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Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, Augustus: John William
As the spirit of experimentation swirled around him in the 1960s and ’70s, John Williams, working in relative obscurity as an English professor, wrote finely crafted novels distinguished by precise form, powerful but restrained prose, and close attention to physical detail and its symbolic import. His three major works—Butcher’s Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965), and the National Book Award–winning Augustus (1972)—have come to be recognized as masterpieces of American fiction. This authoritative Library of America volume brings all three together for the first time, along with editor Daniel Mendelsohn’s selection of essays in which Williams reflects on the context of his work.
In Butcher’s Crossing (1960), Harvard student William Andrews, his imagination fired after hearing a lecture by Emerson, strikes out West, arriving in the small Kansas prairie town of Butcher’s Crossing, where he is quickly enticed to finance a buffalo hunting expedition to the Colorado Rockies. Driven deeper and deeper into the wild by unreasoning greed as winter approaches, beset by trouble without and within, the expedition stumbles toward a scene of slaughter no reader will ever forget.
Stoner (1965) follows the life and unremarkable career of William Stoner, an English professor in a midwestern university in the early decades of the last century. Despite keen disappointments in his marriage and family and repeated failures in the fraught arena of faculty politics, Stoner fashions an inner life—rendered by Williams with consummate skill—that becomes a source of solace and strength. Writing for The New York Times, Morris Dickstein called Stoner “something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel.”
In Augustus (1972), Williams transports readers back to the turbulent final years of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire, to contemplate, in the imagined words of his titular emperor, “the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility—which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it.” Narrated through letters, journals, and memoranda by Julius Caesar, Augustus, Augustus’s daughter Julia (banished by her father to a barren volcanic island for the crime of adultery), and an ever-changing cast of allies and enemies, Augustus is a masterwork of historical fiction that, as Daniel Mendelsohn has written, “suggests the past without presuming to recreate it.”
Rounding out the volume is a selection of three essays by Williams—“The Western: Definition of the Myth” (1961), “Fact in Fiction: Problems for the Historical Novelist” (1973), and “The Future of the Novel” (1974)—as well as the author’s remarks upon accepting the National Book Award for Augustus in 1973.
In Butcher’s Crossing (1960), Harvard student William Andrews, his imagination fired after hearing a lecture by Emerson, strikes out West, arriving in the small Kansas prairie town of Butcher’s Crossing, where he is quickly enticed to finance a buffalo hunting expedition to the Colorado Rockies. Driven deeper and deeper into the wild by unreasoning greed as winter approaches, beset by trouble without and within, the expedition stumbles toward a scene of slaughter no reader will ever forget.
Stoner (1965) follows the life and unremarkable career of William Stoner, an English professor in a midwestern university in the early decades of the last century. Despite keen disappointments in his marriage and family and repeated failures in the fraught arena of faculty politics, Stoner fashions an inner life—rendered by Williams with consummate skill—that becomes a source of solace and strength. Writing for The New York Times, Morris Dickstein called Stoner “something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel.”
In Augustus (1972), Williams transports readers back to the turbulent final years of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Empire, to contemplate, in the imagined words of his titular emperor, “the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility—which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it.” Narrated through letters, journals, and memoranda by Julius Caesar, Augustus, Augustus’s daughter Julia (banished by her father to a barren volcanic island for the crime of adultery), and an ever-changing cast of allies and enemies, Augustus is a masterwork of historical fiction that, as Daniel Mendelsohn has written, “suggests the past without presuming to recreate it.”
Rounding out the volume is a selection of three essays by Williams—“The Western: Definition of the Myth” (1961), “Fact in Fiction: Problems for the Historical Novelist” (1973), and “The Future of the Novel” (1974)—as well as the author’s remarks upon accepting the National Book Award for Augustus in 1973.
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First published October 5, 2021
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About the author
John Williams
9 books2,431 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
John Edward Williams, Ph.D. (University of Missouri, 1954; M.A., University of Denver, 1950; B.A., U. of D., 1949), enlisted in the USAAF early in 1942, spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma. His first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published in 1948, and his first volume of poems, The Broken Landscape, appeared the following year.
In the fall of 1955, Williams took over the directorship of the creative writing program at the University of Denver, where he taught for more than 30 years.
After retiring from the University of Denver in 1986, Williams moved with his wife, Nancy, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he resided until he died of respiratory failure on March 3, 1994. A fifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was left unfinished at the time of his death.
