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Summary: When Ondaatje Wasn't Afraid to Experiment...
Review: ...there was this book: an odd assortment of newspaper clippings, dialogue, narrative, description... It's a beautifully odd collection that captures the "idea" of this folk hero, rather than a straight story. Great reading!
Rating: 
Summary: Inside William Bonney
Review: I can think of few things more challenging than trying to write a poem as if it were coming from the mind of Billy the kid. How could anyone ever associate someone so notorious and rough with poetic thought? Michael Ondaatje successfully captures the ruggedness of a western gunslinger while also showing a more romantic and introspective side of Billy the Kid. The wonderful language, historical detail, variety of forms, and colorful stores in this book make it exciting from start to finish. I truely enjoyed Michael Ondaatje's writing and was amazed at the amount of information he was able to pack into 100 pages, especially since over half of them were poetry! I really feel that I learned more about Billy the Kid in these pages than I could have learned in a 300-page novel. Ondaatje's writing takes you inside the mind of Billy Bonney in a way that most prose novels could not.
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Summary: A New Look at the Legend of Billy the Kid
Review: If you don't know much about William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, or if you think you do know all about him, this book will be a welcome surprise. Ondaatje destroys all the stereotypes of Billy the Kid; he is no longer just a violent outlaw. He is a poet, a lover, and a friend. Through his own words and poems as well as the words of his close friends, the reader gets a fuller and unique description of William Bonney. Ondaatje blends poetry, pictures, and real newspaper accounts into this very unique "novel." And, Ondaatje pulls it off so well that the reader really believes that he is reading something written by William Bonney. The poetry is beautiful and the story is captivating, even if you're not a fan of "wild west" stories. This book is a one of a kind read.
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Summary: Ondaatje shows a grotesque portrayal of the west.
Review: In Michael Ondaatje\222s book, we see the other side of Billythe Kid, not just the action and violence that was characteristic ofhim, but also a poetic side. In Ondaatje\222s book, there are poems, stories, and a jailhouse interview with Billy the Kid. Although these poems are not the works of the real Billy the Kid, Ondaatje tries to produce an accurate portrayal of what the mind set was like of some westerners, possibly Billy\222s. Ondaatje uses his own imagination to tell what may have been going through the mind of Billy the Kid- William Bonney.
Ondaatje also uses his poems and stories to describe the loneliness of the west. Billy the Kid was often times alone. Ondaatje assumes that Billy (being alone a lot of the time)would have a close relationship with nature, which seems would be true. There are poems that have to do with the scenery of places, told with very vivid descriptions. Ondaatje explains it as Billy would have seen it, and does a good job in doing so.
Prostitution was frequent in the west, and Ondaatje plays on that fact, assuming maybe that Billy frequented prostitutes. If that is true, we don\222t know. Billy, in this book, and the woman named Angie have some type of ongoing relationship. There are many poems in which Billy talks about her. Even though this is fiction, Billy the Kid may have known a woman like Angie. Alcohol played a part in that relationship, as well as others in the book. Alcohol was a means to escape and numb pain. That was very common in the Old West and Ondaatje clearly shows the importance it had in people\222s lives.
Ondaatje uses his own imagination throughout most of the book, but does include a jailhouse interview from the Texas Star from March 1881. Using the jailhouse interview after reading Ondaatje\222s poems and stories makes us realize that the real Billy the Kid had a personal side to him, that was not much publicized. Ondaatje\222s portrayal of that side of Billy may in fact, be right on target.
This book attempts to show Billy the Kid and the Old West in a way that hasn\222t been seen before. By using poems and stories having to do with what Billy the Kid may have been going through in his personal life, we are givena truer image of the west. Not many western novels attempt to show us the emotional aspect of a known hero or outlaw. Ondaatje, through his descriptions and stories, gives us one possibility.
