The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

The 1950s classic that rewrote the myth of the American West and inspired its subsequent chroniclers from Sam Peckinpah to Marlon Brando to Cormac McCarthy. Hendry Jones isnt quite Billy the Kid, but hes the Kid all the same, and like Billys his story doesnt take long to tell. Hell do a fair amount of killing, be done in by an old friend, then get turned into a myth before his body is cold. Years later, one of the Kids last living partners in crime, Doc Bakerold and less than sobertries to set the record straight: who killed who and why, and how none of that old craziness is worth swooning over or rehashing. Except that Doc is a bit of a poet despite himself, and in drawing together what he knows and remembers about the Kids last days, he winds up saying just about everything that needs to be said about the American West, about kids playing with guns, about boys playing at being men out on the frontier, where they thought no one was watching. As Will Oldhamwhose moniker as a musician, Bonnie Prince Billy, was partly inspired by Billy the Kidnotes in his introduction, Hendry Jones served as fodder for a field of artists grappling with masculinity and violence in the West: Marlon Brandos One-Eyed Jacks, Sam Peckinpahs Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian are all impossible to imagine without Neiders Kid having first blazed the trail. A concise and brutal modern masterpiece, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones is one of the few Western novels worthy of the name.