John's review
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
by Michael Ondaatje
John's review
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
John's review
rating:
bookshelves:
done-been-read-shelf
Michael Ondaatje is certainly one of the world's greatest living writers. My admiration for his writing craft is boundless but I will nonetheless attempt at a dispirited review of his first novel-ish publication. Although this is his first "novel" (more on novel(ish)ness later), it ranks among his most unabashedly avant-garde next to The English Patient and his most recent Divisadero. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is one of the earliest attempts in North American letters at revising the Wild West mythos. The Revisionist Western is, again, one of my favorite sub-genres of all time, but I am still attempting objectivity. This novel(ish) piece of writing takes a stab at demythologizing the outlaw/bandit/freedom fighter archetype of which, for almost a century, Billy the Kid belonged to. It is intensely violent but this violence is offset by an, at times, strikingly humanized portrayal of a violent murderer. Similarly (or perhaps contrarily), Bi...more
