick movie transformed into poetry/prose/a few pictures. It's fragmentary, nebulous, disintegrating, nonsensical, beautiful, weird, scary, quiet, even silent. It's got lots and lots of white space. For a reason. I think it's wonderful and I want to spend even more time with it, let it soak in a bit more before further reports. One thing to say: it's very much an Ezra Pound poetry as history sort of thing, but clearer (but only because we know the myth immediately since it's still prevalent, as opposed to, say, the history of the Malatesta family in 16th century Italy). Enjoy it.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've taken to describing this book as "What would happen if William Faulkner wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a poem. Concisely. In Canada."

So it's no surprise that it blew me away.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

One morning woke up
Charlie was cooking
and we ate not talking
but sniffing wind
wind so fine
it was like drinking ether

Of course it was Peckinpah and Zimmerman who delivered me here. This a lyrical treatment of the famed gunslinger. It utilizes interviews, prose poems and even pages of clipped meter. Perhaps this ideal territory for the poet Ondaatje? It might also be his best book as some here have speculated? It provides a curious tension of vistas, cordite and threadbare redemption. I’m reasonably certain that the story of dog breeding will haunt my psyche for years. Likewise the merciless thirst of many within these pages represents a cosmic affliction. Perhaps every reader will thus emerge as if they stepped out of a bandbox?

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, and well-written, because Michael Ondaatje. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the particulars of Billy the Kid’s short and violent life before listening to this title.
I liked how Ondaatje wove information known about Billy’s exploits from accounts of the time and photographs. I suspect that if I’d known more about the legend, I’d have been more moved by this work.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents a fragmented mosaic of short prose, photos, poems, and fictionalized news articles about the legendary outlaw Billy the Kid's life and death. It captures William H. Bonney's violent existence in the American southwest during the late 1800s, including his complex relationship with Sheriff Pat Garrett, involvement in the Lincoln County War, and several relationships with women, friends, and enemies. It reads as a series of short stories told in non-linear fashion. The narrative perspective shifts constantly — sometimes Billy speaks in first person, sometimes Garrett reflects on their history, and occasionally an omniscient narrator provides context. Ondaatje explores how historical figures become transformed into legends. I am glad I read it but did not feel much of a connection to the characters or the subject matter.

[sigurd · Rating 5 out of 5]

qualche anno fa lessi l'autobiografia di carmine crocco, e poi anche il diario del generale Borjes, e devo dire che questi briganti folli e cani sciolti esercitano su di me un fascino incredibile. qui abbiamo la storia di Billy the Kid raccontata da lui medesimo in un insieme di scritti apocrifi che alternano prosa e poesia. piccoli bozzetti di rara potenza visiva e emozionale. e il libro, che dire..., è il capolavoro più sottovalutato dell'universo, ed entra di diritto nei miei best-100. La scrittura di michael ondaatje è magnifica: secca, poetica, impressionista, essenziale. (ho già preso il suo secondo libro sul jazzista Buddy Bolden). la storia di Billy The Kid, raccontata in questo modo, ti si attacca al collo come un cagnaccio, ti stacca le giugulari, il sangue scorre lentamente e tu fai le riflessioni che devi fare prima di morire dissanguato, tra un amico che ti ha tradito, un amore mai dimenticato, e un nemico che ti cercherà fino ai confini del mondo, e avrà risparmiato la sua ultima pallottola per te.

post scriptum
non tutti sanno che il vero nome di Billy The Kid era Henry McCarty e il vice sceriffo che lo portò in carcere e che McCarty uccise, riuscendosi a liberare delle manette con una mossa che abbiamo visto fare allo psicopatico Chigur nel film non è un paese per vecchi, si chiamava... Bell.
(dedicato ai pivelli che oggigiorno parlano di letteratura americana, riempiendosene la bocca, e poi non sanno l'ABC. con affetto, sigurd).

_______________________
Dopo aver sparato a Gregory
ecco che è successo

gli avevo sparato un colpo a regola d'arte
gliel'avevo fatto esplodere sotto al cuore
così che non poteva tirar tanto per le lunghe
e stavo per allontanarmi
quando 'sto pollo trotterella verso di lui
e mentre cadeva gli zompa al collo
gli pianta il becco in gola
punta le zampe e sradica
una vena rossa e blu

intanto lui cadeva
e il pollo si allontanava

seguitando a tirare la vena
fino a farla di 12 metri
quasi tenesse il corpo come un aquilone
e l'ultima uscita di Gregory è stata

