Anything for Billy (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Larry McMurtry
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1880's
- Setting: West Texas and the New Mexico Territory
- Principal Characters: Billy Bone, Ben Sippy, Joe Lovelady, Will “Old Whiskey” Isinglass, Katie Garza, Lady Cecily Snow, Mesty-woolah, Bloody Feathers
- Genres: Long fiction, Western fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Mythology or myths, Nineteenth century, West, U.S., Robbery or robbers, Adventure, New Mexico, Southwest, Cowboys or cowgirls, Texas, Guns
- Locales: New Mexico, Texas
Larry McMurtry continues to shift from the Old West to modern-day Texas and back again for the subjects of his novels. His great success in Lonesome Dove (1985), a novel of frontier days, was followed by the comic but less successful novel of Texas in the 1980's, Texasville (1987). In Anything for Billy he returns to the frontier days of the Wild West and the story of one of its most famous characters, Billy the Kid, but his approach is humorous. Lonesome Dove was an epic novel with a tragic ending, an impressive attempt to re-create the early days of the...
[The entire page is 2020 words long]
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