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Butcher's Crossing
Een roman over het verlangen naar een intens leven, en het verlies van onschuld; een verhaal dat diep graaft in de menselijke ziel
Amerika, 1870. De jonge Will Andrews stopt met zijn opleiding aan Harvard en trekt westwaarts op zoek naar avontuur, naar het echte Amerika. Als hij na een lange reis aankomt in het van god en iedereen verlaten dorp Butcher's Crossing in Kansas neemt Andrews een ingrijpend besluit: hij gaat mee op wat een van de laatste grote jachten op de bizon zal zijn, een dier dat vrijwel uitgeroeid is door de handel in huiden. De ervaren jager Miller leidt de expeditie naar een kudde van duizenden bizons in een verstopte vallei. Terwijl Miller als een bezetene in de weer is om elke nog levende bizon te doden, worden de mannen in het nauw gedreven door de snel invallende winter en leert Andrews meer van zijn land dan hij ooit had kunnen voorzien.
Elk aspect van Andrews' beproeving, van de langdurige paardrijritten over de verlaten prairie en het verbeten slachten van de vele bizons tot de harde overlevingsstrijd in de ruige natuur, is beschreven in de onwaarschijnlijk mooie, sobere en heldere stijl van John Williams. Net als zijn succesroman Stoner straalt Butcher's Crossing, zoals The Times schreef, 'een veerkrachtig soort optimisme uit over ons vermogen om iets van waarde te redden uit de onmogelijke omstandigheden van het menselijk leven'.
John Williams (1922-1994) wordt momenteel wereldwijd herontdekt als schrijver van een uniek en hartverscheurend oeuvre. Alleen al in Nederland werden er van Stoner bijna 200.000 exemplaren verkocht. Met Butcher's Crossing laat Williams opnieuw zien dat zijn oeuvre van groot belang is voor de literatuur. Over Stoner schreef de pers:
'Niet elk jaar lees je een boek dat zo meeslepend is dat je er bijna in verdwijnt en alles om je heen vergeet. Butcher's Crossing is zo'n boek' NRC Handelsblad *****
'Butcher's Crossing zingt, in een andere toonsoort, maar mooier, hetzelfde sombere lied als Stoner. Ziedaar de verrassing van 2013' de Volkskrant *****
'Een betoverend epos van een geweldige schrijver' Het Parool *****
'Net zo sterk en verpletterend als de vergeten parel Stoner. Lees dit boek, het zal je niet berouwen' De Standaard der Letteren ****
'Met Butcher's Crossing is het duidelijk dat Williams ten onrechte in de marge was beland. Dat hij alsnog uit de literaire vergeetput is gered, is een godsgeschenk voor de lezer.' De Tijd
'De personages zijn scherp omlijnd, de gebeurtenissen levendig; de plaatsen, de geuren en de geluiden uitstekend getroffen. En het proza is subliem' The Chicago Tribune
'Een boek van een wonderlijke schoonheid. De poëzie van verdriet wordt niet vaak zo sereen en ingetogen gezongen als in Stoner' Hans Bouman, de Volkskrant ****
'Een vergeten parel uit de Amerikaanse literatuur, in een aangrijpende, heldere stijl' Kathy Mathys, De Standaard ****
'Als u een boek wilt lezen dat uw leven gaat veranderen, lees dan Stoner' Arnon Grunberg
'Een spectaculair onspectaculaire roman over het leven van een weinig opmerkelijke man, vormgegeven in bijna perfecte en precieze taal, met een ingetogen wijsheid die de ziel raakt...
334 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1960
1854 people are currently reading
59707 people want to read
About the author
John Williams
9 books2,413 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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September 1, 2019
”You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies at school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re old.”
Will Andrews bought into the Manifest Destiny rhetoric of Horace Greeley, Go West, Young Man! The year is 1873. He has three years of education at Harvard and to throw off the yoke he feels settling around his young shoulders he decides to head to Kansas. His father, a Unitarian Minister, gives him the name of a man he knew named McDonald as a person who might be able to help him settle in out west. If the father had known what a den of iniquity that most of Western Kansas was at this point he might not have been so encouraging of his son to head West.
Butcher’s Crossing is a hide town. A town that exists only as a central point for Buffalo hunters to bring their hides for sale and to drink and get their ashes hauled. McDonald is the buyer of hides and he is buried in paperwork. He tries to hire Andrews to help him in the office, but Will did not come West to sit behind a desk. He asks for directions to a reliable Buffalo hunter. At one time there were millions of Buffalo stretching from Canada to Mexico, but after decades of slaughter their numbers have greatly diminished. By 1873 the large herds numbering in the thousands have been broken up into small pockets of a hundred or less. The meat is left to rot and the hides are being sent back East to be made into coats. Later the bones of the deceased Buffalo are picked up off the plains and ground into fertilizer.
Large Mound of Buffalo Bones
It was an eradication of a species on an epic scale.
The numbers of Buffalo today have come back from the brink of extinction. There are about 200,000 Buffalo being raised for the parks service and for meat. They are such a majestic animal and it truly would have been tragic if they had disappeared forever.
My Great Grandfather Ashley Joseph Ives in his Buffalo coat.
Andrews finds Miller and provides the cash to supply one last great Buffalo hunt. Miller had seen a large herd numbering nearly 3,000 a few years before in a valley in the Colorado mountains. It has always been his dream to go back. Andrews also meets Francine, a prostitute from St. Louis who was tired of all the competition in Missouri and liked that she could pick and choose her customers in this small backwater town in Kansas. Andrews, except for a furtive few moments with a willing cousin has very little experience with women.
”He pulled away from her a little to look at her soft heavy body that clung to him like velvet, held there of its own nature; there was a serenity on her face, almost as if it were asleep; and he felt that she was beautiful. He was assailed by the knowledge that others had seen this face as he was seeing it now; that others had kissed her on her wet lips, had heard the voice he was hearing, had felt the same breath he was feeling upon his own face, now. They had quickly paid their money, and had gone, and others had come, and others. He had quick and irrational image of hundreds of men, steadily streaming in and out of a room. He turned, pulled away from her, suddenly dead inside himself.”
As they journey to Colorado Andrews discovers how unprepared he is to do this much riding and this much work for this many long hours, finding himself beyond bone tired, so tired he can barely remember who he is.
”Day by day the numbness crept upon him until at last the numbness seemed to be himself. He felt himself to be like the land, without identity or shape; sometimes one of the men would look at him, look through him, as if he did not exist; and he had to shake his head sharply and move an arm or a leg and glance at it to assure himself that he was visible.”
They find the Buffalo.
They kill the Buffalo.
They reduce a herd of 3,000 down to a few hundred.
I was rooting for the Buffalo. I wanted a stampede, or any intervention that would wreak vengeance upon the hunters for their greed.
Buffaloes can reach speeds of 35mph.
”At night, when the two of them rode wearily out of the valley to the small red-orange glow that marked their camp in the darkness, they found Miller slouched darkly and inertly before the fire; except for his eyes he was as still and lifeless as one of the buffalo he had killed. Miller had even stopped washing of his face the black powder that collected there during his firing; now the powder smoke seemed a permanent part of his skin, ingrained there, a black mask that defined the hot, glaring brilliance of his eyes.”
I know people who hunt and I know people who kill. There are those that go out to hunt for a specific purpose and there are those that go out to kill anything that is moving. I’ve walked along the river that flows through my family property after people have been through there shooting squirrels, birds, and rabbits, not to eat them, but just for the sport of it. Everything is silent, a condemnation of our failed stewardship colors the air. There is something inherently missing in people who choose to treat life this way. I used to hunt with my friends and family and then I shot my first deer soon after turning 15 and that was my last time. I walked up to the dying deer hidden by the grass. He had looked so large when he had stared across the field at me and in death looked so tenderly small sprawled on the ground. The stain was larger than the gain.
I sold my rifle.
To keep a herd from running away you have to kill their leader first.
”The buffalo passed their wounded leader, and ran beyond him some three hundred yards, where their running gradually spent itself, and where they stood, milling uneasily about. The old bull stood alone behind them, his massive head sunk below his hump; his tail twitched once or twice, and he shook his head. He turned around several times, as another animal might have done before sleeping, and finally stood facing the two men who were more than two hundred yards away from him. He took three steps toward them, and paused again. Then, stiffly, he fell on his side, his legs straight out from his belly, The legs jerked, and then he was still.
That bull had fought off all his competitors. He’d won the right to inseminate and pass along his bloodline to the next generation. He stood between his herd and every threat that nature could throw at him. ”The old bull carried thick scars on his sides and flanks that could be seen even at a great distance.” A bullet fired from a man two hundred yards away that he couldn’t even see exploded through his chest cavity, punching through both his lungs, drowning him with his own blood, and he didn’t even get a chance to fight.
The hunting party stayed too long in the mountains, greed overrides common sense, and nature comes calling.
Many more trials and tribulations await the less than heroic characters that populate this novel. John Williams is a wonderful writer. His book Stoner is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, so despite this being a subject matter that I find particularly distasteful the writing was superb. This is a epic western with all the grandeur of inspiring descriptions of the landscape and the wonderful character sketches of the rough and tumble people who for a time made their living on the plains of Kansas. They cleared the land for the farmers and the ranchers that were coming close behind them. My Great-great Grandfather Thomas Newton Keeten came to Kansas in the 1880s, so he was part of the migration of farmers who settled after the near eradication of the Buffalo and the Indians had been “pacified”. He broke the sod, built a house, helped form the Methodist church that I was baptized in, and is buried in the cemetery among the bones of the Buffalo.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Will Andrews bought into the Manifest Destiny rhetoric of Horace Greeley, Go West, Young Man! The year is 1873. He has three years of education at Harvard and to throw off the yoke he feels settling around his young shoulders he decides to head to Kansas. His father, a Unitarian Minister, gives him the name of a man he knew named McDonald as a person who might be able to help him settle in out west. If the father had known what a den of iniquity that most of Western Kansas was at this point he might not have been so encouraging of his son to head West.
Butcher’s Crossing is a hide town. A town that exists only as a central point for Buffalo hunters to bring their hides for sale and to drink and get their ashes hauled. McDonald is the buyer of hides and he is buried in paperwork. He tries to hire Andrews to help him in the office, but Will did not come West to sit behind a desk. He asks for directions to a reliable Buffalo hunter. At one time there were millions of Buffalo stretching from Canada to Mexico, but after decades of slaughter their numbers have greatly diminished. By 1873 the large herds numbering in the thousands have been broken up into small pockets of a hundred or less. The meat is left to rot and the hides are being sent back East to be made into coats. Later the bones of the deceased Buffalo are picked up off the plains and ground into fertilizer.
Large Mound of Buffalo Bones
It was an eradication of a species on an epic scale.
The numbers of Buffalo today have come back from the brink of extinction. There are about 200,000 Buffalo being raised for the parks service and for meat. They are such a majestic animal and it truly would have been tragic if they had disappeared forever.
My Great Grandfather Ashley Joseph Ives in his Buffalo coat.
Andrews finds Miller and provides the cash to supply one last great Buffalo hunt. Miller had seen a large herd numbering nearly 3,000 a few years before in a valley in the Colorado mountains. It has always been his dream to go back. Andrews also meets Francine, a prostitute from St. Louis who was tired of all the competition in Missouri and liked that she could pick and choose her customers in this small backwater town in Kansas. Andrews, except for a furtive few moments with a willing cousin has very little experience with women.
”He pulled away from her a little to look at her soft heavy body that clung to him like velvet, held there of its own nature; there was a serenity on her face, almost as if it were asleep; and he felt that she was beautiful. He was assailed by the knowledge that others had seen this face as he was seeing it now; that others had kissed her on her wet lips, had heard the voice he was hearing, had felt the same breath he was feeling upon his own face, now. They had quickly paid their money, and had gone, and others had come, and others. He had quick and irrational image of hundreds of men, steadily streaming in and out of a room. He turned, pulled away from her, suddenly dead inside himself.”
As they journey to Colorado Andrews discovers how unprepared he is to do this much riding and this much work for this many long hours, finding himself beyond bone tired, so tired he can barely remember who he is.