John Edward Williams, Ph.D. (University of Missouri, 1954; M.A., University of Denver, 1950; B.A., U. of D., 1949), enlisted in the USAAF early in 1942, spending two and a half years as a sergeant in India and Burma. His first novel, Nothing But the Night, was published in 1948, and his first volume of poems, The Broken Landscape, appeared the following year.
In the fall of 1955, Williams took over the directorship of the creative writing program at the University of Denver, where he taught for more than 30 years.
After retiring from the University of Denver in 1986, Williams moved with his wife, Nancy, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he resided until he died of respiratory failure on March 3, 1994. A fifth novel, The Sleep of Reason, was left unfinished at the time of his death.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 16, 2022
The library of America has done it again. This is an author I would probably have never heard of if not for them. The first book in this collection was about buffalo hunters. I assumed that it would be a trilogy based on the same characters. the second book is about a farm boy from Kansas that went to agriculture college and fell in love with literature. He got a doctorate and taught the rest of his life. The third book is the life of Caeser Augustus. All three were superb but could not have been more different.
October 6, 2024
Having read Stoner previously (a 5 star favorite), I’ll focus on Butcher’s Crossing & Augustus.
Augustus is an absolute masterpiece, the greatest work of historical fiction I’ve read and potentially my favorite of the collection. The varied perspectives of each letter and journal entry, through which the story is told non-chronologically, cumulatively culminate in an extraordinarily textured narrative. The inverse of Butcher’s Crossing in this regard, Augustus is bursting with characters and voices through which we follow Octavius Caesar from cradle to grave. Parallels Stoner in its rumination upon what constitutes a fulfilling life, whether personal sacrifices made at the behest of society are noble or fruitless, hierarchical intrigue and machinations, loveless and/or dutiful marriages & more; all this while chronicling epic history of Roman republicanism, civil war, poetry, & sexism (a very surprisingly crucial tenet of the novel). A novel that made me feel like a child again.
Butcher’s Crossing predates the publication of Blood Meridian, & though it is far less violent I feel it’s worth considering the two in juxtaposition. Sparse sojourns through the Western wilderness of the mid 1800s on horseback made by a ragtag group including the young protagonist & the grizzled veteran. Butcher’s Crossing places a greater emphasis upon the minutiae of their journey, the bulk of the novel centering the toilsome work of travel, encampment, hunting, & survival. These ~150 pages are tense & enthralling while never straining credulity. There isn’t much depth to the characterization of the crew beyond the protagonist, owing in part to the limited third person narration, but the prose & plot are beyond compelling. Williams is a meditative savant. The slaughter of the buffalo is not directly acknowledged as the tragedy it clearly is, but as a passive occurrence the protagonist has sought & wrought purely of his unconscious vanity. This is bookended by visits to the titular town of Butcher’s Crossing, in which that vanity is demonstrably stripped to the bone & reconstructed in a new form. Haunting and thrilling while rarely overtly attempting to be so.
Augustus is an absolute masterpiece, the greatest work of historical fiction I’ve read and potentially my favorite of the collection. The varied perspectives of each letter and journal entry, through which the story is told non-chronologically, cumulatively culminate in an extraordinarily textured narrative. The inverse of Butcher’s Crossing in this regard, Augustus is bursting with characters and voices through which we follow Octavius Caesar from cradle to grave. Parallels Stoner in its rumination upon what constitutes a fulfilling life, whether personal sacrifices made at the behest of society are noble or fruitless, hierarchical intrigue and machinations, loveless and/or dutiful marriages & more; all this while chronicling epic history of Roman republicanism, civil war, poetry, & sexism (a very surprisingly crucial tenet of the novel). A novel that made me feel like a child again.
Butcher’s Crossing predates the publication of Blood Meridian, & though it is far less violent I feel it’s worth considering the two in juxtaposition. Sparse sojourns through the Western wilderness of the mid 1800s on horseback made by a ragtag group including the young protagonist & the grizzled veteran. Butcher’s Crossing places a greater emphasis upon the minutiae of their journey, the bulk of the novel centering the toilsome work of travel, encampment, hunting, & survival. These ~150 pages are tense & enthralling while never straining credulity. There isn’t much depth to the characterization of the crew beyond the protagonist, owing in part to the limited third person narration, but the prose & plot are beyond compelling. Williams is a meditative savant. The slaughter of the buffalo is not directly acknowledged as the tragedy it clearly is, but as a passive occurrence the protagonist has sought & wrought purely of his unconscious vanity. This is bookended by visits to the titular town of Butcher’s Crossing, in which that vanity is demonstrably stripped to the bone & reconstructed in a new form. Haunting and thrilling while rarely overtly attempting to be so.
