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

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

this was a class assignment but i actually really enjoyed it

I LOVE this. So much that after I finished, I spent some time reading about Billy the Kid's life, and then started rereading Ondaatje's book. This is one of those books that, like Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, blurs the lines between novel and poetry. It needs to be savored slowly, and it's a book that doesn't seem to come together until you get to the end and then take the time to reread it. The first read was like wading through water -- enjoyable because Ondaatje's words are a joy to read. The second read is where all the pieces begin to click into place, at least it was for me. I love how playful Ondaatje is, how funny and tragic and lovely he is in this book at different turns. I just love this book, and know I'll be rereading it several more times in my lifetime. Luckily for me, it's short.

I enjoyed this one overall. The structure took me a little bit to get into, but the language made up for it. Very stark, and evocative of the subject.

This mixed genre work--poetry, prose poetry, faux memoir, and so much more--shows an imagination at work. With a vigorous ear and powerful eye, and a great playfulness for the serious, Ondaatje has created a masterpiece that is rooted in its late sixties roots, but still packs a punch today.

This book repeatedly fixates on bedsheets, window panes, skin, memory: the thin, near-translucent veneers between order and entropy. The literary form moves between short story and free verse. Billy the Kid is rendered as a mythical entity or force of nature that exists solely in these transitional spaces, between law and crime, life and death, gentleman and psychopath. The extreme violence that populates the book is described in terms of color and air, with skin being torn like tissue and breath taking place through new orifices.

Every moment is the definition of impressionistic. Ondaatje describes nouns like they’re verbs. He describes moments of cosmic awareness (I am dying) as though they were being apprehended in a sensory way (It is my brain coming out like red grass). Billy drinks in his surroundings and digests them omnisciently, less interested in their narrative than in their color, heft, sound, etc.

The book’s opening section describes materials and techniques for capturing photographs, specifically photos where the subject is in motion; above the paragraph is an empty square box where a portrait will never develop. This opening is such a perfect mission statement for the book as a whole: ignore the figurative description and stick to the “Pyro and soda developer,” the snow and the fire.

UPDATE: 3.5 stars
I’ve decided to up my rating because I keep going back to sections I really enjoyed and there’s details I’m noticing now that just make Ondaatje brilliant. I still think you need to be familiar with the Lincoln County War and Western genre in general to not be completely lost. But I also think you’re supposed to be lost when you read this....

2.5 stars
(content warning: the subject matter of this book is highly graphic, violent, and deals with mature themes such as, murder, explicit descriptions of the body, and sex)

This is a difficult one for me to rate because I've loved Michael Ondaatje's works in the past, particularly "Coming Through Slaughter", but this particular "novel" just didn't appeal to me. Ondaatje challenges conventional and poetic form brilliantly in a bricolage of poetry, prose, and fictional testimonials. There were particular poems, often shorter and free verse, that I really loved. Ondaatje is truly an innovative and unique writer that deserves more mainstream attention. However, altogether the connecting tissue of this specific story was difficult to decipher and just became boring for this reader. I also just really dislike Westerns as a genre, so this review is completely biased.

writing this from my bed at 2am so be that as it may…I don’t know, I had a lot of feelings about this. I like the way it played with genre a lot and that was likely my favorite aspect of the novel aside from the Tom O’Folliard character who’s imagery and motifs recur beautifully but doesn’t get nearly enough page time of his own. Sallie is definitely MVP alongside Tom. Somehow I think the characters on the periphery who got significant literary attention in the novel were more compelling than billy himself, but that might also b because I’m not familiar with his true backstory so I’m generally rather uninvested in his ‘reality’ ‘truth’ lore, etc. and more so the book itself. I was a big fan of the ending interview format with billy though, so sometimes he convinced me.

Was not a fan of that children's story at the end. Also, the mostly race-free aspect of this novel. Westerns have a long and dangerous history in that regard and instead of dealing with it, I think Ondaatje ignored it.

(Hybrid works 2023)

"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 descrition" 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 all 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.

I liked this more than I thought I would. I usually don't go in for experimental novels, but this hooked me instantly. I stumbled into the novel at a Goodwill, bought it for a buck because it was Ondaatje and I had the pleasure of hearing him speak in Columbia, Missouri a few years back. I thought it was a book of poetry that would sit on my shelf, unread, for years. Instead, I blasted through it in a weekend. Most of the cool reviews already covered the book's strengths. I would only add that something about the tone reminded me of Blood Meridian which is one of my favorite novels. Ondaatje is, and always IS, a poet. Even his prose is really blocks of verse. Here, he takes both forms and spreads them out like a literary collage, each fragment self contained and engaging in its own right, whether the lines were grouped in paragraphs or not.

Worth your time.

So glad I started reading Ondaatje here. I'd like to think this was written before this multiple-style text became a postmodern stereotype. So bold. Perhaps I'd dock a half star for the occasional lapse, but the brilliant and the opaque more than make up for them. My copy is a 2008 edition with a then new afterward in which Ondaatje describes it as a 'mongrel work'. Perfect. I can't wait to read it again.