”Day by day the numbness crept upon him until at last the numbness seemed to be himself. He felt himself to be like the land, without identity or shape; sometimes one of the men would look at him, look through him, as if he did not exist; and he had to shake his head sharply and move an arm or a leg and glance at it to assure himself that he was visible.”
They find the Buffalo.
They kill the Buffalo.
They reduce a herd of 3,000 down to a few hundred.
I was rooting for the Buffalo. I wanted a stampede, or any intervention that would wreak vengeance upon the hunters for their greed.
Buffaloes can reach speeds of 35mph.
”At night, when the two of them rode wearily out of the valley to the small red-orange glow that marked their camp in the darkness, they found Miller slouched darkly and inertly before the fire; except for his eyes he was as still and lifeless as one of the buffalo he had killed. Miller had even stopped washing of his face the black powder that collected there during his firing; now the powder smoke seemed a permanent part of his skin, ingrained there, a black mask that defined the hot, glaring brilliance of his eyes.”
I know people who hunt and I know people who kill. There are those that go out to hunt for a specific purpose and there are those that go out to kill anything that is moving. I’ve walked along the river that flows through my family property after people have been through there shooting squirrels, birds, and rabbits, not to eat them, but just for the sport of it. Everything is silent, a condemnation of our failed stewardship colors the air. There is something inherently missing in people who choose to treat life this way. I used to hunt with my friends and family and then I shot my first deer soon after turning 15 and that was my last time. I walked up to the dying deer hidden by the grass. He had looked so large when he had stared across the field at me and in death looked so tenderly small sprawled on the ground. The stain was larger than the gain.
I sold my rifle.
To keep a herd from running away you have to kill their leader first.
”The buffalo passed their wounded leader, and ran beyond him some three hundred yards, where their running gradually spent itself, and where they stood, milling uneasily about. The old bull stood alone behind them, his massive head sunk below his hump; his tail twitched once or twice, and he shook his head. He turned around several times, as another animal might have done before sleeping, and finally stood facing the two men who were more than two hundred yards away from him. He took three steps toward them, and paused again. Then, stiffly, he fell on his side, his legs straight out from his belly, The legs jerked, and then he was still.
That bull had fought off all his competitors. He’d won the right to inseminate and pass along his bloodline to the next generation. He stood between his herd and every threat that nature could throw at him. ”The old bull carried thick scars on his sides and flanks that could be seen even at a great distance.” A bullet fired from a man two hundred yards away that he couldn’t even see exploded through his chest cavity, punching through both his lungs, drowning him with his own blood, and he didn’t even get a chance to fight.
The hunting party stayed too long in the mountains, greed overrides common sense, and nature comes calling.
Many more trials and tribulations await the less than heroic characters that populate this novel. John Williams is a wonderful writer. His book Stoner is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, so despite this being a subject matter that I find particularly distasteful the writing was superb. This is a epic western with all the grandeur of inspiring descriptions of the landscape and the wonderful character sketches of the rough and tumble people who for a time made their living on the plains of Kansas. They cleared the land for the farmers and the ranchers that were coming close behind them. My Great-great Grandfather Thomas Newton Keeten came to Kansas in the 1880s, so he was part of the migration of farmers who settled after the near eradication of the Buffalo and the Indians had been “pacified”. He broke the sod, built a house, helped form the Methodist church that I was baptized in, and is buried in the cemetery among the bones of the Buffalo.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
October 2, 2019
Why read a historical novel about a privileged Harvard dropout who wants to find himself by going on a buffalo hunt?
1. It's by John Williams, who wrote one of my three favourite novels, Stoner, which I reviewed HERE, as well as his masterpiece, Augustus, which I reviewed HERE.
2. Hunting is not what it's really about (probably like Moby Dick?).
3. It was a good follow-on from Cold Mountain, which I reviewed HERE: two totally different US landscape-based stories, set only a few years apart.
What This Is - and Is Not
• This is a road movie - without the road, the car, or the film cameras.
• It's a Western - without cows, cowboys orindians native Americans.
• It's a character-based story - but the main characters don't speak or move (because they’re the landscape and weather).
• It's about big beasts, big wilderness, big ambitions, some big characters - but it often focuses on the minutest details of how things looks, sound, and feel (see quotes near the end).
• It’s about quests and dreams (of meaning for one; of wealth for another); aspects have a mythical air – but harsh reality dominates, and it's not the standard "American Dream" of wealth (success, fame, power).
• It's a coming-of-age story or bildungsroman - except that the end of the journey seems more like the beginning of Will's growing up.
• It's about life (finding purpose in it, as well as basic survival) - but there's bloody death and butchery.
If it seems a slightly surprising subject for a quiet professor of literature to write about, his wife explains that he lived in the West, loved the landscape, and liked camping. (He didn't hunt buffalo.) See this interview with Nancy Gardner Williams: HERE.
Landscape
“He believed there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright.”
I often seek quiet landscapes for solace, thinking, escape (preferably woodland). I like to listen and touch. I’m not brave or reckless enough to go anywhere really wild, and although I eat meat, I’m no hunter. Nevertheless, I can relate to underlying theme of this story more than I expected.
Will Andrews heads west, not to make his fortune, but to find meaning in his life. The landscape quickly has a profound effect, though it doesn’t really clarify things for him. He longs for the distant mountains but “did not know precisely what hunger or thirst they would assuage”. How many of us long vaguely for something, without being sure how or if it will fix things?
After only a month away from Boston, he barely remembers home, which seems “in a very distant time… The image would not stay with him. Unreal, it thinned like brown fog.” He quickly feels at home in the tiny settlement of Butcher’s Crossing, but yearns to go further, into the wilderness: in “a hint of the distant horizon” he sees “his own undiscovered nature”.
As he travels, he comes to identify with his surroundings, “He felt himself to be like the land, without identity or shape”. He has “the feeling that he was being absorbed” and “promised… a richness and a fulfilment for which he had no name”. After only a few weeks, “He had been here in the high valley for all of that part of his life that mattered… He could not think of himself outside of where he was”. Is this peace or an unhealthy form of disassociation?
But what’s it all for? When they eventually leave the valley, after much hardship, Will “felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.”
This thwarting of uncertain ambitions, this lack of resolution, reminded me of Stoner.
Faith, Religion, Ritual
Does everyone need faith in something? I’m not sure (I don’t think I have faith in anything much), but that’s the suggestion here.
Charley Hoge, the waggon driver, has a simple but profound faith in the words of his dog-eared Bible, and a fair amount of faith in Miller, the experienced buffalo hunter. Miller’s faith is also in Miller: his vast experience of the beasts and their environment. Schneider, the skinner, has faith in his own experience, so it’s no surprise that he and Miller don’t always agree. McDonald, the hide trader, has hope of future prosperity when the railroad comes through town.
Will is the faithless one: the son of a preacher who pressed Emerson more than God on his son. That is surely why Will now seeks answers in the wilderness, and why “the reality of their journey lay in the routine detail… a ritual, more and more meaningless as it was repeated, but a ritual which nevertheless gave his life the only shape it now had”.
There is also a ritualistic aspect to the hunting, killing, and skinning: “a rhythm in Miller’s slaughter… Like a dance, a thunderous minuet created by the wildness that surrounded it”. Does that make it somehow sacred, or profane and greedy?
If my Biblical knowledge were closer to Charley’s than Will’s, I’d probably spot more, but wilderness is significant in the Christian story, and just as Genesis has a six-day creation, Miller’s preparation for the journey is six days, as it the first leg of it (after which, they are literally off the beaten track).
I’m not sure if it’s the author’s intention, but you could easily sermonise along the lines of the perils of chasing material gain, versus the importance of searching for deeper truth.
Transformation
From the most ancient myths and stories, physical journeys have paralleled personal journeys of transformation. That is true here – not just of Will, but even the characters who are used to venturing out for weeks on end.
There are the obvious physical transformations from weeks in the saddle, then the hard labour of hunting and skinning etc, but the psychological changes are greatest, and most profound. As things get tougher, each man has to wrestle his own demons, as well as the other men, and the conditions in which they’re living, travelling and, hopefully, surviving - physically and mentally.
“He thought at times that he as moving into a new body, or into a real body that had lain hidden beneath unreal layers of softness and whiteness and smoothness.” Later, these feelings are echoed when he loses his virginity.
Survival
If you like survival stories, there’s plenty here. They travel in uncharted territory, where only one of them has been before, and that was ten years earlier. They have supplies, but need to make them last, and can’t ever go too far from water. The terrain and weather are always a risk, as is the greed of trying to get just a few more hides.
Seeing this Through Other Eyes
Some books are so deep or strange, they inspire hugely varied and very creative reviews. This is, in some ways, a very simple story, but I was struck by the variety of my friends' reviews: they are almost all 4* or 5*, but the themes and ideas the pick out are remarkably diverse. I think that indicates how much depth there is beneath the surface.
I think this could make a wonderful film - but only in the rights hands. It needs to focus on careful shots of the landscape, rather than wild west clichés: enormous vistas, as well as careful light, highlighting details close-up. Stephen Poliakoff would be perfect, though in 2010, Sam Mendes was reported to be adapting it. He's made some excellent films, but I'm not sure I'd want to see his version of this.
Descriptions of Minute Details
This is also a notable feature of his first (disowned) novel, Nothing But The Night, HERE.
• “He became aware that his hands were tightly clenched; the tips of his fingers slipped in the moisture of his palms.
• “Flat lines of sweat ran through the glinting beads of moisture that stood out on his forehead, and ran into his tangled eyebrows.”
• “He noticed the minute beads of sweat that stood out distinctly above her full lip and caught the sunlight like tiny crystals.”
• “The rich buffalo grass… changed its color throughout the day; in the morning, in the pinkish rays of the early sun, it was nearly gray; in the yellow light of the midmorning sun, it was a brilliant green; at noon it took on a bluish cast; in the afternoon, in the intensity of the sun, at a distance, the blades lost their individual character and through the green showed a distinct cast of yellow, so that when a light breeze whipped across, a living color seemed to run through the grass, to disappear and reappear from moment to moment. In the evening after the sun had gone down, the grass took on a purplish hue as if it absorbed all the light from the sky and would not give it back.”
• “When he inserted the rod into the breech of the barrel the hot metal hissed, and the drops of water that got on the outside of the barrel danced for a moment on the blued metal and disappeared.”
• “He heard nothing save the soft whistling of the wind around his ears, which were beginning to tingle from the coolness. The southern reaches of the valley were softening in a faint mist that was coming down from the mountains… the sunlit white vapor twisted and coiled upon itself before a thrusting wind that was not felt on the ground here in the valley.”
• “The mountainside was a riot of varied shade and hue… He thought that if he listened he could hear the sound of growth… the fragrant air, spiced with the odor of crushed pine needles and musty from the slow decay that worked upward from the earth.”
Other Quotes
• “It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source.”
• “She was a presence which assuaged a need in him that he barely knew he had, until the need was met.”
• “Caught in the ugliness of sleep… defenceless… in the innocence of sleep” he “had never seen a part of her that he was seeing now.”
• “It wasn’t you, it was me.” (Published in 1960!)
Williams' Four Novels, Compared
See the end of my review of his first (disowned) novel, Nothing But The Night, HERE.
1. It's by John Williams, who wrote one of my three favourite novels, Stoner, which I reviewed HERE, as well as his masterpiece, Augustus, which I reviewed HERE.
2. Hunting is not what it's really about (probably like Moby Dick?).
3. It was a good follow-on from Cold Mountain, which I reviewed HERE: two totally different US landscape-based stories, set only a few years apart.
What This Is - and Is Not
• This is a road movie - without the road, the car, or the film cameras.
• It's a Western - without cows, cowboys or
• It's a character-based story - but the main characters don't speak or move (because they’re the landscape and weather).
• It's about big beasts, big wilderness, big ambitions, some big characters - but it often focuses on the minutest details of how things looks, sound, and feel (see quotes near the end).
