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| 7/14/1881 |
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Billy the Kid, by Ondaatje, O. Henry...
On this day in 1881 Billy the Kid was killed by his nemesis, Pat Garrett, at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Near midnight, the Kid returned from an errand of love or hunger to find someone in his hideout; to his hushed "Quien es? Quien es?," Billy received a fatal shot above the heart. This was also the starting pistol for a fiction marathon which shows no signs of being over. . . . |
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"Lawmen and Outlaws"
An essay explores the literary history of the American West in stories about Joaquin Murieta, Billy the Kid, Jesse and Frank James, Sam Bass, and others. Discusses the works of James Butler ("Wild Bill") Hickok, Zane Grey, Max Brand, Louis L'Amour, Walter Woods, and others.
"While Grey and others were shaping the main tradition in novelistic fiction, some authors were reinterpreting the characters of actual outlaws. In 1903, Walter Woods wrote a play entitled Billy the Kid. The drama viewed this outlaw sympathetically, as a wronged and misunderstood youth, thus reversing the dime novel portrait of a smirking psychopath. ... Interestingly, Garrett himself had helped lay the foundation for this more favorable depiction by co-authoring The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, published in 1882. Garrett was politically ambitious, so in this biography he would hardly say that the outlaw he'd shot was an insignificant punk. Instead, the Kid becomes 'the peer of any fabled brigand on record.' At any rate, the Woods play marked the beginning of a revisionist cycle which was to see Billy the Kid transformed from a self-centered mercenary into a romantic idealist." |  |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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