November 1, 2023
John Williams is severely underrated and he’s also my favorite 20th c American Writer.
All three of the included titles are brilliant and distinctly different in subject: “Stoner” is a masterpiece; “Augustus” thankfully won him some recognition (National Book Award 1972); “Butcher’s Crossing” is a beautiful and lush Western.
His razor sharp prose is masterful and restrained in all three and he strikes a perfect balance of beauty and brutality in the themes he explores.
This collection is one of my most treasured on my shelf (but I also recommend the NYRB published versions of his works as the Library of America one is somewhat uncommon). This collection also features his speech for his National Book Award.
All three of the included titles are brilliant and distinctly different in subject: “Stoner” is a masterpiece; “Augustus” thankfully won him some recognition (National Book Award 1972); “Butcher’s Crossing” is a beautiful and lush Western.
His razor sharp prose is masterful and restrained in all three and he strikes a perfect balance of beauty and brutality in the themes he explores.
This collection is one of my most treasured on my shelf (but I also recommend the NYRB published versions of his works as the Library of America one is somewhat uncommon). This collection also features his speech for his National Book Award.
July 26, 2025
I wasn’t aware of Williams’ work before but got intrigued by the premise of Stoner, a story of quiet struggle about a professor dedicated to his work. I started with that novel and enjoyed it so much to read the rest of Williams’ collected works. Each of the three novels collected here are wildly different - a Western and an epistolary story set in Ancient Rome - but they’re tied together by Williams’ superb, craftsman writing. There are flat-out beautiful sentences on every page, and each story is finely structured.
October 15, 2024
Why'd I walk into a Barne's and Noble and go "Yeah man I should totally read harder literature. I'm sure these 3 novels in one collection won't be too long"? What strange times that was many months ago.
Most of Williams's writing is slow paced. Methodical and thoroughly researched. Butcher's Crossing was the slowest of the three involving 3 cowboys in a dying idea of the west hunting buffalo for their pelts. An examination of greed and its costs in a defiance of the western genre. Which makes it very western. Heavy on the use of landscape and setting to convey ideas with a wonderfully explosive ending. After reading it, I wasn't too sure if I was going to like the rest of the collection. Plus, I was mostly buying this to read Stoner.
And Stoner delivers. The title character is constantly represented with care and humanity. Mistakes and all in plain view without apology to said character. Morris Dickstein called it a perfect novel. How could I pass that up? Stoner lives a life of constant failures. Marriage, academic career, familial relationships, etc. All constantly never going his way from page one. A love of learning and the process of learning deeply ingrained into him allows him strength to continue. From the outside, a story of a man that ends up not accomplishing much and living a mundane life before an uneventful death. From Stoner's perspective, a satisfying and full life buoyed by his craft and perseverance of it. It's a beautiful book. Augustus is the flipside and equally a masterpiece.
An impersonal look at power and the maintenance of power. How far will one go to get power and how ordinary will one's heinous actions be in doing so? This time, we are never actually seeing the writings of the title character until the very end. The entire novel told from the perspective of other people in relation to Octavious shows masterfully how power centralized consumes all the thoughts and actions of an inner circle vying for said power. A beautiful ending scene with metaphors on innocence vs ambition leaves an idea of just how easy it is to crave power and tip the scales towards your ambition without ever fully understanding the impact of one's choices until the very end.
One caveat is the selected writing on "The future of the Novel". I don't agree entirely with Williams's opinions on how novels don't work on style alone. On how substance is the most important thing and how the novel is defined via sequential plot within a recognizable standard of time. I think by defining the novel in this way he still has issues in classifying Ulysses and other novels like House of Leaves. The time period that he wrote that essay didn't see postmodernism. I'm not entirely convinced on his argument that stream of consciousness novels necessarily are epics.
Regardless, a fantastic collection. I'm glad I read this.
Most of Williams's writing is slow paced. Methodical and thoroughly researched. Butcher's Crossing was the slowest of the three involving 3 cowboys in a dying idea of the west hunting buffalo for their pelts. An examination of greed and its costs in a defiance of the western genre. Which makes it very western. Heavy on the use of landscape and setting to convey ideas with a wonderfully explosive ending. After reading it, I wasn't too sure if I was going to like the rest of the collection. Plus, I was mostly buying this to read Stoner.