• It’s about quests and dreams (of meaning for one; of wealth for another); aspects have a mythical air – but harsh reality dominates, and it's not the standard "American Dream" of wealth (success, fame, power).
• It's a coming-of-age story or bildungsroman - except that the end of the journey seems more like the beginning of Will's growing up.
• It's about life (finding purpose in it, as well as basic survival) - but there's bloody death and butchery.
If it seems a slightly surprising subject for a quiet professor of literature to write about, his wife explains that he lived in the West, loved the landscape, and liked camping. (He didn't hunt buffalo.) See this interview with Nancy Gardner Williams: HERE.
Landscape
“He believed there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright.”
I often seek quiet landscapes for solace, thinking, escape (preferably woodland). I like to listen and touch. I’m not brave or reckless enough to go anywhere really wild, and although I eat meat, I’m no hunter. Nevertheless, I can relate to underlying theme of this story more than I expected.
Will Andrews heads west, not to make his fortune, but to find meaning in his life. The landscape quickly has a profound effect, though it doesn’t really clarify things for him. He longs for the distant mountains but “did not know precisely what hunger or thirst they would assuage”. How many of us long vaguely for something, without being sure how or if it will fix things?
After only a month away from Boston, he barely remembers home, which seems “in a very distant time… The image would not stay with him. Unreal, it thinned like brown fog.” He quickly feels at home in the tiny settlement of Butcher’s Crossing, but yearns to go further, into the wilderness: in “a hint of the distant horizon” he sees “his own undiscovered nature”.
As he travels, he comes to identify with his surroundings, “He felt himself to be like the land, without identity or shape”. He has “the feeling that he was being absorbed” and “promised… a richness and a fulfilment for which he had no name”. After only a few weeks, “He had been here in the high valley for all of that part of his life that mattered… He could not think of himself outside of where he was”. Is this peace or an unhealthy form of disassociation?
But what’s it all for? When they eventually leave the valley, after much hardship, Will “felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.”
This thwarting of uncertain ambitions, this lack of resolution, reminded me of Stoner.
Faith, Religion, Ritual
Does everyone need faith in something? I’m not sure (I don’t think I have faith in anything much), but that’s the suggestion here.
Charley Hoge, the waggon driver, has a simple but profound faith in the words of his dog-eared Bible, and a fair amount of faith in Miller, the experienced buffalo hunter. Miller’s faith is also in Miller: his vast experience of the beasts and their environment. Schneider, the skinner, has faith in his own experience, so it’s no surprise that he and Miller don’t always agree. McDonald, the hide trader, has hope of future prosperity when the railroad comes through town.
Will is the faithless one: the son of a preacher who pressed Emerson more than God on his son. That is surely why Will now seeks answers in the wilderness, and why “the reality of their journey lay in the routine detail… a ritual, more and more meaningless as it was repeated, but a ritual which nevertheless gave his life the only shape it now had”.
There is also a ritualistic aspect to the hunting, killing, and skinning: “a rhythm in Miller’s slaughter… Like a dance, a thunderous minuet created by the wildness that surrounded it”. Does that make it somehow sacred, or profane and greedy?
If my Biblical knowledge were closer to Charley’s than Will’s, I’d probably spot more, but wilderness is significant in the Christian story, and just as Genesis has a six-day creation, Miller’s preparation for the journey is six days, as it the first leg of it (after which, they are literally off the beaten track).
I’m not sure if it’s the author’s intention, but you could easily sermonise along the lines of the perils of chasing material gain, versus the importance of searching for deeper truth.
Transformation
From the most ancient myths and stories, physical journeys have paralleled personal journeys of transformation. That is true here – not just of Will, but even the characters who are used to venturing out for weeks on end.
There are the obvious physical transformations from weeks in the saddle, then the hard labour of hunting and skinning etc, but the psychological changes are greatest, and most profound. As things get tougher, each man has to wrestle his own demons, as well as the other men, and the conditions in which they’re living, travelling and, hopefully, surviving - physically and mentally.
“He thought at times that he as moving into a new body, or into a real body that had lain hidden beneath unreal layers of softness and whiteness and smoothness.” Later, these feelings are echoed when he loses his virginity.
Survival
If you like survival stories, there’s plenty here. They travel in uncharted territory, where only one of them has been before, and that was ten years earlier. They have supplies, but need to make them last, and can’t ever go too far from water. The terrain and weather are always a risk, as is the greed of trying to get just a few more hides.
Seeing this Through Other Eyes
Some books are so deep or strange, they inspire hugely varied and very creative reviews. This is, in some ways, a very simple story, but I was struck by the variety of my friends' reviews: they are almost all 4* or 5*, but the themes and ideas the pick out are remarkably diverse. I think that indicates how much depth there is beneath the surface.
I think this could make a wonderful film - but only in the rights hands. It needs to focus on careful shots of the landscape, rather than wild west clichés: enormous vistas, as well as careful light, highlighting details close-up. Stephen Poliakoff would be perfect, though in 2010, Sam Mendes was reported to be adapting it. He's made some excellent films, but I'm not sure I'd want to see his version of this.
Descriptions of Minute Details
This is also a notable feature of his first (disowned) novel, Nothing But The Night, HERE.
• “He became aware that his hands were tightly clenched; the tips of his fingers slipped in the moisture of his palms.
• “Flat lines of sweat ran through the glinting beads of moisture that stood out on his forehead, and ran into his tangled eyebrows.”
• “He noticed the minute beads of sweat that stood out distinctly above her full lip and caught the sunlight like tiny crystals.”
• “The rich buffalo grass… changed its color throughout the day; in the morning, in the pinkish rays of the early sun, it was nearly gray; in the yellow light of the midmorning sun, it was a brilliant green; at noon it took on a bluish cast; in the afternoon, in the intensity of the sun, at a distance, the blades lost their individual character and through the green showed a distinct cast of yellow, so that when a light breeze whipped across, a living color seemed to run through the grass, to disappear and reappear from moment to moment. In the evening after the sun had gone down, the grass took on a purplish hue as if it absorbed all the light from the sky and would not give it back.”
• “When he inserted the rod into the breech of the barrel the hot metal hissed, and the drops of water that got on the outside of the barrel danced for a moment on the blued metal and disappeared.”
• “He heard nothing save the soft whistling of the wind around his ears, which were beginning to tingle from the coolness. The southern reaches of the valley were softening in a faint mist that was coming down from the mountains… the sunlit white vapor twisted and coiled upon itself before a thrusting wind that was not felt on the ground here in the valley.”
• “The mountainside was a riot of varied shade and hue… He thought that if he listened he could hear the sound of growth… the fragrant air, spiced with the odor of crushed pine needles and musty from the slow decay that worked upward from the earth.”
Other Quotes
• “It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source.”
• “She was a presence which assuaged a need in him that he barely knew he had, until the need was met.”
• “Caught in the ugliness of sleep… defenceless… in the innocence of sleep” he “had never seen a part of her that he was seeing now.”
• “It wasn’t you, it was me.” (Published in 1960!)
Williams' Four Novels, Compared
See the end of my review of his first (disowned) novel, Nothing But The Night, HERE.
December 4, 2022
TERRA DI CONFINE
”Open Range-Terra di confine” il bel film western del 2003 diretto e interpretato da Kevin Costner.
Pubblicato nel 1960, cinque anni prima di “Stoner”, e ambientato intorno al 1870 tra Kansas e Colorado, tra prateria e montagne, “Butcher’s Crossing” è il romanzo western per antonomasia, il paradigma del western, tutto quello che ci si aspetta da un western.
In più c’è l’enorme talento di questo scrittore, che non spreca parole e neppure le lesina, le cerca con precisione che rimane nascosta, le organizza con perizia e pacatezza, con potere evocativo e incredibile capacità descrittiva: e fa centro, come un grande tiratore, come i migliori cacciatori di quell’epoca.
In questo modo, un western diventa una storia mitologica, mistica, archetipica, senza tempo, universale.
Questa come quelle che seguono sono immagini della celebre scena di caccia al bufalo del film “Balla coi lupi” diretto e interpretato da Kevin Costner nel 1990, vincitore di ben 7 premi Oscar.
Un libro che avrebbe potuto non finire mai, la trama, per quanto ben strutturata, non è certo l’asse portante, non è l’obiettivo principale.
Un libro che avrei voluto non finisse mai.
Un romanzo che potrebbe anche essere migliore di “Stoner”: ma si tratta di due capolavori, difficile dire quale vince, è una bella lotta.
La prateria, gli zoccoli, i fili d’erba, gli argini di fiumi e torrenti, la pelle umana che arrossa e indurisce, la pelle degli animali, i muscoli dei cavalli, le ruote del carro… la sete, la fatica, il caldo, la sensazione di essere al capolinea… l’approdo, il focolare, il whiskey e il caffè, come si arrota un coltello e come si prepara una cartuccia, come si costruisce un recinto o un capanno, come si lega un cavallo… e poi la caccia… la natura prevedibile e quella imprevedibile, la natura mite e quella selvaggia…
E con la stessa pacatezza Williams racconta un massacro, una lunghissima scena d’apocalisse, piena di sangue e polvere, come se fossimo nelle trincee della Prima Guerra Mondiale.
Il sogno di Miller è forse di essere più grande di dio?
Questi cacciatori sembrano interessati quasi più ai sogni che alla selvaggina, sono dreamhunters, la caccia è soprattutto a quello che sembra irraggiungibile…
Da Ulisse in poi lo sappiamo bene, il vero ritorno a casa è impossibile: la Butcher’s Crossing che ritrovano è molto diversa da quella che hanno lasciato, non solo perché il tracciato della ferrovia è stato spostato 50 miglia più in là e non toccherà più l’abitato, non solo perché la pelle di bisonte non ha più acquirenti…
Il ventenne protagonista, probabile discepolo di Ralph Waldo Emerson, citato in epigrafe, ha lasciato Boston, il mondo civilizzato e ordinato, ha lasciato l’università di Harvard, per cercare un’altra scuola e per scoprire il West, la frontiera, per scoprire se stesso.
Capisce che la natura da e toglie, proprio come la vita – che fare l’amore è più facile del previsto: le sue scoperte sono tante, ed enormi, ma non sono sicuro che riescano a racchiudere tutta la sua solitudine, e la sua inquietudine.
Dopo Melville, prima di Cormac McCarthy, Williams sa costruire un romanzo di formazione, e un romanzo epico, con la stessa tranquillità e naturalezza dell’artigiano che ha compiuto gli stessi gesti da sempre, e col talento degli artisti.
”Open Range-Terra di confine” il bel film western del 2003 diretto e interpretato da Kevin Costner.
Pubblicato nel 1960, cinque anni prima di “Stoner”, e ambientato intorno al 1870 tra Kansas e Colorado, tra prateria e montagne, “Butcher’s Crossing” è il romanzo western per antonomasia, il paradigma del western, tutto quello che ci si aspetta da un western.
In più c’è l’enorme talento di questo scrittore, che non spreca parole e neppure le lesina, le cerca con precisione che rimane nascosta, le organizza con perizia e pacatezza, con potere evocativo e incredibile capacità descrittiva: e fa centro, come un grande tiratore, come i migliori cacciatori di quell’epoca.
In questo modo, un western diventa una storia mitologica, mistica, archetipica, senza tempo, universale.
Questa come quelle che seguono sono immagini della celebre scena di caccia al bufalo del film “Balla coi lupi” diretto e interpretato da Kevin Costner nel 1990, vincitore di ben 7 premi Oscar.
Un libro che avrebbe potuto non finire mai, la trama, per quanto ben strutturata, non è certo l’asse portante, non è l’obiettivo principale.
Un libro che avrei voluto non finisse mai.
Un romanzo che potrebbe anche essere migliore di “Stoner”: ma si tratta di due capolavori, difficile dire quale vince, è una bella lotta.
