The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje (English) Paperback Boo

Description: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje From the Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient comes a visionary novel about an icon of American violence. William Bonney killed his first man when he was twelve. By the time he was twenty-one he had, by his own reckoning, slain nineteen more. In the intervening years he had become "Billy the Kid", bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint, a boy with buck teeth and a pleasant face who could shoot a stranger calmly in the heart and walk away while birds ravaged the corpse. Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Ondaatje traces Billy'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. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description 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. Author Biography Michael Ondaatje is a novelist and poet perhaps best known for his Booker Prize winning novel adapted into an Academy Award-winning film, The English Patient. His other books include Secular Love, In the Skin of a Lion, Running in the Family, and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. He edited From Ink Lake, a selection of Canadian stories, and has won several Governor Generals Award for both fiction and poetry. Review Quote "The Collected Works of Billy the Kidstrains ones powers of description.... Ondaatjes eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint." -Larry McMurtry,The Washington Post Book World "Wonderful.... Ondaatjes language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art." -Annie Dillard Excerpt from Book 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 OFolliardAngela Ds split arm,and Pat Garrettsliced off my head.Blood a necklace on me all my life.Christmas at Fort Sumner, 1880. There were five of us together then. Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, Charlie Bowdre, Tom OFolliard, and me. In November we celebrated my 21st birthday, mixing red dirt and alcohol--a public breathing throughout the night. The next day we were told that Pat Garrett had been made sheriff and had accepted it. We were bad for progress in New Mexico and cattle politicians like Chisum wanted the bad name out. They made Garrett sheriff and he sent me a letter saying move out or I will get you Billy. The government sent a Mr. Azariah F. Wild to help him out. Between November and December I killed Jim Carlyle over some mixup, he being a friend.Tom OFolliard decided to go east then, said he would meet up with us in Sumner for Christmas. Goodbye goodbye. A few days before Christmas we were told that Garrett was in Sumner waiting for us all. Christmas night. Garrett, Mason, Wild, with four or five others. Tom OFolliard rides into town, leaning his rifle between the horses ears. He would shoot from the waist now which, with a rifle, was pretty good, and he was always accurate.Garrett had been waiting for us, playing poker with the others, guns on the floor beside them. Told that Tom was riding in alone, he went straight to the window and shot OFolliards horse dead. Tom collapsed with the horse still holding the gun and blew out Garretts window. Garrett already halfway downstairs. Mr. Wild shot at Tom from the other side of the street, rather unnecessarily shooting the horse again. If Tom had used stirrups and didnt swing his legs so much he would probably have been locked under the animal. OFolliard moved soon. When Garrett had got to ground level, only the horse was there in the open street, good and dead. He couldnt shout to ask Wild where OFolliard was or he wouldve got busted. Wild started to yell to tell Garrett though and Tom killed him at once. Garrett fired at OFolliards flash and took his shoulder off. Tom OFolliard screaming out onto the quiet Fort Sumner street, Christmas night, walking over to Garrett, no shoulder left, his jaws tilting up and down like mad bladders going. Too mad to even aim at Garrett. Son of a bitch son of a bitch, as Garrett took clear aim and blew him out.Garrett picked him up, the head broken in two, took him back upstairs into the hotel room. Mason stretched out a blanket neat in the corner. Garrett placed Tom OFolliard down, broke open Toms rifle, took the remaining shells and placed them by him. They had to wait till morning now. They continued their poker game till six a.m. Then remembered they hadnt done anything about Wild. So the four of them went out, brought Wild into the room. At eight in the morning Garrett buried Tom OFolliard. He had known him quite well. Then he went to the train station, put Azariah F. Wild on ice and sent him back to Washington.In Boot Hill there are over 400 graves. It takes the space of 7 acres. There is an elaborate gate but the path keeps to no main route for it tangles like branches of a tree among the gravestones.300 of the dead in Boot Hill died violently200 by guns, over 50 by knivessome were pushed under trains--a popularand overlooked form of murder in the west.Some from brain haemorrhages resulting from bar fightsat least 10 killed in barbed wire.In Boot Hill there are only 2 graves that belong to women and they are the only known suicides in that graveyardThe others, I know, did not see the wounds appearing in the sky, in the air. Sometimes a normal forehead in front of me leaked brain gases. Once a nose clogged right before me, a lock of skin formed over the nostrils, and the shocked face had to start breathing through mouth, but then the moustache bound itself in the lower teeth and he began to gasp loud the hah! hah! going strong--churned onto the floor, collapsed out, seeming in the end to be breathing out of his eye--tiny needle jets of air reaching into the throat. I told no one. If Angela D. had been with me then, not even her; not Sallie, John, Charlie, or Pat. In the end the only thing that