And Stoner delivers. The title character is constantly represented with care and humanity. Mistakes and all in plain view without apology to said character. Morris Dickstein called it a perfect novel. How could I pass that up? Stoner lives a life of constant failures. Marriage, academic career, familial relationships, etc. All constantly never going his way from page one. A love of learning and the process of learning deeply ingrained into him allows him strength to continue. From the outside, a story of a man that ends up not accomplishing much and living a mundane life before an uneventful death. From Stoner's perspective, a satisfying and full life buoyed by his craft and perseverance of it. It's a beautiful book. Augustus is the flipside and equally a masterpiece.
An impersonal look at power and the maintenance of power. How far will one go to get power and how ordinary will one's heinous actions be in doing so? This time, we are never actually seeing the writings of the title character until the very end. The entire novel told from the perspective of other people in relation to Octavious shows masterfully how power centralized consumes all the thoughts and actions of an inner circle vying for said power. A beautiful ending scene with metaphors on innocence vs ambition leaves an idea of just how easy it is to crave power and tip the scales towards your ambition without ever fully understanding the impact of one's choices until the very end.
One caveat is the selected writing on "The future of the Novel". I don't agree entirely with Williams's opinions on how novels don't work on style alone. On how substance is the most important thing and how the novel is defined via sequential plot within a recognizable standard of time. I think by defining the novel in this way he still has issues in classifying Ulysses and other novels like House of Leaves. The time period that he wrote that essay didn't see postmodernism. I'm not entirely convinced on his argument that stream of consciousness novels necessarily are epics.
Regardless, a fantastic collection. I'm glad I read this.
May 31, 2025
Butcher’s Crossing: I don’t read Westerns and I haven’t gotten that much into slow-paced books, so Butcher’s Crossing and its style of storytelling was pretty new, and at times, too slow for me. This is was also my first John Williams story as well. I think Willams has a very rich writing style that really forces you to sit and internalize each word he uses so that a much more vivid and picturesque view of the scenes he describes can be conjured.
I liked his portrayal of man’s regression and devolution as Andrews and the other men descended deeper into the wilderness. I don’t know if the lack of dialogue is a hallmark of Williams’s style or an intentional choice for this particular story, but either way I found it fitting. The silence amongst the men added to the brutality and violence that the hunt forces them to embrace.
When reading, I felt like the men each grew to represent different points on a spectrum of man’s regression. Charley Hoge would be on one end with Miller on the other, while Schneider and Andrews were somewhere in the middle. Charley never actively participated in the hunt and was a devout Christian. I think his high religiosity and strong adherence to a moral code allowed him to retain more of his humanity than the others. Conversely, Miller fully becomes one with nature and is sometimes described as being indistinguishable from it. He fully gives into the apathetic lifestyle of the wilderness and indulges in violence. Andrews and Schneider are in the middle because they consistently think about things they could have back home, such as Francine. However, Schneider cares less about the sentimentality of these things which positions him closer to Miller’s side of the spectrum. Andrews, on the other hand, actively recognizes the effect that the hunt has on him and even tries to cleanse himself of it, which puts him more towards Charley’s end.
In the end, I thought the story’s remarks about the search for meaning being one filled with nothingness and based on lies to be appropriate. Andrews tries to find himself in nature, an objective and brute force that exerts its will on humanity with no regard for how people will manage. Him trying to find meaning in a meaningless and violent place and ultimately finding nothing makes sense and proves to be a hard truth for him and the other characters to swallow.
One question this story makes me think about is whether the search for meaning is a worthwhile endeavor. I think Butcher’s Crossing makes a strong case that it isn’t, at least in nature it isn’t. This made me think about whether it’s worthwhile in human society, and overall I think it’s yes. Human society has consistently been filled with senseless atrocities and acts of injustice that make it hard to find meaning. However, the main difference between human society and nature is that the senseless pain and apathy is inherent to nature, but is constructed and cultivated through the various systems of human society. I think if the society we’ve built can be made to breed senseless and meaningless pain then it can also be built to provide meaningful purpose.
Stoner: I’ve just finished Stoner, and while it moved at a quicker pace and was more entertaining than Butcher’s Crossing, I thought it was just fine. Many people have praised this story, and maybe I need to reread it when I’m at a different stage in life, but it didn’t feel all that special. Perhaps that’s the point since Stoner’s life is one of mediocrity and he is an average everyday man, but I found the reflections and lessons of the previous story to be much more interesting. I did find lots of relatability in the beginning of the story as Stoner entered college since that’s where I’m currently in life.
