Ten Paces Apart
A book review of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
If you are itching for the simplicity of a traditional novel, do not read The Collected Works of Billy The Kid. This verse novel is not shy to take its readers into the depths of the mind of Billy the Kid, also known as William Bonney, in this fictionalized telling of the blood, sweat, and tears that made up his life. The book is a multi-format and multi-genre account of the notorious outlaw in an unspecified stretch of time leading to his death. The narrative digs deep into the emotional state of the outlaw himself, through fictionalized first person reflections as well as statements by those who knew him. However, rather than being told in a chronological prose, author Michael Ondaatje uses narrative poetry in a convoluted sequence, consequently keeping the reader on her toes.
The setting is the fantasized and yet harsh reality of the Wild, Wild West. Billy the Kid, a real man, was born in 1859 and killed 1881. He spent his life in the areas in and around New Mexico, and was held accountable for eight murders before his death turned him into an iconic figure that represented the Wild West. While nearing the turn of the century, American technology was moving fast in the growing cities, but not as fast in the more isolated parts of the country. Cameras had been invented but were still in the early stages, and were rare. In fact, the early technology is mentioned in the opening of the book, how some of the photographs were taken “with the Perry shutter as quick as it can be worked — Pyro and soda developer”(Ondaatje, 1). The novelty of the camera began for the beginning of photographic documentation of history. All in all, the reality of the Wild West is much less glamorous than stereotypical belief. Illness was rampant, resources scarce, and survival of the fittest was law.
The Hidden Cowboy in Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje is a Sri-Lanka born, Canadian writer. He is most well known for his extremely successful novel, The English Patient (1992). The novel takes place in Italy at the end of World War II. The novel has gotten much recognition, winning the Booker Prize in 1992 and its film adaptation coming four years later. However before his novel’s success, Ondaatje published his critically-acclaimed book The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), one of his earliest pieces of work. Both works tell stories non-chronologically, but are fairly dissimilar to each other in story and style.
The Collected Works was written in the 1960s, when Ondaatje emigrated from Ceylon to England to Canada to attend college in Quebec. It was originally published by the Canadian publishing company, Anansi Press, in 1970.
Ondaatje’s admiration of the American West and his fascination with the violence that plagued the area at that time is what inspired his writing. He believed Westerns had not done this violence justice, and that the reality was much more gruesome than what was depicted in movies. In the afterword of the novel, he recalls from his childhood:
“I’d had an obsession with westerns since I was eight or nine — for even in Sri Lanka the myth of the American West had filtered down furtively among children in Colombo. I had a cowboy suit, with blatantly cheap-looking glass “jewels” on my cowboy belt as well as little holders for one’s bullets…By the time I was in my teens I was going to school in England and had seen many more westerns, but somehow the movies all seemed to safe” (Ondaatje 113).
For someone who had an upbringing so distant from the American West, Ondaatje hit it on the nose with this novel. The Los Angeles Times marvels at this as well, stating that he “makes vivid the loneliness and physical texture of the Southwest, its pollen, its storms, its snow. Remarkable, given that he’d never been there when he wrote the book” (Rayner). The Collected Works was hailed as a success upon its publication. In 1970, the year of its publication, the book received the Governor General’s Literary Award from the Canadian Arts Council. Its content proves to have agency between mediums, as others have taken fascination of the realistic narrative he portrays in his poems, even amounting to a play adaptation in 1990 that toured in Canada and some of the United States’ Southwest.
However, not all had taken an immediate liking to the Ondaatje’s obscure style of writing. John Diefenbaker, a former Canadian prime minister, called a news conference to denounce the book due to how much he disliked it. There was no follow up as to why, but many can assume it was a mixture of the content, not shy to delve in sexual, violent, and explicit content, as well as its avant-garde style. Overall however, the novel remains an award-winning, critically-acclaimed piece of literature that encapsulates the American West. Astounding in the fact that it was written by a man who had no relation to America at all, except for that of pure enchantment.
