From Publishers Weekly
Combining fact, folklore and a shopworn twist of revisionist history, Meltzer's eccentric debut joins the legion of books about the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid. Although Billy's tale may be a rerun, the storyteller's is a hoot. The narrator is Walter, a reclusive 1990s New York City apartment dweller. An unemployed, obese shut-in burdened by countless phobias, Walter is afraid of people, germs, daylight and healthy food. As he snarfs down Hershey Bar marshmallow fluffer-honey-nutter sandwiches topped with Redi-Whip, Walter becomes obsessed with the Old West's most notorious, pint-sized killer. He desperately wants to purge Billy of his brutal myth, to prove the Kid was really just misunderstood, not withstanding the 21 notches on his pistols. But even as Walter escapes in dreams to the Lincoln County War of 1878, the urban travails of his waking hours are closing in on him. Annotated and liberally sprinkled with quotations from penny-dreadfuls, the Bible and old movies like Billy the Kid vs. Frankenstein, this odd, bittersweet novel features troubles more complex than those The Kid ever had to face. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An urban shut-in's lugubrious narrative of a life without purpose, spliced to a lengthy deconstruction of the career of the historical killer Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Though he characterizes himself as ``built for comfort,'' Walter, the enormously fat, sugar-addicted agoraphobe of this tentative first novel from Meltzer, is anything but comfortable. A prisoner of his dead parents' New York City apartment, his expenses paid by their trust fund, Walter's waking hours are spent nursing paranoid obsessions about the neighbors he encounters on brief journeys to his mailbox or the basement laundry machines. A fidgety sleeper, Walter repeatedly dreams of a spectral figure who may or may not be the Kid, then resolves to find out as much as he can about the historical figure from books, movie videos, and other materials he orders by mail. What follows is a ragged assembly of annotated quotations (reproduced in varied typefaces) from memoirs about the Kid, Kid biographies, Kid film scripts, songs, dime novels, and other effluvia, all cluttered by Walter's fretful analysis of American culture, in which the Kid serves as a mythic icon. After demonstrating, at tedious length, how much can never definitively be verified about the Kid's existence, Walter wrestles with the possibility that the legendary hero may not have died from Pat Garrett's shooting and could be his impossibly old great-grandfather, who has been making ominous calls to Walter's answering machine. Inspired by his research, Walter comes to terms with his own purposeless life and sets forth on an antiheroic quest to ``rescue'' his great-grandfather from a rest home. A satiric gloss on the postWW II urban coming-of-age novels of Bellow and Roth, padded to book length with material drawn from a variety of exotic sources. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jerome Lowell DeJur Award
Combining fact, folklore and a shopworn twist of revisionist history, Meltzer's eccentric debut joins the legion of books about the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid. Although Billy's tale may be a rerun, the storyteller's is a hoot.

Book Description
BILLY?S BLUES, recipient of the 1995 Jerome DeJur Award (previously granted to Oscar Hijuelos and Walter Mosley), is narrated by Walter, a modern day shut-in who suffers from numerous phobias. Safely removed from the late 20th century, Walter spends the day sleeping, reading, and eating, until be becomes obsessed with a famous figure from the late 19th Century: Billy the Kid. The infamous ?Boy Bandit King? of the old Southwest, shot dead at the age of twenty-one by Sheriff Pat Garret, who was once a friend. As his life spins out of control, his story is interrupted by increasingly elaborate interpretations of Billy the Kid until it becomes difficult to separate myth from reality and fiction from fact. As Billy the Kid leapt into the pages of history from old dime novels and western folklore, BILLY?S BLUES might become an enfant terrible of literature.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Billy's Blues won the Jerome Lowell DeJur Award previously granted to Oscar Hijuelos and Walter Mosley. It was listed in the Charlotte News & Observer's "Literary Books with a Buzz" alongside such noted authors as John Irving, Gore Vidal, Jane Smiley, and Ann Tyler. It was recommended by Publisher's Weekly as a "real hoot."