The idea of love was one that was very present throughout the whole story. I think Williams connected it nicely to power by showing how only the things we truly love can ever have power over us, and force us to act in ways that maintain its presence in our lives. Additionally, just as power shifts, so can love. I think Stoner’s relationships with his family and literature exemplified this. Initially, Stoner has a deep love for Edith which allows her to maintain power in their marriage, but when he realizes this love will never be reciprocated, he shifts his focus toward literature. It consumes him and he’s always fixated on work, and it’s related elements, to the point where it’s his only life and his family goes into the background.
John Williams’s writing style is as consistent and engaging as it was in Butcher’s Crossing. He dives deep into the setting of a scene and creates a very distinct vibe for this story. The characters were all good, especially Edith, who brings a nice dose of absurdity and conflict.
Augustus: Augustus was easily my favorite out of the three stories. I thought the format that Williams used to tell this story was really interesting and cool. The letters provided an easy way to get to know the innermost thoughts and feelings of characters or the facade they presented to other characters, depending on who the recipient of the letter was. The third part of Augustus was much more slow in comparison to the others since it’s mainly Augustus reflecting on everything you just read. This is the first time in a long time that I feel compelled to reread a story after finishing it. I also appreciated how Williams gradually introduces new characters throughout the story. It helps it feel less overwhelming since so many people are involved and there are lots of overlapping dynamics and relationships. Constantly switching perspectives also kept me engaged throughout. Additionally, this story also has me more interested in reading about other forms of historical fiction about the Roman Empire.
I liked his portrayal of man’s regression and devolution as Andrews and the other men descended deeper into the wilderness. I don’t know if the lack of dialogue is a hallmark of Williams’s style or an intentional choice for this particular story, but either way I found it fitting. The silence amongst the men added to the brutality and violence that the hunt forces them to embrace.
When reading, I felt like the men each grew to represent different points on a spectrum of man’s regression. Charley Hoge would be on one end with Miller on the other, while Schneider and Andrews were somewhere in the middle. Charley never actively participated in the hunt and was a devout Christian. I think his high religiosity and strong adherence to a moral code allowed him to retain more of his humanity than the others. Conversely, Miller fully becomes one with nature and is sometimes described as being indistinguishable from it. He fully gives into the apathetic lifestyle of the wilderness and indulges in violence. Andrews and Schneider are in the middle because they consistently think about things they could have back home, such as Francine. However, Schneider cares less about the sentimentality of these things which positions him closer to Miller’s side of the spectrum. Andrews, on the other hand, actively recognizes the effect that the hunt has on him and even tries to cleanse himself of it, which puts him more towards Charley’s end.
In the end, I thought the story’s remarks about the search for meaning being one filled with nothingness and based on lies to be appropriate. Andrews tries to find himself in nature, an objective and brute force that exerts its will on humanity with no regard for how people will manage. Him trying to find meaning in a meaningless and violent place and ultimately finding nothing makes sense and proves to be a hard truth for him and the other characters to swallow.
One question this story makes me think about is whether the search for meaning is a worthwhile endeavor. I think Butcher’s Crossing makes a strong case that it isn’t, at least in nature it isn’t. This made me think about whether it’s worthwhile in human society, and overall I think it’s yes. Human society has consistently been filled with senseless atrocities and acts of injustice that make it hard to find meaning. However, the main difference between human society and nature is that the senseless pain and apathy is inherent to nature, but is constructed and cultivated through the various systems of human society. I think if the society we’ve built can be made to breed senseless and meaningless pain then it can also be built to provide meaningful purpose.
Stoner: I’ve just finished Stoner, and while it moved at a quicker pace and was more entertaining than Butcher’s Crossing, I thought it was just fine. Many people have praised this story, and maybe I need to reread it when I’m at a different stage in life, but it didn’t feel all that special. Perhaps that’s the point since Stoner’s life is one of mediocrity and he is an average everyday man, but I found the reflections and lessons of the previous story to be much more interesting. I did find lots of relatability in the beginning of the story as Stoner entered college since that’s where I’m currently in life.
