Episode Details

After struggling to write a novel about the last days of Billy the Kid, travel writer and Mark Twain scholar Charles Neider found his inspiration by heading to the Monterey coast and creating his own version of the "the greatest gunman alive at the time of his death." Published in 1956, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones is a fictionalized take on the mythologized outlaw, relocating the mesas of New Mexico to the beaches of Ensenada and Punta del diablo and providing a lyrical and haunting prose which ended up inspiring both Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Despite its almost legendary reputation, Hendry Jones ended up falling into obscurity compared to other lauded 20th century Western novels. If anybody appreciates the influence of an underrated Western book, it's artist/historian David Lambert, who previously talked with us about Richard Brautigan's The Hawkline Monster and Crow Killer by Thorp and Bunker. Lambert returns to the podcast to celebrate the recent republishing of Neider's novel by digging deep into this rich psychological character study and its unique historical and geographical observations, as well as the shockingly faithful screenplay adaptation by Peckinpah and Brando's not-so-faithful screen version. David Lambert on X: x.com/DavidLambertArt David Lambert on bsky: @davidlambertart.bsky.social The Pink Smoke on X: x.com/thepinksmoke John Cribbs on X: x.com/thelastmachine