 First edition | |
| Author | Michael Ondaatje |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Anansi Press |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Awards | Governor-General Literary Award - Poetry (1970) |
| ISBN | 978-0679767862 |
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems is a verse novel by Michael Ondaatje, published in 1970. It chronicles and interprets important events in the life of William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, and his conflict with Sheriff Pat Garrett.
The book presents a series of poems not necessarily in chronological order which fictionalize and relate Bonney's more famous exploits, after the end of the Lincoln County War. The narrative includes his relationship with John and Sallie Chisum, his formation of a gang with Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre, his standoff with Garrett in Stinking Springs, his arrest and escape from Lincoln, New Mexico, his escape and the ensuing murder of James Bell and Robert Olinger, and finally his death at the hands of Garrett.
The book was written by Ondaatje in the late 1960s in Canada, after he emigrated from Ceylon to England and further relocated to Quebec in order to attend college. [2] It was initially published by Anansi Press in 1970, and reprinted in 1979 by Wingbow Press, the printing arm of the now-defunct distributor Bookpeople. Its most recent reprint was in 2009 by Vintage International.
On its release, the volume received largely positive reviews. Most notably, it received the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in 1970 from the Canadian Arts Council. [3] Karyl Roosevelt also praised the book in the New York Times, calling it "a good little book, carefully crafted and thoroughly literate." [4] In a more sober 1974 review, Phoebe Adams wrote that the book is "[a] bizarre project altogether, accomplished with a sporadic brilliance that merits attention." [5] When the book was given another print in 2009, one reviewer wrote that "'The Collected Works of Billy the Kid' already feels like a modern classic, the book in which a great writer first learned to do a trick with a knife." [6] There was some negative reaction, however. John Diefenbaker, a former Canadian prime minister, was reported to have "hated the award-winning book and called a news conference to denounce it." [2] The publicity of the event helped boost sales, however, and in the end the book is widely acknowledged to be a good first effort, and indeed it was: Ondaatje would go on to write another award-winning novel, The English Patient , and several others.
Ondaatje adapted the novel into a play. It premiered in Toronto in multiple times, notably at the Dallas Theater Center, [7] the Stratford Festival [7] and the Toronto Free Theatre. [8] The play has received generally positive critical attention.[ citation needed ] Before the 1990 run in Toronto, Ondaatje revised his original script to better explore the female characters in the work. He stated that the original work was "a very male book" and that JoAnn, the director of the Tarragon Theatre's Toronto production, "has brought out subtleties [in the female characters] that were hidden – too hidden." [8]
Ondaatje gave permission for the work to be the subject of a new adaptation by English theater director Dan Jemmett in 2007. [9] Originally produced in Pittsburgh, PA, by Quantum Theatre, the new vision was created by the company of five actors and Jemmett. The show was subsequently presented in Madrid, Spain, and Paris, France, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in 2013.
Ondaatje agreed for the work to be adapted as a chamber opera by the English composer Gavin Bryars, with the libretto made by Jean Lacornerie, who staged the work. It was presented at the two co-commissioning theatres in Lyon, Le Théâtre de la Croix-Rouse and Le Théâtre de la Renaissance, in March 2018 and subsequently toured. The musical performance was directed by Gérard Lecointe, with the French pop singer Bertrand Belin as Billy the Kid and the soprano Claron MacFadden playing all female role.
The novel was also a source of inspiration for the 2012 album Lonesome Dreams by Lord Huron. While the album is not a direct adaptation of the work, there are several similar plot themes and general storytelling style. [10] Some of these themes are carried forward in some fashion to their second album, Strange Trails (2015), although the influence is somewhat less pronounced.
William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker.
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Henry McCarty, alias William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was an American outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West who is alleged to have killed 21 men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21. He is also known for his involvement in New Mexico's Lincoln County War, during which he allegedly committed three murders.
Each winner of the 1970 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The winners received a $2500 prize.
Billy may refer to:
Young Guns II is a 1990 American Western action film and a sequel to Young Guns (1988). It stars Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Christian Slater, and features William Petersen as Pat Garrett. It was written by John Fusco and directed by Geoff Murphy.
Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett was an American Old West lawman, bartender and customs agent known for killing Billy the Kid. He was the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, as well as Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
Michael Redhill is an American-born Canadian poet, playwright and novelist. He also writes under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe.
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Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 American revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah, written by Rudy Wurlitzer, and starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, Barry Sullivan, Jason Robards, Slim Pickens and Bob Dylan. The film is about an aging Pat Garrett (Coburn), hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid (Kristofferson).
Chisum is a 1970 American Western film directed by Andrew McLaglen, starring John Wayne in the title role, and adapted for the screen by Andrew J. Fenady from his short story "Chisum and the Lincoln County War." The supporting cast features Forrest Tucker, Christopher George, Ben Johnson, Glenn Corbett, Andrew Prine, Bruce Cabot, Patric Knowles, Richard Jaeckel, Lynda Day George, Pedro Armendariz Jr., John Agar, John Mitchum, Ray Teal, Christopher Mitchum and Hank Worden with Geoffrey Deuel and Pamela McMyler receiving "introducing" credits. The picture was filmed in Panavision and Technicolor.
Linda Spalding is a Canadian writer and editor. Born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Jacob Alan Dickinson and Edith Senner, she lived in Mexico and Hawaii before moving to Toronto, Ontario in 1982.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Left Handed Gun is a 1958 American Western film and the film directorial debut of Arthur Penn, starring Paul Newman as Billy the Kid and John Dehner as Pat Garrett.
Justin John Rutledge is a Toronto-based Canadian alternative country singer-songwriter signed to Outside Music.
The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, The Noted Desperado of the Southwest is a biography and partly first-hand account written by Pat Garrett, sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, in collaboration with a ghostwriter, Marshall Ashmun "Ash" Upson. During the summer of 1881 in a small New Mexican village, Garrett shot and killed the notorious outlaw, William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Due to the first publisher's inability to widely distribute this book beginning in 1882, it sold relatively few copies during Garrett's lifetime. By the time the fifth publisher purchased the copyright in 1954, this book had become a major reference for historians who have studied the Kid's brief life. The promotion and distribution of the fifth version of this book to libraries in the United States and Europe sent it into a sixth printing in 1965, and by 1976 it had reached its tenth printing. For a generation after Sheriff Garrett shot the Kid, his account was considered to be factual, but historians have since found in this book many embellishments and inconsistencies with other accounts of the life of Billy the Kid.
Lord Huron is an American indie rock band based in Los Angeles. The band is composed of Mark Barry, Miguel Briseño, Tom Renaud (guitar) and its founder, Ben Schneider. Following some solo and self-produced EPs, the group's debut album Lonesome Dreams was released in 2012 and their fourth and most recent album Long Lost was released in May 2021.
The legend of Billy the Kid has acquired iconic status in American folklore, yet the outlaw himself, also known as William Bonney, had minimal impact on historical events in New Mexico Territory of the late 1800s. More has been written about Billy the Kid than any other gunslinger in the history of the American West, while hundreds of books, motion pictures, radio and television programs and even a ballet have been inspired by his legend.