Product Details

• Published on: 1981-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 108 pages

Customer Reviews

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

Rambling
The author has presented this book as if Billy had written a series of notes and observations, some are poetry, some are about women, some are accounts. My main problems with the work is that it does tend to ramble on and also that the author doesn't seem to know much about frontier life unless the subject is a cowboy - I doubt very much that Sallie Chisholm lived in a bungalow with running water and collected exotic animals.