The Myth of Billy the Kid

It has come to my attention while reading previous posts that a great amount of attention is given to the "informative" or historical accounts/pieces within this work. I think, coming to this piece, especially if it is with only a cursory knowledge of Billy the Kid, it is only natural to look for sign posts or guides into the "real life" and "real person" of "William Bonney" (his birth name was Henry McCarty). However, I see Ondaatje's project here as a look into the nature of myth, with the clear intent of challenging and complicating our view of yes, a historical person, but more essentially, a name, a time, and a way of life (the outlaw).

To me, this intent was made clear on the first page, which is conviently lacking the photograph that is referred to in the prose underneath. I feel that the blank photograph is an introduction about what the reader really knows about Billy the Kid- nothing. A photograph of him is given on the book's cover, and yet Ondaatje chooses within the book's pages not to represent Billy, but the acquaintances and settings in which he interacted. There are a fem moments where Billy (as the speaker) recalls certain photographs taken of him, but these are never shown. I believe this allows Ondaatje the free reign to construct a theoretical universe for Billy in which what is believed to be known contends with the unknown.

In speaking about the relationship in the book between "prosaic" sections (most all of which I catagorize as prose poems) and the "poetic" sections, I agree their is a tension. The imagination of the poems where Billy interprets his the memories of his life (the deaths he witnessed, his friends, the western landscape) are beautiful (not childish, as someone else mentioned), haunting, and provide a complex emotional character. I do not believe Ondaatje created a coherent character, but a many-faceted amalgamation of conflict. Just as society as a whole is unable to agree on his character, his horror or his heroism, the reader is unable to get a clear idea of what Billy thought of himself. This is often brought up in the recurring them of madness. A particularly telling image of Billy, I think, occurs on page 33, when he recounts an experience with Sallie Chisum. He places her in the bath with her bedsheet wrapped around her, lifts her out, and watches while she tries to escape from the entanglement - all used as an illustration for "a mad man's skin." I feel here that Billy's mind, his ego, and his violence are all struggling in the net that legend has wrapped around him.

Despite this being my second time reading this book, I felt with immediacy again the confusion imposed on the reader by Ondaatje's inverted chronology and multiple speakers (some of which must be guessed by context). (Actually, I was suprised when I accidentally read a poem in the voice of Billy, when it actually turned out to be Garrett.) Again, I feel this confusion further contributes to the inability to grasp a clear picture.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the tension between Sallie's rather ambiguous accounts in juxtaposition with the later portrayal of her complicated (perverse?) affair with Billy. I love Sallie's description of Billy as "a courteous little gentleman" who was "the pink of politeness."This image is certainly difficult to reconcile with the image of him watching her naked struggle in a mad man's skin.

Rather than looking for the truth in any of the events and relationships Ondaatje portrayed in the book, I reveled in his imagination of Billy's mind. I feel "getting into the mind of the myth" is really what drives the piece, and collects together all of its disjunct parts. One of the most artful and moving books of poetry I have ever read.