La prateria, gli zoccoli, i fili d’erba, gli argini di fiumi e torrenti, la pelle umana che arrossa e indurisce, la pelle degli animali, i muscoli dei cavalli, le ruote del carro… la sete, la fatica, il caldo, la sensazione di essere al capolinea… l’approdo, il focolare, il whiskey e il caffè, come si arrota un coltello e come si prepara una cartuccia, come si costruisce un recinto o un capanno, come si lega un cavallo… e poi la caccia… la natura prevedibile e quella imprevedibile, la natura mite e quella selvaggia…
E con la stessa pacatezza Williams racconta un massacro, una lunghissima scena d’apocalisse, piena di sangue e polvere, come se fossimo nelle trincee della Prima Guerra Mondiale.
Il sogno di Miller è forse di essere più grande di dio?
Questi cacciatori sembrano interessati quasi più ai sogni che alla selvaggina, sono dreamhunters, la caccia è soprattutto a quello che sembra irraggiungibile…
Da Ulisse in poi lo sappiamo bene, il vero ritorno a casa è impossibile: la Butcher’s Crossing che ritrovano è molto diversa da quella che hanno lasciato, non solo perché il tracciato della ferrovia è stato spostato 50 miglia più in là e non toccherà più l’abitato, non solo perché la pelle di bisonte non ha più acquirenti…
Il ventenne protagonista, probabile discepolo di Ralph Waldo Emerson, citato in epigrafe, ha lasciato Boston, il mondo civilizzato e ordinato, ha lasciato l’università di Harvard, per cercare un’altra scuola e per scoprire il West, la frontiera, per scoprire se stesso.
Capisce che la natura da e toglie, proprio come la vita – che fare l’amore è più facile del previsto: le sue scoperte sono tante, ed enormi, ma non sono sicuro che riescano a racchiudere tutta la sua solitudine, e la sua inquietudine.
Dopo Melville, prima di Cormac McCarthy, Williams sa costruire un romanzo di formazione, e un romanzo epico, con la stessa tranquillità e naturalezza dell’artigiano che ha compiuto gli stessi gesti da sempre, e col talento degli artisti.
May 22, 2022
“… whatever he spoke he knew would be another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year.”
I can envision myself in a high school English course with Mr. B, analyzing this book to death. With its myriad of themes, the symbolism, the conflicts – man versus man, man versus nature, man versus self – and the smart characterizations, my classmates and I could have spent a couple of weeks dissecting John Williams’ novel. The discussion would have been lively in Mr. B’s class; they were an insightful bunch. But then I might have harbored bitter feelings towards Butcher’s Crossing. And that would have been a shame, because this was a pleasure to read and a deeply satisfying bit of mental calisthenics without all the added pressure of endless scrutiny.
Have you ever had the feeling that there is something more out there for you? You haven’t seen enough of the world yet. You haven’t achieved your biggest dream. You don’t really know who you are or who you want to be. Of course, you have indeed struggled with one or all of these questions at some time in your life. Hell, I’m going through it even now. Is it a maddening cycle that repeats every couple of decades or something?! In any case, Will Andrews, Harvard student and son of a preacher from Boston, has decided that he needs to, quite simply, find meaning in his life. He heads west to Kansas and the prairies in search of a man named McDonald that his father once knew. McDonald went west seeking fortune and predicts the railroad will be laid down in Butcher’s Crossing in no time. His advice to Andrews is to settle right there and prepare to rake in the dough. But Andrews is not there for the money; he is there for that “thing” he can’t quite name. So instead he heads out to Colorado with a small party of men led by the formidable Miller in order to hunt buffalo for their coveted hides.
“His half-closed eyes nearly recaptured the sharp engravings he had seen in books, in magazines, when he was at home in Boston; but the thin black lines wavered upon the real grass before him, took on color, then faded. He could not recapture the strange sensations he had had, long ago, when he first saw those depictions of the land he now was seeking.”
When I was a child, I remember the great anticipation of seeing the ocean in Florida for the very first time. I recall being with my grandparents in a town that supposedly sat right next to the sea, but still no sign of that grand body of water. The smell was rather unpleasant. We drove what seemed a very long time. And there it was at last. The ocean. But the sight of it was not quite as earth-shattering as I had imagined it would be. Sure, the water was mostly blue, but it wasn’t dazzling. The sky was disappointingly gray. There were a lot of buildings in the way, obstructing my view. There were too many people. I wanted it all to myself. I think I know exactly how Will Andrews felt when he struck out across the prairie on the first leg of his journey.
There are a lot of eye-opening moments for Andrews on this literal as well as metaphorical journey. I gulped them down like I do a root beer float in the summertime. The characterizations are superb. Williams makes clever use of the physical appearances of his subjects to illustrate what lies beneath as well as what sort of changes each man undergoes as he traipses across the country. Andrews sees Miller as almost a piece of the landscape when they first begin. Eventually, obsession rules the day when the slaughtering of an immense buffalo herd is underway. Miller’s physical characteristics are altered and enhanced by the light of the fire.
“… he saw Miller’s face, black and dull with powder smoke, his white teeth clenched behind his stretched-out leathery lips, and his eyes, black and shining in their whites, surrounded by a flaming red line of irritated lids.”
Charley Hoge, the whiskey-drinking, Bible-thumping, oxen team driver takes on a pale glow, with a vacant look in his eyes. The skinner, Schneider, an independent, more sensible kind of man who is interested in a bit of money but mostly in taking care of his most basic human needs, becomes more and more isolated from the rest of the bunch. When Will Andrews sees the first buffalo skinned and slaughtered, it becomes almost akin to mankind itself. The beast stripped of its dignity is not unlike what Andrews has begun to see in the souls of these men. He begins to understand the confusion he felt stirring within himself following his first encounter with the soft-skinned, kindly prostitute Francine.
“… it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.”
I could go on and on for pages trying to get all the points across that Williams so brilliantly manages with a remarkable economy of words. This story is never sentimental, the prose never overwritten, and the violence never gratuitous. Mr. B would have delighted in that class with the talk of the destruction of the American dream, the symbolism of the fire and brimstone and all those biblical kinds of things he loved so much, the butchering of the buffalo and the cleansing of its blood from Andrews’s body and clothing. He would have been tickled if someone had raised their hand and asked him what made us any different from one another in the end, when we are all stripped down to the core of our being. I don’t know if Mr. B would have been able to tell us if our dreams were a waste, or that all our young desires would perish far before the twilight of our years. He might have. Or would he have been able to console us with the fact that there is still a glimmer of hope for some men and women? Maybe we wouldn’t always know where we were going, but perhaps discovering something about ourselves was enough to get us back up on the proverbial horse to keep riding off to newer possibilities. I’d like to think that giving up is what kills the soul, while unending learning and growth is what keeps us emboldened, open-minded, and truly alive.
“He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.”
I can envision myself in a high school English course with Mr. B, analyzing this book to death. With its myriad of themes, the symbolism, the conflicts – man versus man, man versus nature, man versus self – and the smart characterizations, my classmates and I could have spent a couple of weeks dissecting John Williams’ novel. The discussion would have been lively in Mr. B’s class; they were an insightful bunch. But then I might have harbored bitter feelings towards Butcher’s Crossing. And that would have been a shame, because this was a pleasure to read and a deeply satisfying bit of mental calisthenics without all the added pressure of endless scrutiny.
Have you ever had the feeling that there is something more out there for you? You haven’t seen enough of the world yet. You haven’t achieved your biggest dream. You don’t really know who you are or who you want to be. Of course, you have indeed struggled with one or all of these questions at some time in your life. Hell, I’m going through it even now. Is it a maddening cycle that repeats every couple of decades or something?! In any case, Will Andrews, Harvard student and son of a preacher from Boston, has decided that he needs to, quite simply, find meaning in his life. He heads west to Kansas and the prairies in search of a man named McDonald that his father once knew. McDonald went west seeking fortune and predicts the railroad will be laid down in Butcher’s Crossing in no time. His advice to Andrews is to settle right there and prepare to rake in the dough. But Andrews is not there for the money; he is there for that “thing” he can’t quite name. So instead he heads out to Colorado with a small party of men led by the formidable Miller in order to hunt buffalo for their coveted hides.
“His half-closed eyes nearly recaptured the sharp engravings he had seen in books, in magazines, when he was at home in Boston; but the thin black lines wavered upon the real grass before him, took on color, then faded. He could not recapture the strange sensations he had had, long ago, when he first saw those depictions of the land he now was seeking.”
When I was a child, I remember the great anticipation of seeing the ocean in Florida for the very first time. I recall being with my grandparents in a town that supposedly sat right next to the sea, but still no sign of that grand body of water. The smell was rather unpleasant. We drove what seemed a very long time. And there it was at last. The ocean. But the sight of it was not quite as earth-shattering as I had imagined it would be. Sure, the water was mostly blue, but it wasn’t dazzling. The sky was disappointingly gray. There were a lot of buildings in the way, obstructing my view. There were too many people. I wanted it all to myself. I think I know exactly how Will Andrews felt when he struck out across the prairie on the first leg of his journey.
There are a lot of eye-opening moments for Andrews on this literal as well as metaphorical journey. I gulped them down like I do a root beer float in the summertime. The characterizations are superb. Williams makes clever use of the physical appearances of his subjects to illustrate what lies beneath as well as what sort of changes each man undergoes as he traipses across the country. Andrews sees Miller as almost a piece of the landscape when they first begin. Eventually, obsession rules the day when the slaughtering of an immense buffalo herd is underway. Miller’s physical characteristics are altered and enhanced by the light of the fire.
“… he saw Miller’s face, black and dull with powder smoke, his white teeth clenched behind his stretched-out leathery lips, and his eyes, black and shining in their whites, surrounded by a flaming red line of irritated lids.”
Charley Hoge, the whiskey-drinking, Bible-thumping, oxen team driver takes on a pale glow, with a vacant look in his eyes. The skinner, Schneider, an independent, more sensible kind of man who is interested in a bit of money but mostly in taking care of his most basic human needs, becomes more and more isolated from the rest of the bunch. When Will Andrews sees the first buffalo skinned and slaughtered, it becomes almost akin to mankind itself. The beast stripped of its dignity is not unlike what Andrews has begun to see in the souls of these men. He begins to understand the confusion he felt stirring within himself following his first encounter with the soft-skinned, kindly prostitute Francine.
“… it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.”
I could go on and on for pages trying to get all the points across that Williams so brilliantly manages with a remarkable economy of words. This story is never sentimental, the prose never overwritten, and the violence never gratuitous. Mr. B would have delighted in that class with the talk of the destruction of the American dream, the symbolism of the fire and brimstone and all those biblical kinds of things he loved so much, the butchering of the buffalo and the cleansing of its blood from Andrews’s body and clothing. He would have been tickled if someone had raised their hand and asked him what made us any different from one another in the end, when we are all stripped down to the core of our being. I don’t know if Mr. B would have been able to tell us if our dreams were a waste, or that all our young desires would perish far before the twilight of our years. He might have. Or would he have been able to console us with the fact that there is still a glimmer of hope for some men and women? Maybe we wouldn’t always know where we were going, but perhaps discovering something about ourselves was enough to get us back up on the proverbial horse to keep riding off to newer possibilities. I’d like to think that giving up is what kills the soul, while unending learning and growth is what keeps us emboldened, open-minded, and truly alive.
“He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.”
September 26, 2015
Williams’ biggest achievement in this novel is that there isn’t an ounce of overblown characterization in the diverging life perspectives that populate Butcher's Crossing, an emerging town in the Great Plains of the old west. In spite of the bison hunters, the dusty brothel with the purring prostitute, the inexperienced city boy Will Andrews from Boston, and the drunkard who nurses his whiskey with a mucky Bible and prayerful gibberish, this is not the predictable Western the reader might anticipate. Clichés are exploited to serve the story, not employed to construct it.
An omniscient narrator delves deep into the psychological dimension of the characters who grope in the darkness of their beings in search of answers to questions not even formulated. In spite of their disparate temperaments, the four men share the common bond of confronting their insignificance in relation to the impassive grandeur of the natural world. Contrasted experience, mental strength and resilience prove to be useless when nature serves as mirror to the men’s obsessions, ignored fears and misconceptions, a mirror that reflects their most savage selves.
