The Collected Works of Billy the Kid [Paperback]

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 Kidis 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.“Moving and tragic. . . . Ondaatje is a poet and even his prose moves with rhythmic circular precision.” —The New York Times Book Review“The Collected Works of Billy the Kidstrains one’s powers of description.... Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint.”—Larry McMurtry,The Washington Post Book World“Wonderful.... Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art.” —Annie DillardMichael Ondaatje is a novelist and poet who lives in Toronto, Canada. He is the author ofThe English Patient,Divisadero,In the Skin of a Lion,Coming Through Slaughter,The Collected Works of Billy the KidandAnil's Ghost; three collections of poems,The Cinnamon Peeler,Secular Love, andThere's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir,Running in the Family. He received the Booker Prize forThe English Patient.These are the killed.(By me)—Morton, Baker, early friends of mine.Joe Bernstein. 3 Indians.A blacksmith when I was twelve, with a knife.5 Indians in self defence (behind a very safe rock).One man who bit me during a robbery.Brady, Hindman, Beckwith, Joe Clark,Deputy Jim Carlyle, Deputy Sheriff J. W. Bell.And Bob Ollinger. A rabid cat,birds during practice,These are the killed.(By them)—Charlie, Tom O'FolliardAngela D's split arm,and Pat Garrel+