As a whole, Ondaatje’s use of photographs within The Complete Works are not explicit in content but thematically related to revealing the ruthless underbelly of the Wild West. They are few in number, and rarely directly depict what has just been discussed in the text. Instead, they are meant to evoke the Wild West. The pictures are used to pull on emotion, to make the reader project what they’ve read on to abstract images. Indeed, they all are depicting something that is most likely Wild West related, but never explicitly connected to the text. This is because Ondaatje uses archival images from the time period, but not directly of his own subject matter. In this way, the photographs feel if they are part of a free-association to the text, rather than the text being derived from free-association to the photograph. The sporadic image placement and lack of descriptions also build an an air of mystery:
“…it was the poet bpNichol who helped me pace the book with its silences and what was unsaid. “I send you a picture of Billy…”, which begins the book, in fact had an image of The Kid within the rectangle above the text until Barrie suggested I simply (or perversely) remove the image within it, and suddenly the footholds of the story became mysterious. It was the reader who would now need to provide the picture of Billy” (Ondaatje, 118).
Ondaatje sets the tone of the relationship of photo and text for the rest of the book by choosing to leave the first image blank. The reader is left in wonderment on not only why the picture is missing, but what the subject looks like. The image of Billy the Kid therefore must be interpreted by the reader through the prose and description. This decision to withhold photographs from the reader is representative of the avant-garde nature of the book, as it defies the standard rules of literature with a non-linear timeline. Not only does this evoke an intriguement in the audience, but also informs them that the enchantment of the Wild West and its characters are almost too surreal to be captured by a mere photograph.
Photographs are scattered rather sparsely, majority of them with no captions. Documentation was sparse in this historical setting, giving reason as to why there are so few pictures. The archival photos included thusly do not explicitly depict the exact subject matter of the book, rather seek to emulate what would be, giving the reader visual context.
The photographs also serve to break apart the text. As it is a verse novel, the story switches from prose to poetry to dialogue with no clear transition between formatting. Yet the tone of the book is consistent; part frantic, part fear, and part fierce all work together to create a relatable, or at least understandable, image of Billy the Kid. It tears down the mythology surrounding him, creating a boy who went West and fell into a life spent avoiding the consequences of a few wrong choices. Ondaatje does not let Billy become an icon, just a boy who has as many dreams and fears as anyone else.
The photographs within offer a pause between the frantic methods of narration, giving the reader a chance to process what is happening while attempting to contextualize the photograph. In this way, they’re also disjointed from the text, placed distinctly away from the words. The connection is one the reader must draw and must create for themselves, rather than Ondaatje doing it for them. The vagueness of the photographs simply enhances the text, as afterall, what is not said is just as important as what is.
There are 10 total images within the book, sporadic and disconnected. All of the pictures are in black and white, thusly in-line with the setting’s available technology.
Two of the images are etchings/drawings; one of a woman in a bed, scantily clothed and seductively posed on page 67. In this part of the narrative, the character Angela “Angie” Dickinson is introduced through a poem that accentuates her sexuality through the lens of Billy the Kid. Because it is unlikely a woman such as Angie would have been photographed, Ondaatje inserts a drawing representative of hyper-sexualized women at this time. The poem is also worth taking note of, as it shows the untraditional nature of the novel. While some descriptions of characters are made up of paragraphs filled with run-on sentences, this ballad cuts through as an upbeat tale of woman Billy the Kid is afraid to admit he loves.
“Miss Angela D has a mouth like a bee / she eats and off all your honey / her teeth leave a sting on your very best thing / and its the best when she gets the best money” (Ondaatje 66).
Demeaning yet in an admirational tone, this “song” shows a softer side to Billy the Kid, purely through style of text. However the most obscure part of the poem is the open ended parenthesis, “(thankin yew,” once again leaving the viewer hanging right as they believe they have figured something out about the character. The other comes shortly after on page 72, depicting a pile of men, overrun by snakes as a new figure enters the door. One can assume, that while snakes are a common predator in the West, they are also one of the most commonly used metaphors for deceitfulness. Being familiar with the nature of the west and its “every man for himself” mantra, this etching does not come as too much of an outlier to the narrative.