Walter, the narrator of Billy's Blues, is a loser. He's overweight, unemployed, agoraphobic and on the verge of becoming a shut-in. However, Walter does have one interest - Billy the Kid, the nefarious boy bandit king of the old southwest, shot dead by the age of twenty-one by an outlaw turned sheriff who was once his friend. Although Walter's fixation does give him a sense of purpose, will it help him to maintain his sanity or do just the opposite?
'Twas on the same night that poor Billy died He said to his friends "I'm not satisfied. There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through And Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two." --Reverend Andrew Jenkins

The key to Billy's Blues is in its experimental methdology. Walter's story, told in the first person, is interrupted by the history of "The Kid" which is told in a collage form (newspaper clippings, eyewitness accounts and scholarly debate balaced with movies, poetry, music and traditional story-telling.) The two stories, Walter's and that of his fixation, collide at the end. Although the collage form is nothing new, never before has it been used in this way.

Billy's Blues is a breakthrough novel by newcomer C. Rips Meltzer. The first effort by this important new voice in literature will surely not be his last. Billy's Blues opens up new avenues for the novel that will take the art form successfully into the twenty-first century and beyond. The novel is not dead; it's alive and well and still kicking in Billy's Blues.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Combining fact, folklore and a shopworn twist of revisionist history, Meltzer's eccentric debut joins the legion of books about the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid. Although Billy's tale may be a rerun, the storyteller's is a hoot. The narrator is Walter, a reclusive 1990s New York City apartment dweller. An unemployed, obese shut-in burdened by countless phobias, Walter is afraid of people, germs, daylight and healthy food. As he snarfs down Hershey Bar marshmallow fluffer-honey-nutter sandwiches topped with Redi-Whip, Walter becomes obsessed with the Old West's most notorious, pint-sized killer. He desperately wants to purge Billy of his brutal myth, to prove the Kid was really just misunderstood, not withstanding the 21 notches on his pistols. But even as Walter escapes in dreams to the Lincoln County War of 1878, the urban travails of his waking hours are closing in on him. Annotated and liberally sprinkled with quotations from penny-dreadfuls, the Bible and old movies like Billy the Kid vs. Frankenstein, this odd, bittersweet novel features troubles more complex than those The Kid ever had to face. (Mar.)

Kirkus Reviews

An urban shut-in's lugubrious narrative of a life without purpose, spliced to a lengthy deconstruction of the career of the historical killer Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Though he characterizes himself as "built for comfort," Walter, the enormously fat, sugar-addicted agoraphobe of this tentative first novel from Meltzer, is anything but comfortable. A prisoner of his dead parents' New York City apartment, his expenses paid by their trust fund, Walter's waking hours are spent nursing paranoid obsessions about the neighbors he encounters on brief journeys to his mailbox or the basement laundry machines. A fidgety sleeper, Walter repeatedly dreams of a spectral figure who may or may not be the Kid, then resolves to find out as much as he can about the historical figure from books, movie videos, and other materials he orders by mail. What follows is a ragged assembly of annotated quotations (reproduced in varied typefaces) from memoirs about the Kid, Kid biographies, Kid film scripts, songs, dime novels, and other effluvia, all cluttered by Walter's fretful analysis of American culture, in which the Kid serves as a mythic icon. After demonstrating, at tedious length, how much can never definitively be verified about the Kid's existence, Walter wrestles with the possibility that the legendary hero may not have died from Pat Garrett's shooting and could be his impossibly old great-grandfather, who has been making ominous calls to Walter's answering machine. Inspired by his research, Walter comes to terms with his own purposeless life and sets forth on an antiheroic quest to "rescue" his great-grandfather from a rest home. A satiric gloss on the postWW IIurban coming-of-age novels of Bellow and Roth, padded to book length with material drawn from a variety of exotic sources.