The idea of love was one that was very present throughout the whole story. I think Williams connected it nicely to power by showing how only the things we truly love can ever have power over us, and force us to act in ways that maintain its presence in our lives. Additionally, just as power shifts, so can love. I think Stoner’s relationships with his family and literature exemplified this. Initially, Stoner has a deep love for Edith which allows her to maintain power in their marriage, but when he realizes this love will never be reciprocated, he shifts his focus toward literature. It consumes him and he’s always fixated on work, and it’s related elements, to the point where it’s his only life and his family goes into the background.
John Williams’s writing style is as consistent and engaging as it was in Butcher’s Crossing. He dives deep into the setting of a scene and creates a very distinct vibe for this story. The characters were all good, especially Edith, who brings a nice dose of absurdity and conflict.
Augustus: Augustus was easily my favorite out of the three stories. I thought the format that Williams used to tell this story was really interesting and cool. The letters provided an easy way to get to know the innermost thoughts and feelings of characters or the facade they presented to other characters, depending on who the recipient of the letter was. The third part of Augustus was much more slow in comparison to the others since it’s mainly Augustus reflecting on everything you just read. This is the first time in a long time that I feel compelled to reread a story after finishing it. I also appreciated how Williams gradually introduces new characters throughout the story. It helps it feel less overwhelming since so many people are involved and there are lots of overlapping dynamics and relationships. Constantly switching perspectives also kept me engaged throughout. Additionally, this story also has me more interested in reading about other forms of historical fiction about the Roman Empire.
October 8, 2025
This volume in the Library of America series reprints three of the four novels Williams published, along with three essays related to them, as well as his brief remarks when accepting the National Book Award in 1973.
Butcher’s Crossing : This novel, set in the West a few years after the Civil War, was hard for me to get into, but I persevered, and it hooked me; the book ended powerfully and stayed with me after I finished it. At the time Williams wrote it, in the late 1950s, the Western genre dominated Hollywood movies and television with a romanticized mythology of the noble, incorruptible loner. Yet this was an overlay on a deeper stratum of Romanticism, the idealized view of Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau. In this novel, Williams subverts both layers. Will Andrews, the protagonist, comes West filled with the Emersonian ideal of Nature, but what he goes through takes him the final step, which Emerson called “the natural man,” but in a way Emerson would not have expected.
Will uses his inheritance to finance a buffalo-hunting expedition led by Miller, a frontiersman who foreshadows what Will becomes by the book’s conclusion. The four-man hunting party is forced to spend the winter snowbound in the Rocky Mountains, which, in the mythic terms Williams draws on for this quest, is like a descent into the underworld. By the time he and the others return to their starting point, Will has shed most of his identity. Burning the clothes he’d worn for half a year and two baths complete the process. An inferno set by Miller, who led the party, also takes on ritual character. In the end, Will rides away, having been reborn as the vacant-eyed loner, placing his faith in his instinct rather than his reason. As Williams wrote in his essay on the genre of the Western, also reprinted in this volume, “[t]he outcome of myth is always mixed; its quest is for an order of the self that is gained at the expense of knowing at least the essential chaos of the universe.”
Stoner recounts the life of an only child from a hardscrabble farm in Missouri who goes to university, falls in love with literature, and spends the rest of his life teaching there. His marriage is a failure, their only child turns from them, and he arouses the enmity of his department head, who stymies his career. From the outside, this seems like an obscure, meaningless life.
The incident that derails his career is his refusal to give a passing grade to the department head’s protege. This grad student is a satire of the Romantic sensibility, which, in Williams’s view (as becomes clear in his essay on the future of the novel, also reprinted in this volume), reduces literary sensibility to spasms of inspiration, while disregarding grammatical and phonetic demands and blithely ignoring the history of literature. This anti-Romantic polemic ties this novel to Williams’s earlier work, Butcher’s Crossing . By the way, Andrews and Stoner share the same given name, Will/Willy.
If asked to consider this novel in terms of the categories of imaginative literature, one has to rule out myth, epic, and tragedy, leaving comedy as the only possible descriptor. Yet there are few laughs along the way, and indeed no happy ending. In fact, it is one of the most unrelentingly sad books I can recall reading.
And yet the book shows how Stoner plods on, and displays a dogged Stoicism reminiscent of his dirt-farm father. When he looks back at the end of his life, Stoner realizes he had done it all out of love. Lying on his deathbed, he picks up his only published book, based on his dissertation. He knows both he and his book are destined for obscurity. Yet his fingers tingle as he touches the pages (he is beyond reading), suggesting a symbiotic relationship between hand/mind and book, making a case for the irreducible nobility of both life and literature.
