[The Collected Works of Billy the Kid] fixes a certain view of the Kid into an intense, fully realized image…. (p. 42)
Ondaatje's mythmaking is a careful process, built up by various means, and he indicates in several ways the degree to which he is presenting a legendary or poetic image of the Kid. There is, for instance, the concern with photographs. The book opens with an account of photography at the time of Billy's life, indicating the difficulty (which is also Ondaatje's) of taking a sharp image of a moving object…. [And] what the photograph shows is always accurate…. Indeed, it was the reversed image of one famous photograph of Billy which led to the mistaken idea that he was left-handed. All contemporary authorities … remember Billy as right-handed; but his left-handedness fits in better with the legendary image of the outsider…. Ondaatje's subtitle, "Left Handed Poems" derives from [Arthur Penn's film on Billy the Kid,] The Left Handed Gun. (pp. 42-3)
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Ondaatje, (Philip) Michael 1943–: Critical Essay by Stephen Scobie Access Pass.