never changed, never became deformed, were animals.Mmmmmmmm mm thinkingmoving across the world on horsesbody split at the edge of their necksneck sweat eating at my jeansmoving across the world on horsesso if I had a newsmans brain Id saywell some morals are physicalmust be clear and openlike diagram of watch or starone must eliminate muchthat is one turns when the bullet leaves youwalk off see none of the thrashingthe very eyes welling up like bad drainsbelieving then the moral of newspapers or gunwhere bodies are mindless as paper flowers you dont feedor give to drinkthat is why I can watch the stomach of clocksshift their wheels and pins into each otherand emerge living, for hoursWhen I caught Charlie Bowdre dyingtossed 3 feet by bang bullets gigglingat me face tossed in a gagglehe pissing into his trouser legs in painface changing like fast sunshine o my godo my god billy Im pissing watchyour handswhile the eyes grew all over his bodyJesus I never knew that did youthe nerves shot outthe liver running around therelike a headless hen jerkingbrown all over the yardseen that too at my auntsnever eaten hen since thenBlurred a waist high riverfoam against the horseriding naked clothes and bootsand pistol in the airCrossed a crooked riverloving in my headambled dry on stubbleshot a crooked birdHeld it in my fingersthe eyes were small and farit yelled out like a trumpetdestroyed it of its fearAfter shooting Gregorythis is what happenedId shot him well and carefulmade it explode under his heartso it wouldnt last long andwas about to walk awaywhen this chicken paddles out to himand as he was falling hops on his neckdigs the beak into his throatstraightens legs and heavesa red and blue vein outMeanwhile he felland the chicken walked awaystill tugging at the veintill it was 12 yards longas if it held that body like a kiteGregorys last words beingget away from me yer stupid chickenTilts back to fallblack hair swivelling off hershattering the pillowBilly she saysthe tall gawky body spitting electricoff the sheets to my armleans her whole body outso breasts are thinnerstomach is a hollowwhere the bright bush jumpsthis is the first timebite into her side leavea string of teeth marksshe hooks in two and covers memy hand lockedher body nearly breaking off my fingerspivoting like machines in final speedlater my hands cracked in love juicefingers paralysed by it arthriticthese beautiful fingers I couldnt movefaster than a crippled witch nowThe barn I stayed in for a week then was at the edge of a farm and had been deserted it seemed for several years, though built of stone and good wood. The cold dark grey of the place made my eyes become used to soft light and I burned out my fever there. It was twenty yards long, about ten yards wide. Above me was another similar sized room but the floors were unsafe for me to walk on. However I heard birds and the odd animal scrape their feet, the rotten wood magnifying the sound so they entered my dreams and nightmares.But it was the colour and light of the place that made me stay there, not my fever. It became a calm week. It was the colour and the light. The colour a grey with remnants of brown--for instance those rust brown pipes and metal objects that before had held bridles or pails, that slid to machine uses; the thirty or so grey cans in one corner of the room, their ellipses, from where I sat, setting up patterns in the dark.When I had arrived I opened two windows and a door and the sun poured blocks and angles in, lighting up the floors skin of feathers and dust and old grain. The windows looked out onto fields and plants grew at the door, me killing them gradually with my urine. Wind came in wet and brought in birds who flew to the other end of the room to get their aim to fly out again. An old tap hung from the roof, the same colour as the walls, so once I knocked myself out on it.For that week then I made a bed of the table there and lay out my fever, whatever it was. I began to block my mind of all thought. Just sensed the room and learnt what my body could do, what it could survive, what colours it liked best, what songs I sang best. There were animals who did not move out and accepted me as a larger breed. I ate the old grain with them, drank from a constant puddle about twenty yards away from the barn. I saw no human and heard no human voice, learned to squat the best way when shitting, used leaves for wiping, never ate flesh or touched another animals flesh, never entered his boundary. We were all aware and allowed each other. The fly who sat on my arm, after his inquiry, just went away, ate his disease and kept it in him. When I walked I avoided the cobwebs who had places to grow to, who had stories to finish. The flies caught in those acrobat nets were the only murder I saw.And in the barn next to us there was another granary, separated by just a thick wood door. In it a hundred or so rats, thick rats, eating and eating the foot deep pile of grain abandoned now and fermenting so that at the end of my week, after a heavy rain storm burst the power in those seeds and brought drunkenness into the minds of those rats, they abandoned the sanity of eating the food before them and turned on each other and grotesque and awkwardly because of their size they went for each others eyes and ribs so the yellow stomachs slid out and they came through th Details ISBN067976786X Author Michael Ondaatje Short Title COLL WORKS OF BILLY THE KID Pages 128 Language English ISBN-10 067976786X ISBN-13 9780679767862 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY FIC Illustrations Yes Year 1996 Publication Date 1996-03-31 Residence Toronto, -CN Birth 1943 Series Vintage International (Paperback) Publisher Vintage Imprint Vintage DOI 10.1604/9780679767862 Audience General/Trade UK Release Date 1996-03-19 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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