October 11, 2007 Bonus Blog
Okay, I finally got to read the Larry McMurtry piece on Billy the Kid on the New York Review of Books website. But only because Meghan Saar went on with her computer and registered me ($3, business account).

Here's the paragraph in question:

"In the last three decades, scholarship about Billy has shaken off its pulp origins and become professional, the three best books, in my view, being Robert M. Utley's Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989), Frederick Nolan's The West of Billy the Kid (1998), and now Michael Wallis's Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride. Nor should one forget the brilliant cartoonist Bob Boze Bell's Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid, a fine contribution to the vast literature on the Kid."
—Larry McMurtry

Heady company I must say. Utley, Nolan and Wallis are heroes of mine. And FYI, he only uses the term brilliant one other time, when discussing other mythical characters, as in, "The folk heroes you might put against [Billy]—Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox Babe, Pecos Bill—seem pretty tame these days, though the Coen brothers did their best for Paul Bunyan, in their brilliant movie Fargo."

And, I'll certainly take that comparison standing up as well.

"A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey."
—Old Vaquero Saying