The Portrayal of the Artist in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
The dictionary.com definition of artist is “a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.” However, it also defines artist as “a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill.” This definition is quite fitting for the protagonist of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje, who is an artist of sorts. William Bonney, perhaps better known as the bloodthirsty but charming Billy the Kid, creates work that does, in fact, exhibit exceptional skill. He is an expert in execution and a specialist in slaughter. In spite of this, he still values human life and artistic expression in general, evident in the several inward reflection scenes that Ondaatje scatters throughout the book. Therefore, Ondaatje portrays the figure of the artist as a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill, and who takes pride in the work that he/she creates.
On the very first page of the book, there is a description of a picture of Billy the Kid that is not even shown. The author of this caption writes about how talented he is with a camera. “I shall show you what can be done from the saddle without ground glass or tripod” (Ondaatje 5). Here, the artist goes into minor detail about his exposures and his expertise. For him, the subject matter is of no consequence. Instead, the artistic medium and the methods used to capture the subject are of extreme importance. The photographer takes great pride in his work, which is easy to tell from the way in manner in which he writes. In a sense, he is not that much different from Billy. Ondaatje depicts Billy as an artist in his own way, and that he takes great pride in the work that he creates. Both Billy and the photographer frame their subjects and “shoot” them, and they both have very specific parameters when it comes to how the work of art must be made. Ondaatje’s portrayal of the artist, then, is one of...