POETRY AND CONTRADICTIONS OF THE OLD WEST : CHARLES NEIDER'S THE AUTHENTIC DEATH OF HENDRY JONES

For years I've been wanting to to read The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider. Published in 1956, Neider dove deep into researching the life of Billy The Kid, churning what he learned into a fiction that gave an offbeat and gritty look at the old west, meditating on violence, dying youth, and changing times among other things. Marlon Brando snapped up the book and hired Sam Peckinpah, primary a television writer at the time, to write a script and Stanley Kubrick to direct. He fired them both, got a script from Gary Trosper, who went on to write The Birdman of Alcatraz and The Spy Who Came in From The Cold) and directed it himself as the film One Eyed Jacks,. Almost twenty years later Peckinpah used elements from his script for Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. When McNally Editions republished the book this summer, one of my reading dreams came true,

Neider sets his Old West tale as far west as you can go to the California coast. He narrates the story through "Doc" Baker who rode with outlaw Hendry Jones, who he refers to as The Kid. Doc feels it's time to set the record straight. and tell the story of his capture, escape, and showdown with old friend Dad Longworth, now working for the law,

Death feels like another character in the book. The shootings are quick and brutal with little rousing action. Most of the first half of the book occurs in a jail while the gallows are being prepared for The Kid. In the second half he holes up in a dying fishing village, that is damp, cold and smelly with whale bones littering the beach, planning for a confrontation with Dad. He and his gang reflect the Townes Van Zandt song "Waiting Around to Die".

Neider's style ironically delves into the romanticism of the old west as he takes shots at printing the legend. Through Doc, he tells the story with the voice of a saloon raconteur.. Doc may want to tell it like it was, but he also wants the listener to buy him more beers, so he has to be entertaining as well. The book puts faith in storytelling reaching further than facts for the elusive truths it grasps for.

With The Kid he creates a character both well defined and enigmatic. He is affable and capable with a gun, but has bought into his legend. His outlaw ways may be bucking some of the area's corruption, but he adheres to them because he knows nothing else, He and the gang pursue a dime novel life and half succeed.

The Authentic Death Of Hendry Jones may be too literary in its structure and approach to be easily adapted into a film. Brando mainly used the setting and some names. Peckinpah applied the themes of masculinity and changing times that was already in most of his work but never resonated like they did in Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. If anything Charles Neider created an American ballad in book form with its lyricism, dialogue and prose grounded in place and time. From all of the great things I heard about it for years, it met and exceed my expectations.