William's prose is unsparing, brutal, jagged. There isn't a trace of sentimentality in the crude lyricism of his sparsely constructed sentences, yet one will detect something deeply touching in the icy narrative voice that plucks the petals, one after another, slow and steady, of Will's blossoming innocence.... Or is it immaturity? Driven by his need to fill the empty void that is festering inside him, he escapes the viciousness of civilization to experience a moment of self-revelation embraced by the purity of "Mother Nature". What he finds instead terrifies his tender, trusting disposition. An alien, murderous drive built on numbing detachment, absurd carnage, gratuitous suffering.
When Will's journey comes to an end, he emerges as a different person, his restlessness has dissipated and a sobering calmness has taken possession of his being. The idealistic youth has been substituted for a man who finally accepts he cannot escape himself, a man who feels comfortable with his emptiness like the reader has grown used to hearing the unwritten echo of silence and to appreciate the chilly texture of the color white.
This is an unorthodox bildungsroman more than a Western and John Williams discovers that Ace up his sleeve at a carefully studied pace. The claustrophobic sensation that emanates from his writing could easily be compared to the one provoked by the infinity of open space, that of frosty snow covering the earth and night and day becoming an unbearable succession of blinding darkness and blinding whiteness and the maddening impression of being locked in the small boundaries of our diminutive, suffocating consciousness.
But whose consciousness? What is hidden underneath the characters’ frenzy to tame the wild, to put down the unconquerable, but the projection of the “American Spirit”?
Will’s infantile desire to experience a sort of epiphanic oneness with Nature is the story of a young country ruling history that is seeking to reaffirm its ethos by fighting its foe, mindless of the consequences, heedless of the fact that what remains after massive butchery is the putrid stench of blank stares and vacant-eyed slaughterers.
So yes, many might consider this book a Western; but I insist it might easily be something else. Quite something else, indeed.
An omniscient narrator delves deep into the psychological dimension of the characters who grope in the darkness of their beings in search of answers to questions not even formulated. In spite of their disparate temperaments, the four men share the common bond of confronting their insignificance in relation to the impassive grandeur of the natural world. Contrasted experience, mental strength and resilience prove to be useless when nature serves as mirror to the men’s obsessions, ignored fears and misconceptions, a mirror that reflects their most savage selves.
William's prose is unsparing, brutal, jagged. There isn't a trace of sentimentality in the crude lyricism of his sparsely constructed sentences, yet one will detect something deeply touching in the icy narrative voice that plucks the petals, one after another, slow and steady, of Will's blossoming innocence.... Or is it immaturity? Driven by his need to fill the empty void that is festering inside him, he escapes the viciousness of civilization to experience a moment of self-revelation embraced by the purity of "Mother Nature". What he finds instead terrifies his tender, trusting disposition. An alien, murderous drive built on numbing detachment, absurd carnage, gratuitous suffering.
When Will's journey comes to an end, he emerges as a different person, his restlessness has dissipated and a sobering calmness has taken possession of his being. The idealistic youth has been substituted for a man who finally accepts he cannot escape himself, a man who feels comfortable with his emptiness like the reader has grown used to hearing the unwritten echo of silence and to appreciate the chilly texture of the color white.
This is an unorthodox bildungsroman more than a Western and John Williams discovers that Ace up his sleeve at a carefully studied pace. The claustrophobic sensation that emanates from his writing could easily be compared to the one provoked by the infinity of open space, that of frosty snow covering the earth and night and day becoming an unbearable succession of blinding darkness and blinding whiteness and the maddening impression of being locked in the small boundaries of our diminutive, suffocating consciousness.
But whose consciousness? What is hidden underneath the characters’ frenzy to tame the wild, to put down the unconquerable, but the projection of the “American Spirit”?
Will’s infantile desire to experience a sort of epiphanic oneness with Nature is the story of a young country ruling history that is seeking to reaffirm its ethos by fighting its foe, mindless of the consequences, heedless of the fact that what remains after massive butchery is the putrid stench of blank stares and vacant-eyed slaughterers.
So yes, many might consider this book a Western; but I insist it might easily be something else. Quite something else, indeed.
March 31, 2022
John Williams wrote four novels. None of them, however, sold many copies during his lifetime. I remember some years ago seeing and scanning stories about John Williams with headlines such as “The Best Writer You Never Heard Of,” or something similar. And that certainly applied to me. I had never heard of him, and I couldn’t read his books because they were out of print. In fact, although there were critics who praised his work his books sold few copies before disappearing – literally in some cases -- into the trash bin of history.
He received his greatest, but fleeting, publicity when his epistolary novel set in ancient Rome, Augustus, won the National Book Award in 1973. But it didn’t sell many copies either.
Fast forward to 2013:
A dramatic change occurred when the New York Review of Books (NYRB) re-issued Stoner, a novel about a quiet, unassuming, and in many ways, forgettable professor teaching literature at the University of Missouri, which had originally been published in 1965. Suddenly, everyone had heard of John Williams, at least those who read books. He had become an overnight success – almost a half-century after he had written the book -- and almost two decades after his death.
A year later, NYRB re-issued Augustus.
However, these were not the first Williams novels to be re-issued by NYRB. The first was Butcher’s Crossing, originally published in 1960, and re-issued by NYRB in 2007. It had not attracted the readership that Stoner did six years later, but it benefited from the popularity of that novel, even to the point that Butcher’s Crossing is now in development as a movie.
The town of Butcher’s Crossing is a rag-tag collection of shacks and shanties located on the Kansas prairie. In the late 1870’s, its primary commercial activity is the collection and shipment of buffalo hides to the east. Will Andrews, a young Bostonian imbued with the teachings of Emerson and Thoreau, drops out of Harvard College and travels west in a quest for – well, for something that he can’t quite explain, but obviously includes a search for self. In some ways he pursues a course opposite to that of Stoner; while Stoner deserted nature (the farm) for academia, Andrews deserts academia for nature.
Eventually, because he wants to take part in a buffalo hunt, and because he has some money, Andrews agrees to bankroll a hunt led by an experienced hunter named Miller. To assist the enterprise Miller hires Charley Hoge, a one-handed, whiskey-swilling, Bible-thumper to serve as teamster and camp cook and Schneider, an experienced skinner. Young Andrews main job will be to assist Schneider, even though he knows nothing about skinning animals, but is expected to learn.
I’m not going to divulge any more of the plot, because I don’t want to be guilty of spoilers and because it’s too damn difficult to do anyway. But I will tell you that the passage across the arid western Kansas and eastern Colorado plains almost ends the hunt even before the hunters arrive in the Colorado Rockies where Miller is certain a huge buffalo herd will be found in a valley that he visited years before.
The hunters find the herd but they tarry too long in the Rockies and have to spend the winter there. Winter in the Rockies means snow – a lot of it – and as a result the hunters find themselves engaging in another battle of survival against the forces of nature.
Just as it is impossible to explain in a brief summary why Stoner is such a great novel, so it is with Butcher’s Crossing. It is a western novel. No, that’s not right. It is a novel set in the west. Despite the fact that the story is populated by many stock characters – even the prostitute with the requisite heart of gold – they are overcome by a pared down, austere, but clear and vivid prose that contains no gimmicks or grammatical games.
Joanne Greenberg, who is best known for her book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, knew Williams and admired his talent long before most of the rest of us even had a clue. She was quoted as saying that Williams “wrote like a Shaker would ski – without a wasted motion.” Perfect; I wish I had thought of that.
Anyone looking to read a traditional western in the mainstream of the genre needs to look elsewhere. This is a book that shares more in common with Melville’s Moby Dick than anything ever written by Louis L’Amour. If, on the other hand, you are an admirer of Cormac McCarthy, than this book would likely appeal to you.
[Butcher’s Crossing] is a novel that turns upside down the expectations of the genre – and goes to war with a century of American triumphalism, a century of rejuvenation through violence, a century of senseless slaughter. – John Plotz, The Guardian
The finest western ever written. – Oakley Hall, author of Warlock
‘The West’ never existed. It’s a dream of ‘the East.’ – John Williams
He received his greatest, but fleeting, publicity when his epistolary novel set in ancient Rome, Augustus, won the National Book Award in 1973. But it didn’t sell many copies either.
Fast forward to 2013:
A dramatic change occurred when the New York Review of Books (NYRB) re-issued Stoner, a novel about a quiet, unassuming, and in many ways, forgettable professor teaching literature at the University of Missouri, which had originally been published in 1965. Suddenly, everyone had heard of John Williams, at least those who read books. He had become an overnight success – almost a half-century after he had written the book -- and almost two decades after his death.
A year later, NYRB re-issued Augustus.
However, these were not the first Williams novels to be re-issued by NYRB. The first was Butcher’s Crossing, originally published in 1960, and re-issued by NYRB in 2007. It had not attracted the readership that Stoner did six years later, but it benefited from the popularity of that novel, even to the point that Butcher’s Crossing is now in development as a movie.
The town of Butcher’s Crossing is a rag-tag collection of shacks and shanties located on the Kansas prairie. In the late 1870’s, its primary commercial activity is the collection and shipment of buffalo hides to the east. Will Andrews, a young Bostonian imbued with the teachings of Emerson and Thoreau, drops out of Harvard College and travels west in a quest for – well, for something that he can’t quite explain, but obviously includes a search for self. In some ways he pursues a course opposite to that of Stoner; while Stoner deserted nature (the farm) for academia, Andrews deserts academia for nature.
Eventually, because he wants to take part in a buffalo hunt, and because he has some money, Andrews agrees to bankroll a hunt led by an experienced hunter named Miller. To assist the enterprise Miller hires Charley Hoge, a one-handed, whiskey-swilling, Bible-thumper to serve as teamster and camp cook and Schneider, an experienced skinner. Young Andrews main job will be to assist Schneider, even though he knows nothing about skinning animals, but is expected to learn.
I’m not going to divulge any more of the plot, because I don’t want to be guilty of spoilers and because it’s too damn difficult to do anyway. But I will tell you that the passage across the arid western Kansas and eastern Colorado plains almost ends the hunt even before the hunters arrive in the Colorado Rockies where Miller is certain a huge buffalo herd will be found in a valley that he visited years before.
The hunters find the herd but they tarry too long in the Rockies and have to spend the winter there. Winter in the Rockies means snow – a lot of it – and as a result the hunters find themselves engaging in another battle of survival against the forces of nature.
Just as it is impossible to explain in a brief summary why Stoner is such a great novel, so it is with Butcher’s Crossing. It is a western novel. No, that’s not right. It is a novel set in the west. Despite the fact that the story is populated by many stock characters – even the prostitute with the requisite heart of gold – they are overcome by a pared down, austere, but clear and vivid prose that contains no gimmicks or grammatical games.
Joanne Greenberg, who is best known for her book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, knew Williams and admired his talent long before most of the rest of us even had a clue. She was quoted as saying that Williams “wrote like a Shaker would ski – without a wasted motion.” Perfect; I wish I had thought of that.
Anyone looking to read a traditional western in the mainstream of the genre needs to look elsewhere. This is a book that shares more in common with Melville’s Moby Dick than anything ever written by Louis L’Amour. If, on the other hand, you are an admirer of Cormac McCarthy, than this book would likely appeal to you.
[Butcher’s Crossing] is a novel that turns upside down the expectations of the genre – and goes to war with a century of American triumphalism, a century of rejuvenation through violence, a century of senseless slaughter. – John Plotz, The Guardian
The finest western ever written. – Oakley Hall, author of Warlock
‘The West’ never existed. It’s a dream of ‘the East.’ – John Williams
December 4, 2024
Reading this novel was a bewildering and sad experience. John William’s tale of an ex-Harvard drop-out, Will Andrews, a very innocent man in all sorts of way, who is eager for adventure, was almost too overwhelming to bear. I felt often torn by admiration for the minute descriptions of the beautiful sights of the prairie, rivers and streams and the mountainous area nearing Colorado of the trek Andrews undertook to go buffalo hunting with three other men. But then I found it really hard to bear to be told in slow detail how the small group systematically slaughtered a herd of a hundreds or more of buffalo day after day. The detailed description of the agony of the buffalo’s, their blood flying and their subsequent slaughter went on for at least a hundred pages and I often thought of quiting as it was too heartbreaking to read on.