The inclusion of drawings rather than photographs is a reminder of the time period technology. Photography not being as widespread meant many stories in books and newspapers were illustrated.
The rest, however, are actual period photographs, unsourced and always slightly blurry. The first, an empty white space framed with a black line (page 1), mentioned earlier. This effectively sets the precedent that the images in the books will be conjuring a sense of the story rather than mirroring it directly.
In the second, three men stand in the full page frame on page 9. All are in motion, facing left. The man in the forefront is looking downward, yet his hat does not cast a shadow, his hand in the pocket of his striped pants. The man in the middle ground is painting a sign, it reading ‘LD/7/CAV’, his features blacked out by shadow. The man in the back stands, the top part of his body also cast in shadow. The image is framed on the previous and following pages with poetry. However, it is the poem on the reflecting page that gives clue to what meaning the picture might have:
“When i caught Charlie Bowdre dying/tossed 3 feet by bang bullets giggling/at me face tossed in a gaggle/he pissing into his trouser legs in pain/face changing like fast sunshine o my god/o my god billy i’m pissing watch/your hands/while the eyes grew all over his body/…Jesus i never knew that did you/ the nerves shot out/ the liver running around there/like a headless hen jerking/brown all over the yard/seen that too at my aunt’s/never eaten hen since” (8).
Following this poem, the image can suggest many things, perhaps the burial of Charlie and the marking of his grave, as the image carries a somber and distant tone.
The third photo, on page 20, is small, placed on the bottom of the page, providing a brief reflection on the desert setting as it has a large shed sitting in the middle of a barren landscape.
Page 29 is a portrait of two people, taking up the first ¾ of the page. A man with a large beard on the left, his legs spread and hands tensed on his knees. A woman, her hands folded demurely in her lap, face devoid of emotion. It is implied in the text that the woman is “Miss Sallie Chisum, later Mrs. Roberts, [who] was living in Roswell in 1924, a sweet faced, kindly old lady of a thousand memories of frontier days” (28) within the context of the narrative. Miss Sallie is a central character in Billy’s life, a woman who is able to provide him a safe place to rest and good company in her boarding house. In contrast to the sexualized drawing of Angie, Miss Sallie is presented more conservatively, as well as in a more formal manner tying into Billy’s respect for her.
Then, the fourth photograph on page 45, another one shrank to rest on the bottom of the page. It shows the inside of a wooden home, planks of wood running vertically across the image, broken up by standard bedroom articles. Picture five, page 60: a man sits atop a wagon, facing the right, a dog peeking over the goods piled into the wagon.
Picture 6, page 67, and picture 7, page 72, are the aforementioned drawings. Picture eight, on page 95, is the same as picture four, only cropped and blown up to show just the left corner across an entire page, to drive home the household setting in contrast to the outdoor desert wilderness. The ninth image is the cover of a book, from The Five Cent Wide Awake Library. The book is called True Life: Billy the Kid and shows a stereotypical gunslinger. Following this image is a fantastical story of Billy the Kid rescuing a princess, emulating the type of story the image suggests. The final image on page 111 is a photograph of a young boy in Western wear, sized very small and placed in the corner of the page.
The cover photo, taken by Romualdo Garcia in 1930, is of “Mexican actors portraying Pat Garrett and William Bonney” (back cover). As a final remark on the question of what is being emulated and what is real, the cover’s depiction of the book’s main characters only furthers to drive home Ondaatje’s fascination with breaking away from the romanticized Wild West in favor of a harsh reality.
From this book, a writer can learn to create a narrative from a series of disconnected photographs, or create poetry from the them of a picture. Ondaatje proves that working in a multi-medium format can be effective and beautiful. Billy the Kid provides, as a whole, a fresh understanding of Billy’s narrative, but also the Wild West.
References
“Michael Ondaatje.” Discover ideas about authors, Pinterest, 2019.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/241927811203624319/
Ondaatje, Michael. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Vintage International, New York, New York. 2009.
Rayner, Richard. “Tricks with a Knife.” Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2009,
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-caw-paperback-writers24-2009may24-story.html