Ondaatje uses microcosms throughout his book to represent the bigger picture of the west. In this book, Ondaatje talks about the myths that surround Billy the Kid. He makes us use our imagination (much like he did) to decide what was behind Billy the Kid\222s motives, and what his personality may have been like. In this book, we are not reading about the mythical images that are associated with Billy the Kid, but rather we get a sense of the true west. Billy the Kid was not only portrayed as a gunslinger in Ondaatje\222s book, but also as a lover and a poet.
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Summary: Ondaatje does an excellent job of western revisionism.
Review: 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. Ondaatje implies that while accepted history may see faceless frontiersmen, nineteenth century individuals were no different from those today, and life, on an emotional level, has changed very little. By providing the normally mundane details of daily life in a poetic context, the book sheds new light on a now complete character that can reason and love in addition to shoot enemies. Billy the Kid is an intense look into such a character, and Ondaatje makes a powerful statement about the true nature of the Old West.
Rating: 
Summary: Billy the Kid Speaks!
Review: 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." All these paint an unmistakable landscape of a bleak and desolate New Mexico in the 1880's, a scene so haunted that even "the sun turned into a pair of hands" and pulled out hairs from Billy the Kid's head which, we're told later, is "smaller than a rat." Not one potentially enlivening detail is overlooked; not one square inch of landscape or action escapes the reader's view.
Ondaatje's ambitious project demonstrates that the recipe for great writing is precise detail compounded by believable emotion, a recipe he follows to the letter. Ondaatje executes these two devices so effectively at times that a kind of piercing, revelatory insight emerges periodically. Magical disclosures such as the characterization of Pat Garrett as one who "became frightened of flowers because they grew so slowly he couldn't tell what they planned to do," help to fully realize both the character of Billy the Kid and the times in which he lived, and establish Ondaatje's book as perhaps one of the greatest attempts at persona poetry in the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Can Ondaatje Get Any Better?
Review: Ondaatje's first book is a bona fide masterpiece. Pure and simple, Billy the Kid is a wonderful weave of the mythology of the old west, the darkest vines of human nature, and the poetry in all things that makes life worth living. I thought Coming Through Slaughter, which utilizes some of the same kinds of architecture in its scattered-card-like narrative, was brilliant; Billy the Kid adds mind-blowing to that!
Rating:
Summary: COULD'VE BEEN LESS PRETENTIOUS
Review: The book is full of desultory excerpts from Billy's diary: stories about certain people ' acquaintances, friends, foes, cops, outlaws (like the one he was) is told, which seem irrelevant until those people are referred to in some other part of the book, involved in a small incident involving Billy himself, or just Billy, shedding some more light on their persona. At times, it does feel that Ondaatje is being pretentious by making efforts to purposely disconnect fragments of the book and placing them hugger-mugger, just to make the book a little bit more outré, at other times, it is this annoying and deliberate effort by him, that adds color to this book, and forces the reader to read it more than once to get a grip of what is happening in the book; and with the book becoming more and more comestible with every subsequent reading, who could complain.
The poetry, as it seems to me, gets too vague to understand sometimes, and seems grossly out-of-context, though choice of words seem quite interesting. Moreover, it seems like one needs to know beforehand, the context of the poetry, and a brief know-how of Billy's life, both of which could not be found in the book. This makes the understanding of certain poems, a bit too hard. The simplest poems of the book, is what give it high points: like the one about swatting a fly ' in all its simplicity, this detailed poetic- explanation of how Billy killed an innocuous fly, in addition to the people he had killed, hits the reader hard, with all its earthiness. Also worth highlighting is another poetry-of-sort, which describes the snoring, sleeping friend of Billy, and how his stertorous snoring made a funny whistling sound, when the air from his mouth was forced out of the gap in between his frontal pair of teeth: unassuming, touching and effective.