There is no doubt for me that John Williams was a virtuoso author. I had already concluded that years ago when I read his ‘Stoner’. An atmosphere of bitter disappointment obviously prevails in his novels. After reading ‘Stoner’, that terribly sad masterpiece, I swore I would never want to read another novel by Williams again and I should have listened to myself.
Here is a quote at the end of the novel which is so true and heartbreaking and clearly provides Williams’ obviously constant depressive state of mind:
‘Well, there’s nothing,’ McDonald said. ‘You get born and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you are ready to die, it comes to you - that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world because you are the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You are too old.’
There is no doubt for me that John Williams was a virtuoso author. I had already concluded that years ago when I read his ‘Stoner’. An atmosphere of bitter disappointment obviously prevails in his novels. After reading ‘Stoner’, that terribly sad masterpiece, I swore I would never want to read another novel by Williams again and I should have listened to myself.
Here is a quote at the end of the novel which is so true and heartbreaking and clearly provides Williams’ obviously constant depressive state of mind:
‘Well, there’s nothing,’ McDonald said. ‘You get born and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you are ready to die, it comes to you - that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world because you are the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You are too old.’
September 3, 2017
The bright flare of a match, the creaking of saddle leather, and the mournful lowing of the oxen. The smell of scorched coffee permeates the air, joining the stink of buffalo hunters too long on the trail. Later, the confusion of the herd is rampant amidst the air made hazy and heavy by gun smoke. The force of nature takes its toll, as it always will. The horror of the elements, and the sheer beauty.
I searched for this book based solely on the fact that the author is the man who penned Stoner. Ended up finding a copy at an out-of-state library, courtesy of Mobius. After reading, I had to stifle a snort at the tag on the spine of the book. It sports a label categorizing it as a Western and topped with a picture of a cowboy hat. This novel is so much more. The author is a veritable virtuoso with his deceptively simple writing.
I searched for this book based solely on the fact that the author is the man who penned Stoner. Ended up finding a copy at an out-of-state library, courtesy of Mobius. After reading, I had to stifle a snort at the tag on the spine of the book. It sports a label categorizing it as a Western and topped with a picture of a cowboy hat. This novel is so much more. The author is a veritable virtuoso with his deceptively simple writing.
June 7, 2022
A work of art.
A masterpiece.
This, one of the best books I have ever read, made me think very deeply about questions I’ve been asking myself for a long time.
Because I do often think about how we, as human beings, evolved to this point where we are at the moment, when most people seem to have forgotten or chosen to ignore the part we surely play in the natural world.
Why did Nature allow us to develop to the point of becoming weapons of mass destruction of the world it created?
Was this what Nature intended?
Or did things go out of control at some point?
And if so, who gained control over it?
Is Nature using us as tools for natural selection?
What changed in the world in the last few million years to “force” nature to pick one of its creations up as a tool to eliminate all the other ones?
Or are we just an infectious disease metastasising over and over till there’s no beauty left to be seen in the world?
Okay, I know we can’t and probably won’t find any answers for all these questions.
Hell, I’m not even sure if they can be considered questions at all.
What I do know is that this extraordinary piece of writing ticked ALL the boxes for me. All of them.
Great writing: tick.
Great characterisation: tick.
Compelling storytelling: tick.
Relevant topics and/or subject matter: tick.
Goosebumps all over and a desire to start it again as soon as I finished it.
And all this from a story written in the mid-twentieth century about four guys travelling from Kansas to Colorado for buffalo hunting.
I’ll never forget how beautiful that valley up in the mountains of Colorado was.
I’ll never forget how amazing this book really is.
Just stunning, really.
I’m grateful.
A masterpiece.
This, one of the best books I have ever read, made me think very deeply about questions I’ve been asking myself for a long time.
Because I do often think about how we, as human beings, evolved to this point where we are at the moment, when most people seem to have forgotten or chosen to ignore the part we surely play in the natural world.
Why did Nature allow us to develop to the point of becoming weapons of mass destruction of the world it created?
Was this what Nature intended?
Or did things go out of control at some point?
And if so, who gained control over it?
Is Nature using us as tools for natural selection?
What changed in the world in the last few million years to “force” nature to pick one of its creations up as a tool to eliminate all the other ones?
Or are we just an infectious disease metastasising over and over till there’s no beauty left to be seen in the world?
Okay, I know we can’t and probably won’t find any answers for all these questions.
Hell, I’m not even sure if they can be considered questions at all.
What I do know is that this extraordinary piece of writing ticked ALL the boxes for me. All of them.
Great writing: tick.
Great characterisation: tick.
Compelling storytelling: tick.
Relevant topics and/or subject matter: tick.
Goosebumps all over and a desire to start it again as soon as I finished it.
And all this from a story written in the mid-twentieth century about four guys travelling from Kansas to Colorado for buffalo hunting.
I’ll never forget how beautiful that valley up in the mountains of Colorado was.
I’ll never forget how amazing this book really is.
Just stunning, really.
I’m grateful.
September 21, 2017
A Holocaust of Hides
"He could hardly recall, now, the passion that had drawn him to this room and this flesh, as if by a subtle magnetism; nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung.
Stop what you are doing. Nursing a baby? Put it down. Dousing a wildfire? Walk away. Those things can wait. This book is here. You need to read it NOW. Serious. Focus. Life is short and dreams die. You need to freaking prioritize and this should be at the top of your list.
This book might have just pushed right into my top ten books of all time. I'm not sure what book got pushed out, but perhaps the Old Testament just had to go. Seriously, this book is that good. Well, perhaps, not Old Testament good, but there were times when reading this I felt GOD's finger might have just been scratching this prose on a rock or bleached bone in a mountain somewhere.
”You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies at school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re old.”
It reminded me a bit of Cormac McCarthy that your mom can even read, or think of Moby-Dick, but instead of a white whale, Andrews, Miller, Schneider, and Charley Hoge are seeking an enormous herd of buffalo hidden in valley in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It is a story of death, obsession, nature, destruction, dreams, and the myth of the American West and the Wilderness Myth.
At times 'Butcher's Crossing' also reminded me of the beautiful, dreamy, obsessiveness of Werner Herzog's movies. Nature, in the end, doesn't whimper when you die. Nature often doesn't whimper when it dies. Hell, now I really want Herzog to make this book into a film.
"He could hardly recall, now, the passion that had drawn him to this room and this flesh, as if by a subtle magnetism; nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung.
Stop what you are doing. Nursing a baby? Put it down. Dousing a wildfire? Walk away. Those things can wait. This book is here. You need to read it NOW. Serious. Focus. Life is short and dreams die. You need to freaking prioritize and this should be at the top of your list.
This book might have just pushed right into my top ten books of all time. I'm not sure what book got pushed out, but perhaps the Old Testament just had to go. Seriously, this book is that good. Well, perhaps, not Old Testament good, but there were times when reading this I felt GOD's finger might have just been scratching this prose on a rock or bleached bone in a mountain somewhere.
”You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies at school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re old.”
It reminded me a bit of Cormac McCarthy that your mom can even read, or think of Moby-Dick, but instead of a white whale, Andrews, Miller, Schneider, and Charley Hoge are seeking an enormous herd of buffalo hidden in valley in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It is a story of death, obsession, nature, destruction, dreams, and the myth of the American West and the Wilderness Myth.
At times 'Butcher's Crossing' also reminded me of the beautiful, dreamy, obsessiveness of Werner Herzog's movies. Nature, in the end, doesn't whimper when you die. Nature often doesn't whimper when it dies. Hell, now I really want Herzog to make this book into a film.
August 20, 2015
Andrews dropped to his hands and knees and swung his head from side to side like a wounded animal. “My God!” he said thickly, “My God, my God”.
“A whole winter’s work,” Miller said in a flat dead voice. “It took just about two minutes.”
“Andrews raised his head wildly, and got to his feet. “Schneider,” he said. “Schneider. We’ve got to-”
“Miller put his hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, boy. Won’t do no good to worry about Schneider.”
I went to bed last night still thinking about this remarkable book. I put it on the bedside table and I vaguely recall thinking about buffalo as I slowly slid into the lost world of dreams. I awoke at 3 am and was so wide awake in fact that I made myself a black coffee with honey, slowly opened the doors to the terrace and stood there looking at the Pyrenean mountain range. My much beloved mountains but one that I would soon leave. Time was relentlessly moving on. Thoughts of this book like a stampede of horses took over my mind. I didn’t want to let go and only wished to remain on this mesmerizing carousel moving at death defying speed, while a kaleidoscope of exquisite and yet horrifying images flashed by. All the elements were present, superimposed with the colours white and red. It was surrealistic.
This isn’t just a story about a young man, Will Andrews who leaves Harvard to go west and in fact to find himself but it is also about all aspects of nature and how it has such a profound and important place in our everyday existence. And the reason why Andrews was taking this trip in 1873 was not because of buffalo which were really in vogue at that time but because he had become very influenced at college by a lecture given by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This would prove to be a divine calling in more ways than one.
He believed - and had believed for a long time – that there was a subtle magnetism in nature; which if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright, not indifferent to the way he walked. But he felt that only during the few days that he had been in Butcher’s Crossing had nature been so purely presented to him that its power of compulsion was sufficiently strong to strike through his will, his habit, and his idea. He turned west, his back toward Butcher’s Crossing and the town and cities that lay eastward beyond it; he walked past the clump of cottonwoods toward the river he had not seen but which had assumed in his mind the proportions of a vast boundary that lay between himself and the wildness and freedom that his instinct sought.
I really don’t believe that Andrews knew what he was letting himself in for when he headed west in 1873. He had money in his pocket and in no time after his arrival at Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town in the back of beyond, he had met Mr. McDonald who bought and sold buffalo hides. Andrews’ father had given him a letter of introduction to McDonald as he knew him in Boston through the church. He thought perhaps that Andrews could help McDonald out in his business. This isn’t for Andrews though and his whole purpose of being there is to get out into the country and so he’s told to contact Miller, a buffalo hunter. He also met Francine, a prostitute who teaches him a thing or two and he sees her again upon his return.
So the upshot is that with Andrew’s finance, Miller agrees to lead an expedition to the mountain country, in the Colorado territory where he was convinced buffalo were to be found. Fred Schneider comes as the skinner and Miller’s religious sidekick Charley Hoge will be driving the wagon with a team of oxen and will be the camp man.
So this epic journey begins. We are involved here with four individuals, who are all so different and the clash of personalities soon begins when they cannot find water. The attention to detail here is remarkable. They then get lost but finally find the hidden valley with five thousand buffalo.
I was however surprised with the ease with which Miller shot them. Very few stampedes and I was hoping at one stage that perhaps he would be injured in one of them. I really felt for the buffalo. The detail about skinning of the animals just seemed to slip into the fabric of the book as if it were a normal daily occurrence. It had a dreamlike quality to it.
This was meant to be a short trip but Miller seemed to turn into an individual who was possessed and wanted to shoot the entire herd. Such slaughter. Due to this, the men are delayed and nature steps in with all her majestic glory. They end up being snowed in for eight months. However, this certainly wasn’t a boring life regardless of this being a case of survival with all of its hardships. Recriminations begin to fly from Schneider and even the bible loving Hoge starts complaining. The latter had recently been taking to the bottle and his bible readings were becoming more and more frequent.
But upon their journey back to Butcher’s Crossing, the fast flowing river decides to take and take it did. What an incredible episode here.
The consummate beauty of Williams’ exquisite writing flows continuously throughout this work.
In essence this is a relatively simple story for a western. I expected cowboys and Indians for some obscure reason and there was only one reference made to Indians.
Nevertheless “Butcher's Crossing” is very much the Wild West, although a west on the brink of change. The railroad is coming, it is said, and there are fewer and fewer buffalo about (and the few Indians left are not worth bothering with). Still, all the familiar elements remain: the rough-hewn men, the choice in the bar of either beer or gut-rot whiskey, and the hooker with the heart of gold.
