Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems

Ryan Webb (University of East Anglia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.5: South Asian Diasporic Literature and Culture, 1800-present.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1970

Places

Sri Lanka (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)
Poem collection

Resources

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The Collected Works

is a difficult text to categorise generically. Its subject is historical – the late nineteenth century American outlaw William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid – yet its approach is every bit as fictive as biographical, if not more so. Ondaatje himself has referred to the text as a poem, yet the book is a collage of poetry, prose and image, incorporating quotation from, and pastiche of, both historical and pop-culture sources. The best way to describe it, perhaps, is as a work of historiographic metafiction, viewing the past, and the past’s textual remains in the present, through a highly self-conscious, self-reflexive and fragmented literary filter.

The text’s full title – The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems – is itself a prime

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3099 words

Citation: Webb, Ryan. "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 March 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5864, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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