Augustus is a historical novel about the first Roman emperor. It begins with the calm reaction of Octavian (who would come to be known as Augustus) to the assassination of his uncle, Julius Caesar, and his unlikely success, despite his youth, in grasping and holding the reins of power.
The book recalls Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian and Graves’s two novels about Claudius, but is different. Those are both cast as memoirs of the title figure. Rather than writing a narrative in temporal order, Williams creates a mosaic out of letters, diary entries, and other texts from a variety of witnesses. In this way, the reader sees Octavian from the outside, which is fitting for a man who was careful not to reveal his feelings or his plans. Only at the end of the book and the end of Octavian’s life do we have a text from his own hand, in the form of a lengthy letter to his only surviving friend.
The portrait that emerges is that of an Augustus whose acts are a recognition of his life as an instrument through which Rome unfolds its fate: “Destiny seized me,” he says.
There is a tender portrait of Julia, his only child. Julia is frank about her many affairs. Her status as beloved daughter of the emperor long shields her while she disregards the double morality of her era (noble women must be chaste, while the men are free to do what they like). Julia led a life that modern sensibilities might call liberated. Does Williams come closer to getting her right than Graves? We can’t know, of course. The only measure: does this recreation account for the few undisputed facts and make sense of them? I concluded that what rescued Williams from creating an anachronistic sensibility is that, in the end, in his telling, Julia shares her father’s assumption that the needs of the city take precedence over personal desire, and submits to her banishment.
I’m less sure that Williams evaded anachronism fully in the last section of the novel. As Yourcenar does to Hadrian, Williams grants Octavian, in his valedictory letter, prescience bordering on the prophetic. But in the context of the overall portrayal, in which Octavian’s life is enwrapped in the fate of Rome, even this made sense.
Butcher’s Crossing : This novel, set in the West a few years after the Civil War, was hard for me to get into, but I persevered, and it hooked me; the book ended powerfully and stayed with me after I finished it. At the time Williams wrote it, in the late 1950s, the Western genre dominated Hollywood movies and television with a romanticized mythology of the noble, incorruptible loner. Yet this was an overlay on a deeper stratum of Romanticism, the idealized view of Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau. In this novel, Williams subverts both layers. Will Andrews, the protagonist, comes West filled with the Emersonian ideal of Nature, but what he goes through takes him the final step, which Emerson called “the natural man,” but in a way Emerson would not have expected.
Will uses his inheritance to finance a buffalo-hunting expedition led by Miller, a frontiersman who foreshadows what Will becomes by the book’s conclusion. The four-man hunting party is forced to spend the winter snowbound in the Rocky Mountains, which, in the mythic terms Williams draws on for this quest, is like a descent into the underworld. By the time he and the others return to their starting point, Will has shed most of his identity. Burning the clothes he’d worn for half a year and two baths complete the process. An inferno set by Miller, who led the party, also takes on ritual character. In the end, Will rides away, having been reborn as the vacant-eyed loner, placing his faith in his instinct rather than his reason. As Williams wrote in his essay on the genre of the Western, also reprinted in this volume, “[t]he outcome of myth is always mixed; its quest is for an order of the self that is gained at the expense of knowing at least the essential chaos of the universe.”
Stoner recounts the life of an only child from a hardscrabble farm in Missouri who goes to university, falls in love with literature, and spends the rest of his life teaching there. His marriage is a failure, their only child turns from them, and he arouses the enmity of his department head, who stymies his career. From the outside, this seems like an obscure, meaningless life.
The incident that derails his career is his refusal to give a passing grade to the department head’s protege. This grad student is a satire of the Romantic sensibility, which, in Williams’s view (as becomes clear in his essay on the future of the novel, also reprinted in this volume), reduces literary sensibility to spasms of inspiration, while disregarding grammatical and phonetic demands and blithely ignoring the history of literature. This anti-Romantic polemic ties this novel to Williams’s earlier work, Butcher’s Crossing . By the way, Andrews and Stoner share the same given name, Will/Willy.
If asked to consider this novel in terms of the categories of imaginative literature, one has to rule out myth, epic, and tragedy, leaving comedy as the only possible descriptor. Yet there are few laughs along the way, and indeed no happy ending. In fact, it is one of the most unrelentingly sad books I can recall reading.
And yet the book shows how Stoner plods on, and displays a dogged Stoicism reminiscent of his dirt-farm father. When he looks back at the end of his life, Stoner realizes he had done it all out of love. Lying on his deathbed, he picks up his only published book, based on his dissertation. He knows both he and his book are destined for obscurity. Yet his fingers tingle as he touches the pages (he is beyond reading), suggesting a symbiotic relationship between hand/mind and book, making a case for the irreducible nobility of both life and literature.