This is a splendid book and I love it as I do Stoner. These two books are perfect. I’ve never come across this before and to see how due to Williams’ style of writing, we have here a western of such exceptional quality that it will no doubt stay around for a long time. And the next book for me? Augustus of course. I have ordered it and I should imagine that I will soon be reading my third perfect book.
“A whole winter’s work,” Miller said in a flat dead voice. “It took just about two minutes.”
“Andrews raised his head wildly, and got to his feet. “Schneider,” he said. “Schneider. We’ve got to-”
“Miller put his hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, boy. Won’t do no good to worry about Schneider.”
I went to bed last night still thinking about this remarkable book. I put it on the bedside table and I vaguely recall thinking about buffalo as I slowly slid into the lost world of dreams. I awoke at 3 am and was so wide awake in fact that I made myself a black coffee with honey, slowly opened the doors to the terrace and stood there looking at the Pyrenean mountain range. My much beloved mountains but one that I would soon leave. Time was relentlessly moving on. Thoughts of this book like a stampede of horses took over my mind. I didn’t want to let go and only wished to remain on this mesmerizing carousel moving at death defying speed, while a kaleidoscope of exquisite and yet horrifying images flashed by. All the elements were present, superimposed with the colours white and red. It was surrealistic.
This isn’t just a story about a young man, Will Andrews who leaves Harvard to go west and in fact to find himself but it is also about all aspects of nature and how it has such a profound and important place in our everyday existence. And the reason why Andrews was taking this trip in 1873 was not because of buffalo which were really in vogue at that time but because he had become very influenced at college by a lecture given by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This would prove to be a divine calling in more ways than one.
He believed - and had believed for a long time – that there was a subtle magnetism in nature; which if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright, not indifferent to the way he walked. But he felt that only during the few days that he had been in Butcher’s Crossing had nature been so purely presented to him that its power of compulsion was sufficiently strong to strike through his will, his habit, and his idea. He turned west, his back toward Butcher’s Crossing and the town and cities that lay eastward beyond it; he walked past the clump of cottonwoods toward the river he had not seen but which had assumed in his mind the proportions of a vast boundary that lay between himself and the wildness and freedom that his instinct sought.
I really don’t believe that Andrews knew what he was letting himself in for when he headed west in 1873. He had money in his pocket and in no time after his arrival at Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town in the back of beyond, he had met Mr. McDonald who bought and sold buffalo hides. Andrews’ father had given him a letter of introduction to McDonald as he knew him in Boston through the church. He thought perhaps that Andrews could help McDonald out in his business. This isn’t for Andrews though and his whole purpose of being there is to get out into the country and so he’s told to contact Miller, a buffalo hunter. He also met Francine, a prostitute who teaches him a thing or two and he sees her again upon his return.
So the upshot is that with Andrew’s finance, Miller agrees to lead an expedition to the mountain country, in the Colorado territory where he was convinced buffalo were to be found. Fred Schneider comes as the skinner and Miller’s religious sidekick Charley Hoge will be driving the wagon with a team of oxen and will be the camp man.
So this epic journey begins. We are involved here with four individuals, who are all so different and the clash of personalities soon begins when they cannot find water. The attention to detail here is remarkable. They then get lost but finally find the hidden valley with five thousand buffalo.
I was however surprised with the ease with which Miller shot them. Very few stampedes and I was hoping at one stage that perhaps he would be injured in one of them. I really felt for the buffalo. The detail about skinning of the animals just seemed to slip into the fabric of the book as if it were a normal daily occurrence. It had a dreamlike quality to it.
This was meant to be a short trip but Miller seemed to turn into an individual who was possessed and wanted to shoot the entire herd. Such slaughter. Due to this, the men are delayed and nature steps in with all her majestic glory. They end up being snowed in for eight months. However, this certainly wasn’t a boring life regardless of this being a case of survival with all of its hardships. Recriminations begin to fly from Schneider and even the bible loving Hoge starts complaining. The latter had recently been taking to the bottle and his bible readings were becoming more and more frequent.
But upon their journey back to Butcher’s Crossing, the fast flowing river decides to take and take it did. What an incredible episode here.
The consummate beauty of Williams’ exquisite writing flows continuously throughout this work.
In essence this is a relatively simple story for a western. I expected cowboys and Indians for some obscure reason and there was only one reference made to Indians.
Nevertheless “Butcher's Crossing” is very much the Wild West, although a west on the brink of change. The railroad is coming, it is said, and there are fewer and fewer buffalo about (and the few Indians left are not worth bothering with). Still, all the familiar elements remain: the rough-hewn men, the choice in the bar of either beer or gut-rot whiskey, and the hooker with the heart of gold.
This is a splendid book and I love it as I do Stoner. These two books are perfect. I’ve never come across this before and to see how due to Williams’ style of writing, we have here a western of such exceptional quality that it will no doubt stay around for a long time. And the next book for me? Augustus of course. I have ordered it and I should imagine that I will soon be reading my third perfect book.
July 13, 2022
"A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell..... a death wind for my people."
~~Sitting Bull
They came down into the valley, and the buffalo herds were moving darkly over the land like waves on the ocean. The men slowly moved in on them. The first shot went to kill the leader of the herd, more shots would follow. My mind stopped. The buffalo just stood there in wonder of what was going on, and one by one they were killed. And tears swept over me.
~~Sitting Bull
They came down into the valley, and the buffalo herds were moving darkly over the land like waves on the ocean. The men slowly moved in on them. The first shot went to kill the leader of the herd, more shots would follow. My mind stopped. The buffalo just stood there in wonder of what was going on, and one by one they were killed. And tears swept over me.
October 6, 2025
178th book of 2020.
Williams had a way of dissecting things, and he didn’t always dissect it nicely; he made messy incisions into the meaning of life and what its purpose is, he has made me both despondent and hopeful. There’s something wonderful about Williams’ cynicism. Perhaps it takes a cynic to say that.
John Williams
Butcher’s Crossing is a novel set in the 1860s/1870s about a Harvard student (Will Andrews) looking for something inside himself. To this, he decides to join three men on a hunting trip into the Colorado landscape to kill buffalo. Our first of many themes emerges immediately: the self, and the “creation” of the self. Even Andrews does not know what he wants to discover. One of the most common quotes in conjunction with this novel is this:
He believed—and had believed for a long time—that there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright, not indifferent to the way he walked.
Like Moby-Dick, this novel, on one hand, is about the relentless hunt for animals. Miller, the experienced hunter who leads the 4-man team Andrews is a part of, is our Western Ahab. There is a great desire to kill the buffalo, not like Ahab’s revenge, no, perhaps even more corruptly, for the profit of their hides. Quickly, more themes begin blooming: nature, and our relationship with it, its destruction as well as its majesty, imperialism, obsession, the free market… Andrews enters the world of Butcher’s Crossing with his innocence. The wilderness of the West, and the perils they face, we know that will be stripped from him. With Andrews’ waning innocence, Williams draws a Bildungsroman out of the novel too. I found his spiritual development more subtle than William’s subsequent novel, Stoner, but in that way, also more intriguing and thoughtful. Having said that, for me, Stoner remains the stronger novel, but only just.
The main fault I have with Butcher’s Crossing is its slow start: everything was a little rough at first. Andrews didn’t interest me greatly at first because his yearning was veiled a little too much (we later learn that the uncertainty surrounding his yearning is one of the brilliant aspects of the novel) and the “plot” of the novel doesn’t begin until 70 pages in. I read it in small bites, not caring to read too much at once. Around 120 pages in, Williams emerged as I knew him from Stoner and I raced through the rest. My five-star rating is a reflection on the latter three-quarters of the novel, how it swayed me even after the rocky start.
After finishing the novel I read about Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his influence on the novel. Namely, Emerson’s philosophical metaphor, the “transparent eye”. From Emerson’s 1836 essay, Nature:
Illustration of the “Transparent Eyeball” from Emerson’s Nature
In short, it represents an eye that is “absorbent” rather than “reflective”. One book on the subject, by Michelle Kohler states this rather well: The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world.
Williams is not overt or dogmatic about this. Andrews’ feelings towards nature come both naturally and subtly. One of the key moments, the most overt moments, comes with Andrews’ first look at Miller’s killing.
Despite being published in 1960, it is just as relevant as today. The West, or the “idea” of the West, is perhaps inexhaustible in fiction, but what is certainly inexhaustible is the theme of nature and our relationship with it. In the modern world there is a huge insurgence on animal rights and the act of eating meat; there are more vegetarians and vegans, more people standing against factory farming, and indeed, traditional farming too. Andrews’ beliefs lie in the grey area between respecting nature and being a part of nature: where man is another animal that must kill and eat to survive as other carnivores do. To kill the buffalo, and the other animals in the wilderness, meant for Andrews and the others, both a way of surviving and a way of earning money. In the end, we wonder what it costs, as we are left wondering what Ahab’s obsession cost, but I won’t spoil any of that.
Without spoiling the plot, Butcher's Crossing is a dissection of Andrews' search for himself, and also for his place in the natural world. As humans, being a part of nature also means destroying nature. In the 1800s, to survive in the wilderness, one became part of the wilderness: the men are tested as the buffalo are. They attempt to understand them, by way of killing them more easily. Miller says:
Can we ever understand nature? Can we ever be one with it like Emerson suggests? Does the "transparent eye" exist? And above all, if we go searching for something within us, is there any way we can truly find it, least of all by slaughtering animals and destroying the natural world? The weight left by this book is partly left by imagining the weight of buffalo, strewn across the landscape, slaughtered.
Bison Skulls
Williams had a way of dissecting things, and he didn’t always dissect it nicely; he made messy incisions into the meaning of life and what its purpose is, he has made me both despondent and hopeful. There’s something wonderful about Williams’ cynicism. Perhaps it takes a cynic to say that.
John Williams
Butcher’s Crossing is a novel set in the 1860s/1870s about a Harvard student (Will Andrews) looking for something inside himself. To this, he decides to join three men on a hunting trip into the Colorado landscape to kill buffalo. Our first of many themes emerges immediately: the self, and the “creation” of the self. Even Andrews does not know what he wants to discover. One of the most common quotes in conjunction with this novel is this:
He believed—and had believed for a long time—that there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright, not indifferent to the way he walked.
Like Moby-Dick, this novel, on one hand, is about the relentless hunt for animals. Miller, the experienced hunter who leads the 4-man team Andrews is a part of, is our Western Ahab. There is a great desire to kill the buffalo, not like Ahab’s revenge, no, perhaps even more corruptly, for the profit of their hides. Quickly, more themes begin blooming: nature, and our relationship with it, its destruction as well as its majesty, imperialism, obsession, the free market… Andrews enters the world of Butcher’s Crossing with his innocence. The wilderness of the West, and the perils they face, we know that will be stripped from him. With Andrews’ waning innocence, Williams draws a Bildungsroman out of the novel too. I found his spiritual development more subtle than William’s subsequent novel, Stoner, but in that way, also more intriguing and thoughtful. Having said that, for me, Stoner remains the stronger novel, but only just.
The main fault I have with Butcher’s Crossing is its slow start: everything was a little rough at first. Andrews didn’t interest me greatly at first because his yearning was veiled a little too much (we later learn that the uncertainty surrounding his yearning is one of the brilliant aspects of the novel) and the “plot” of the novel doesn’t begin until 70 pages in. I read it in small bites, not caring to read too much at once. Around 120 pages in, Williams emerged as I knew him from Stoner and I raced through the rest. My five-star rating is a reflection on the latter three-quarters of the novel, how it swayed me even after the rocky start.
After finishing the novel I read about Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his influence on the novel. Namely, Emerson’s philosophical metaphor, the “transparent eye”. From Emerson’s 1836 essay, Nature:
Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.
Illustration of the “Transparent Eyeball” from Emerson’s Nature
In short, it represents an eye that is “absorbent” rather than “reflective”. One book on the subject, by Michelle Kohler states this rather well: The ‘all’ that Emerson seeks access is not simply harmony with nature or even knowledge, but perception of a deep unity between the human spirit and the natural world.