togliti dai piedi stupido d'un pollo

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're looking for something along the lines of The True History of the Kelly Gang or even Lonesome Dove, this ain't that. There were bits in this mishmash that worked, but the overall effect was too disjointed and maybe even self-indulgent to make for a satisfying read. Then again, it's Ondaatje, and Annie Dillard and Larry McMurtry blurbed it, so maybe I failed the author rather than the other way around.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Ondaatje is certainly one of the world's greatest living writers. My admiration for his writing craft is boundless but I will nonetheless attempt at a dispirited review of his first novel-ish publication. Although this is his first "novel" (more on novel(ish)ness later), it ranks among his most unabashedly avant-garde next to The English Patient and his most recent Divisadero. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is one of the earliest attempts in North American letters at revising the Wild West mythos. The Revisionist Western is, again, one of my favorite sub-genres of all time, but I am still attempting objectivity. This novel(ish) piece of writing takes a stab at demythologizing the outlaw/bandit/freedom fighter archetype of which, for almost a century, Billy the Kid belonged to. It is intensely violent but this violence is offset by an, at times, strikingly humanized portrayal of a violent murderer. Similarly (or perhaps contrarily), Billy's portrayal is at times maddeningly animalistic. So too is Ondaatje's novel(ish). It garners its power by oscillating amongst historical record, first person narrative, eye-witness accounts, dime-store novel, photography and most interestingly, poems which are intended to be read as if Billy the Kid wrote them (which of course he didn't). Though it can be dizzying at times while at other times being stomach-churningly violent, this book is a must read for fans of the genre as well as fans of Ondaatje's peculiar, non-linear, pastiche narrative style.

[Spiros · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book every bit as exalted and brutal as Blood Meridian, if slightly narrower in scope; it delineates a world in which life is cheap and short, and in which legend looms large.

[Tinea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems, snippets, and pictures.
Hearty. Read it twice.

After shooting Gregory
this is what happened

I'd shot him well and careful
made it explode under his heart
so it wouldn't last long
was about to walk away
when this chicken paddles out to him
and as he was falling hops on his neck
digs the beak into his throat
straightens legs and heaves
a red and blue vein out

Meanwhile he fell
and the chicken walked away

still tugging at the vein
till it was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory's last words being

get away from me yer stupid chicken

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

No idea how to rate this book. It was mesmerizing. It took forever to read. It had some spectacular bits of writing. It wasn’t a story. It was a story. It was poetry. It was prose. At a minimum, the author really knows what he’s doing with a pen.

[Carissa-Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dynamic, interesting, creative, well-written, and I feel like I didn't fully understand it.

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie knew he was already dead now, had to go somewhere, do something, to get his mind off the pain. Charlie went straight, now closer to them his hands covered the mess in his trousers. Shoot him Charlie shoot him. The blood trail he left straight as a knife cut. Getting there getting there. Charlie getting to the arroyo, pitching into Garrett's arms, slobbering his stomach on Garrett's gun belt. Hello Charlie, said Pat quietly.

The fascination with Billy the Kid is more fascinating than the man himself, really, but this is a very good example. I just wish more of it held up like the above quote. The time shifts work really well; the perspective shifts not so much. Also, there are some jarring anachronisms and inaccuracies. (Look, I never said I hadn't been one of the fascinated!) If it had stuck more with the pathos of the thing, I would have really loved this. Still, the poetry is very good. (The library is kicking me out but I'll come back and put a scrap in later.) And as ever, Pat Garrett is the most sympathetic person in any story about Billy the Kid, so it got that right.

[Anand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the stranger works of fiction I've read, and I didn't entirely get it or figure out the free-flowing prose and poetry of what was going on. But I did get something of a moody, at times visceral and violent, definitely strange, experience of the Old West through a particular poet/novelist's vision. One of the more interesting visions of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, alongside Sam Peckinpah's mournful 1973 masterpiece.

[M. Sarki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Made it about half way through. The book just did not connect with me. I did not believe it, hard as I tried. However, I am a big fan of the legend of Billy the Kid, but this work left me disappointed and adrift. After looking now at two of his books, it is clear I am not an Ondaatje fan even if he is an anointed one.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Collected Works of Bill the Kid is a work of fiction that doesn’t read like a story, but is more an amalgam of accounts, photographs, poetry, and vignettes. Ondaatje’s descriptive prose and well structured sentences transports you back in time and touches all your sense. This was beautifully written, and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

[Stephen M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for an in-class discussion. I was amazed by number of things we talked about. Ondaatje was really of top of his craft when writing this book. My hat is off to him.

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sono sempre stato sensibile al fascino del western, e il miglior complimento che potrei fare a un libro come questo è che gli manca solo la musica: quella di Morricone. Qui c’è un mito, quello di Billy the Kid, un vero Achille piè veloce americano, a cui viene data una voce mozzata, singhiozzante, lirica e polverosa. Un viaggio vorticoso nella mente del fuorilegge da mettere nello scaffale accanto ai romanzi di Cormac McCarthy, a “Nebraska” di Springsteen e al DVD di “The Hateful Eight”.

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was . . . wild tbh. no one tell my English teacher but I skimmed the gory parts hgjfdgfghfg. because holy shit this book got gross.

I . . . can appreciate a lot about this book, and I'd actually consider reading more Michael Ondaatje because I like his writing style, but I personally wouldn't actually recommend this one either

[Ty-Orion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Странна и психаделична колекция от парченца от живота и смъртта на Били Хлапето, известният стрелец от Дивия Запад. Не си падам много по поезия, особено модерна, но някак се отнесох в този хипнотичен калейдоскоп от психотични бележки, бели стихове, части от интервюта и снимки.

[Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’ll be with the world till she dies.”

(how did he know??)

[Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it for the most part, but thought was really cool. Super interesting style and approach mixing poetry with unique prose. Not 5 star cause brain is too puny to process most poetry. However, I did like some included in this 1