The first page of Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid features famous frontier photographer L. A. Huffman's caption to a picture of Billy he allegedly took. Where the picture should be, however, there is nothing but an empty frame. The text thus starts with a forceful problematisation of representation as, contrary to Huffman's statement, Billy is not depicted. In addition, the Huffman caption is fictional. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid thus immediately signals that the status of the image, that representation will be an issue both formally and in terms of content. This problematic status of representation is in fact already emphasised in the preceding paratext, as the copyright page mentions diverse ‘original’ sources, the accuracy of which is more than contested (such as Walter Noble Burns's The Saga of Billy the Kid), or which simply do not exist (such as Huffman's book Huffman: Frontier Photographer, which is purportedly the source of the caption). In addition, the copyright page, referencing the text's intertextual and transmedial nature, also states that the ‘comic book legend is real’ – a playful comment on the relation between fact and fiction in the vein of the famous quip from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’ as it applies to the figure of Billy, and as it is taken up on the narrative's first page with the fictional caption to an allegedly factual but non-depicted image of Billy. These observations are reinforced by the fact that the cover (of my Vintage International edition – the original Anansi publication features an Eadweard Muybridge picture of a man on horseback) does actually depict Billy by means of a reprint of the so-called Upham tintype – the only authentic image of Billy we have. As a result, Huffman's caption can only accompany an empty frame since the image it purportedly comments on does not exist. As readers, we thus witness a great spectacle: an existing but fictional text accompanies a non-existing but allegedly factual image that is represented as such – an empty frame.

Right from the start, beginning with the paratextual elements, Ondaatje's narrative thus complicates the relation between fact and fiction. This is, of course, more than fitting in face of the text's protagonist: the legendary Billy the Kid.