Augustus is a historical novel about the first Roman emperor. It begins with the calm reaction of Octavian (who would come to be known as Augustus) to the assassination of his uncle, Julius Caesar, and his unlikely success, despite his youth, in grasping and holding the reins of power.
The book recalls Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian and Graves’s two novels about Claudius, but is different. Those are both cast as memoirs of the title figure. Rather than writing a narrative in temporal order, Williams creates a mosaic out of letters, diary entries, and other texts from a variety of witnesses. In this way, the reader sees Octavian from the outside, which is fitting for a man who was careful not to reveal his feelings or his plans. Only at the end of the book and the end of Octavian’s life do we have a text from his own hand, in the form of a lengthy letter to his only surviving friend.
The portrait that emerges is that of an Augustus whose acts are a recognition of his life as an instrument through which Rome unfolds its fate: “Destiny seized me,” he says.
There is a tender portrait of Julia, his only child. Julia is frank about her many affairs. Her status as beloved daughter of the emperor long shields her while she disregards the double morality of her era (noble women must be chaste, while the men are free to do what they like). Julia led a life that modern sensibilities might call liberated. Does Williams come closer to getting her right than Graves? We can’t know, of course. The only measure: does this recreation account for the few undisputed facts and make sense of them? I concluded that what rescued Williams from creating an anachronistic sensibility is that, in the end, in his telling, Julia shares her father’s assumption that the needs of the city take precedence over personal desire, and submits to her banishment.
I’m less sure that Williams evaded anachronism fully in the last section of the novel. As Yourcenar does to Hadrian, Williams grants Octavian, in his valedictory letter, prescience bordering on the prophetic. But in the context of the overall portrayal, in which Octavian’s life is enwrapped in the fate of Rome, even this made sense.
October 15, 2025
Collected Novels: Butcher’s Crossing / Stoner / Augustus by John Williams, edited by Daniel Mendelsohn, is a rare literary constellation three works that, together, illuminate the quiet majesty of the human condition.
Each novel stands alone in its mastery, yet when read together, they form a single meditation on ambition, futility, and grace. Butcher’s Crossing is a brutal hymn to the American frontier a study of nature’s indifference and man’s unrelenting hunger for meaning. Stoner is the still center of Williams’s universe a portrait of a life so ordinary it becomes transcendent. And Augustus, his National Book Award–winning masterpiece, expands the canvas to empire, power, and legacy, told through letters that pulse with emotional restraint and timeless insight.
Williams’s prose is symphonic in structure, monastic in discipline, and deeply human in soul. He gives us characters who fail, endure, and quietly triumph in ways that feel achingly true. Reading him feels less like consumption and more like contemplation a rediscovery of what literature can do when stripped of artifice and ambition.
This collection is not just a tribute to one writer’s evolution it’s a testament to what fiction can still achieve when language serves truth above spectacle. For readers of Cather, Stegner, and Kazuo Ishiguro, this is essential American literature, eternal in its quiet precision.
Each novel stands alone in its mastery, yet when read together, they form a single meditation on ambition, futility, and grace. Butcher’s Crossing is a brutal hymn to the American frontier a study of nature’s indifference and man’s unrelenting hunger for meaning. Stoner is the still center of Williams’s universe a portrait of a life so ordinary it becomes transcendent. And Augustus, his National Book Award–winning masterpiece, expands the canvas to empire, power, and legacy, told through letters that pulse with emotional restraint and timeless insight.
Williams’s prose is symphonic in structure, monastic in discipline, and deeply human in soul. He gives us characters who fail, endure, and quietly triumph in ways that feel achingly true. Reading him feels less like consumption and more like contemplation a rediscovery of what literature can do when stripped of artifice and ambition.
This collection is not just a tribute to one writer’s evolution it’s a testament to what fiction can still achieve when language serves truth above spectacle. For readers of Cather, Stegner, and Kazuo Ishiguro, this is essential American literature, eternal in its quiet precision.
September 13, 2024
i just wanted to read stoner for now.
October 17, 2024
Its interesting to read the essays on the formal considerations of fiction writing that were appended to the end of the book.
August 18, 2025
Een heel goe en meeslepend boek. Goe geschreven, vol onverwachte wendingen, en een mooi einde.
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