The book is rather funny, in the way the various killings and encounters are described. No detail is spared, and the gore is described, exactly the way it had happened: and all this, without an iota of emotion ' stoic and cold. Amongst the bits from Billy's diary, about the people he knew, there is this interesting story about this mad-man, who used to raise 'freaky' dogs; he cross-bred them, sub-Rosa, only to be brutally killed by them. Also, the excerpt about Paul Garrett, the ideal assassin and Sallie Chisum makes one feel there were really some colorful and adorable people in Billy's life. Also, Billy's 'exclusive jail interview' is 'in-your-face', and at times, laughable.
All in all, the book is worth the money paid for it, though there are instances, where some material seem grossly out-of-context and leaves the reader lost: it could've been much better off without Ondaatje's pretentious effort to be weird.
Rating:
Summary: COULD'VE BEEN LESS PRETENTIOUS
Review: The book is full of desultory excerpts from Billy�s diary: stories about certain people � acquaintances, friends, foes, cops, outlaws (like the one he was) is told, which seem irrelevant until those people are referred to in some other part of the book, involved in a small incident involving Billy himself, or just Billy, shedding some more light on their persona. At times, it does feel that Ondaatje is being pretentious by making efforts to purposely disconnect fragments of the book and placing them hugger-mugger, just to make the book a little bit more outré, at other times, it is this annoying and deliberate effort by him, that adds color to this book, and forces the reader to read it more than once to get a grip of what is happening in the book; and with the book becoming more and more comestible with every subsequent reading, who could complain.
The poetry, as it seems to me, gets too vague to understand sometimes, and seems grossly out-of-context, though choice of words seem quite interesting. Moreover, it seems like one needs to know beforehand, the context of the poetry, and a brief know-how of Billy�s life, both of which could not be found in the book. This makes the understanding of certain poems, a bit too hard. The simplest poems of the book, is what give it high points: like the one about swatting a fly � in all its simplicity, this detailed poetic- explanation of how Billy killed an innocuous fly, in addition to the people he had killed, hits the reader hard, with all its earthiness. Also worth highlighting is another poetry-of-sort, which describes the snoring, sleeping friend of Billy, and how his stertorous snoring made a funny whistling sound, when the air from his mouth was forced out of the gap in between his frontal pair of teeth: unassuming, touching and effective.
The book is rather funny, in the way the various killings and encounters are described. No detail is spared, and the gore is described, exactly the way it had happened: and all this, without an iota of emotion � stoic and cold. Amongst the bits from Billy�s diary, about the people he knew, there is this interesting story about this mad-man, who used to raise �freaky� dogs; he cross-bred them, sub-Rosa, only to be brutally killed by them. Also, the excerpt about Paul Garrett, the ideal assassin and Sallie Chisum makes one feel there were really some colorful and adorable people in Billy�s life. Also, Billy�s �exclusive jail interview� is �in-your-face�, and at times, laughable.
All in all, the book is worth the money paid for it, though there are instances, where some material seem grossly out-of-context and leaves the reader lost: it could�ve been much better off without Ondaatje�s pretentious effort to be weird.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, for yesteryear
Review: There was a time, pre-English Patient, when the innovative work of Michael Ondaatje appeared assured of standing the test of time, as this slender, groundbreaking volume of poetry, prose, and prose-poetry, now some 35 years old, makes clear. It is, arguably, if not the best--that would be Coming Through Slaughter--then certainly the most felicitous work in Ondaatje's ouevre, and one would be hard pressed indeed to describe it as anything less than a work of sparkling genius.
That the author's more recent, utterly conventional efforts--first Patient, then Anil's Ghost--have, by comparison, evidenced such a precipitous decline, is only sad. But, if you want to read Ondaatje at the near-height of his powers, you could do far worse than Billy the Kid. (Or Slaughter. Or Running in the Family.)
Those were the days. And they were better days. And ballsier days. And brassier. Far better days indeed than Mr. Ondaatje's nowadays. It is the author's express lack of nerve, the lack of nerve expressed in his recent work, that one now deplores. But when Ondaatje was great, he wrote Billy the Kid, the great work of a once-great writer. And in those days, few, few indeed, were greater.
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