The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

By: Michael Ondaatje

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient comes a visionary novel, a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth.

William Bonney, a.k.a. "Billy the Kid", killed his first man when he was 12. By the time he was 21 he had, by his own reckoning, slain 19 more. In the intervening years, he had become "Billy the Kid", bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own 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.

©1970 Michael Ondaatje (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

" The Collected Works of Billy the Kid strains one's powers of description....Ondaatje's eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint." (Larry McMurtry)
"Wonderful....Ondaatje's language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art." (Annie Dillard)

You need to actually read this book

This is one of my favorite books to give as a gift. I love it so much, but you really need a physical copy to get the feel of the poems and prose.

Horrible!

Does anyone believe that Billy The Kid would have a stream of concousness like that written!

Waste of time

Listened to 1/2 an hour…a 1/2 an hour of my life wasted.,

Not what I was hoping for.

I understand it was the “Works” of Billy the Kid, but very choppy. No smooth transitions from idea to idea or from story to poem. Basically, it was all over the place! The reader’s voice was cool sounding, yet very bland while reading. Maybe he felt lost as well because the book was put together so sloppily.

I was so glad I got this book for free as a member. I can now delete it from my library. Had I paid for, I would definitely still return / exchange it. Too bad to, because I love reading books, stories, and articles about old western outlaws and lawmen.