Williams is not overt or dogmatic about this. Andrews’ feelings towards nature come both naturally and subtly. One of the key moments, the most overt moments, comes with Andrews’ first look at Miller’s killing.
Andrews regarded the felled buffalo with some mixture of feeling. On the ground, unmoving, it no longer had that kind of wild dignity and power that he had imputed to it only a few minutes before. And though the body made a huge dark mound on the earth, its size seemed somehow diminished.
Despite being published in 1960, it is just as relevant as today. The West, or the “idea” of the West, is perhaps inexhaustible in fiction, but what is certainly inexhaustible is the theme of nature and our relationship with it. In the modern world there is a huge insurgence on animal rights and the act of eating meat; there are more vegetarians and vegans, more people standing against factory farming, and indeed, traditional farming too. Andrews’ beliefs lie in the grey area between respecting nature and being a part of nature: where man is another animal that must kill and eat to survive as other carnivores do. To kill the buffalo, and the other animals in the wilderness, meant for Andrews and the others, both a way of surviving and a way of earning money. In the end, we wonder what it costs, as we are left wondering what Ahab’s obsession cost, but I won’t spoil any of that.
Without spoiling the plot, Butcher's Crossing is a dissection of Andrews' search for himself, and also for his place in the natural world. As humans, being a part of nature also means destroying nature. In the 1800s, to survive in the wilderness, one became part of the wilderness: the men are tested as the buffalo are. They attempt to understand them, by way of killing them more easily. Miller says:
I've been hunting them for twenty years and I don't know. I've seen them run clean over a bluff, and pile up a hundred deep in a canyon—thousands of them, for no reason at all that a man could see. I've seen them spooked by a crow, and I've seen men walk right in the middle of a herd without them moving an inch. You think about what they're going to do, and you get yourself in trouble; all a man can do is not think about them, just plow into them, kill them when he can, and not try to figure anything out.
Can we ever understand nature? Can we ever be one with it like Emerson suggests? Does the "transparent eye" exist? And above all, if we go searching for something within us, is there any way we can truly find it, least of all by slaughtering animals and destroying the natural world? The weight left by this book is partly left by imagining the weight of buffalo, strewn across the landscape, slaughtered.
Bison Skulls
November 13, 2025
Will a young 23 year old with an idea in his head of how the West should be and the adventure that awaits, as he finds himself in the nature surrounding him. He leaves the East behind and is quickly taken in with the happenings of Butcher's Crossing. He backs a Hide Hunter with funding. They, four men, head off to an area that is isolated with a herd so large that brown colors the valley.
In Will's mind, as he oversees the land he is drawn into the nature surrounding him.
'a mass of pine trees was lighted by the early sun, a patch of turning aspen flamed a deep gold in the green of the pines.'
Such a visual and beautiful phrase. Williams is well known for his very detailed and descriptive words when it comes to nature. It is it's own character.
Because of Miller's obession of unparralleled hunt, the men, including Will, are bone shivering cold with a never ending exhaustion. Will has this transformation that is not as dramatic but is very near just as disturbing. There are times that he is aware of his own changes, as he realizes and sees he can never go back to the euphoria of before.
Butcher's Crossing it is the reality of how harsh that life was. It is so well written. There is heartbreak, depravity, but there is also reveling in satisfaction. John Williams writing is what I would say is one of the great works of American literature. This book needs to be a hardcover for me!! Which if you know me is saying a lot
In Will's mind, as he oversees the land he is drawn into the nature surrounding him.
'a mass of pine trees was lighted by the early sun, a patch of turning aspen flamed a deep gold in the green of the pines.'
Such a visual and beautiful phrase. Williams is well known for his very detailed and descriptive words when it comes to nature. It is it's own character.
Because of Miller's obession of unparralleled hunt, the men, including Will, are bone shivering cold with a never ending exhaustion. Will has this transformation that is not as dramatic but is very near just as disturbing. There are times that he is aware of his own changes, as he realizes and sees he can never go back to the euphoria of before.
Butcher's Crossing it is the reality of how harsh that life was. It is so well written. There is heartbreak, depravity, but there is also reveling in satisfaction. John Williams writing is what I would say is one of the great works of American literature. This book needs to be a hardcover for me!! Which if you know me is saying a lot
September 11, 2021
Τεράστιος!
Υπόδειγμα λογοτεχνίας.
Υπόδειγμα λογοτεχνίας.
January 26, 2025
My reading seems to have been immersed in the stark and rugged American West lately, having just completed Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and Centennial by James Michener. But this book, Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, is a literary masterpiece unlike any other. This story takes place in the 1870s, where William Andrews, a third-year Harvard student, becomes enchanted with the teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson of seeking one’s relationship to nature and heads out west, specifically to a small town in Kansas, Butcher’s Crossing where he meets with Mr. McDonald, a trader of buffalo hides, on the recommendation of his father. Given the name of the buffalo hunter, Miller, Will Andrews is regaled by his stories of immense herds of buffalo hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. Andrews joins in the expedition and the four men head for Colorado led by Miller along with cook and friend of Miller’s, Charlie Hogue and skinner, Fred Schneider. The trip out is grueling and longer than they anticipated but as they reach the promised valley with pristine streams and herds of buffalo, they set about their task. However, giving into greed, they stay too long hunting the buffalo and are surprised by a sudden snow storm that raged for days, blocking the pass out. Forced to spend the winter months in the Rockies, they build a shelter to protect them as they hunt, fish and forage for their food. When they are finally ready to begin the journey back to Butcher’s Crossing, much has changed in the world and perhaps to the men on the expedition, all irrevocably changed. This is a book about our humanity giving one fresh insights. I will end with part of the Introduction by Michelle Latiolais who began her graduate studies at the University of Denver with John Williams in 1981:
”In 1984, shortly after the summer Olympics in Los Angeles, I arrived at the University of California at Irvine to continue my graduate studies. Oakley Hall—himself the author of an important western titled ‘Warlock’ and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1958–leaned across his desk and said to me, ‘You studied with John Williams.. He wrote the finest western ever written.’ A year later Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West’ would be published to give ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ and ‘Warlock’ some company in what was becoming a pantheon of western masterpieces.”
June 27, 2022
Absolute perfection! Should I live to a hundred, I will never forget this story or the power of Williams' writing.
August 13, 2015
… he believed - and had believed for a long time - that there was a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if he unconsciously yielded to it, would direct him aright … (48)
Now Andrews could see the herd clearly. Against the pale yellow-green of the grass, the dark umber of the buffalo stood out sharply … Many were lying at ease upon the soft valley grass; those were mere humps, like dark rocks, without identity or shape … some were grazing lightly, others stood unmoving, they huge furry heads slumped between their forelegs, which were so matted with long dark fur that their shapes could not be seen. (127)
… without identity or shape … their shapes could not be seen
Butcher’s Crossing is usually classified as a “Western”, I guess because of its setting: in Western Kansas and the mountains of Colorado, in the 1870s. But this background produces, in Williams’ telling, a story that has little resemblance to either “traditional” or more contemporary western literature (from authors like Zane Gray, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy; or novels such as The Ox-Bow Incident or Shane). The story has no cowboys, almost no Indians, no settlers, no ranchers, no gunfights, no sheriffs, no bandits.
So if you’re in the mood for a “Western” novel a la McMurtry or Cormac, look elsewhere. You won’t find it here.
What you will find is a haunting, mysterious story of an Easterner who has come to the American West, for reasons that are not clear to him. It is a short but deep novel, unforgettable, and maybe somewhat disturbing.
Will Andrews has left Harvard in his third year, with his share of an uncle’s bequest, and traveled to the American West, in search of a man who his father knew for a time back in Boston, a man named McDonald. When he manages to track McDonald down in Butcher’s Crossing Kansas, McDonald is engaged in a buffalo hide business, buying from buffalo hunters and reselling to buffalo robe makers in the east. Andrews tells McDonald that his father “admired” him because McDonald was “the only man he ever knew who came out here – who came west, and made a life for himself.” (18)
As they talk, Andrews
But McDonald is simply a stepping stone to the West. Andrews has no interest in a job which McDonald offers him, he’s searching for something else. As he haltingly explains to McDonald, “… I came out here to see as much of the country as I can.” … “I want to get to know it. It’s something that I have to do.” …. “I don’t have anything figured out. I just want to know more about this country.” (22-3)
Besides Andrews and McDonald, there are only four other named characters in the novel; Miller, the buffalo hunter; Charley Hoge, Miller’s sidekick and the hunting party’s wagon driver and cook; Francine, an attractive “whore” in Butcher’s Crossing who is in turn attracted to Andrews; and Schneider, the final member of the hunting party, hired as chief skinner. Oh yes, and one more, probably the most important other than Andrews: Nature. Call her Mother if you want.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and Transcendentalism
Williams has placed two quotations directly following the title page, before we see a word of his own writing. The first of these says:
The quote is from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson titled Nature.
In Emerson’s first published work, also called Nature, but a longer work than the previous essay, Emerson wrote
In Butcher’s Crossing (p. 45) Williams writes, of Andrews’ recollections of the life he has left:
In the above quotes, the italics highlight phrases that are almost identical. What Williams has done is to modify Emerson’s thoughts, and give him credit through the reference to Andrews’ recollection of the Emerson lecture. And what he has also done, is put front and center a link between his novel, and the New England transcendental vision.
But Williams’ version of this vision is quite different from that of the nineteenth century New England transcendentalists. And the main differences are all on display right here.
1. Emerson’s references to a Universal Being, to God, to “uncontained and immortal beauty” are missing.
2. Emerson’s “wilderness” becomes Williams’ “wildness”. A small change perhaps, but it reminds us of the second quote which Williams prefaced the novel with, from Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man:
3. Emerson’s “tranquil landscape”, becomes for Williams a “rolling landscape”, and Emerson’s “distant horizon” lies specifically, for Williams, “to the west”. Both of these changes link to Andrews journey to Butcher’s Crossing.
4. Finally, Emerson speaks of man’s “own nature”; for Williams/Andrews it is “his own undiscovered nature”, another link to Andrew’s yearning to discover himself.
The Hunting Party
Andrews tells McDonald that he wants to talk to someone who knows buffalo hunting; McDonald tells him to find Miller. This he does, in the saloon. Miller sits with Charley Hoge. Francine is waiting on them.
Miller tells Andrews of a valley in the mountains he discovered ten years prior, filled with buffalo, that he reckons no man has ever seen, except “Maybe some Indians a long time ago, but no man.” Andrews suggests that Miller take a party there now, and agrees to stake the expedition. Miller leaves for Ellsworth to buy a wagon, supplies, and hire a skinner.
While Miller is gone, Andrews has a few days hanging around the town. He gets on Charley Hoge’s good side when Andrews mentions that his father is a Unitarian minister. He talks with McDonald and Francine. And he spends a lot of time walking to the edge of town and contemplating the rolling land to the west.
And also, “… he realized that the hunt he had arranged with Miller was only a stratagem, a ruse upon himself …” (48).
Andrews doesn’t really care about the buffalo hunt, nor even “seeing the country” as the typical traveler sees an unfamiliar land. He wants to go into that unexplored country, looking for something that he’s sure he will find, some sort of communion with nature, that will reveal to him something that he doesn’t yet know.
So, starting with Emerson’s exaltation of Nature, Williams has now prepared the ground for a story about a young man seeking self-discovery in a consuming vision of a Nature which, for the author, is neither divine nor benign. Williams will tell the story not in the fields and woods which Emerson knew in the east, but on the vast plains and in the high mountains which he, Williams, knew in the west. Andrews believes he knows what he is seeking. Whether he does know is the question.
New England Transcendentalism
The Hunt and its Aftermath
On the 25th of August the four men leave Butcher’s Crossing, heading west. It’s Part Two of the novel. The reader has three fourths of it still to read. Will Andrews has an unknown portion of his journey to knowledge of himself, of life, the world, and Nature to travel. And the reader of this review is just about finished.
Butchers Crossing is one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time. The style in which it’s written is unusual, almost dreamlike in numerous passages. As indicated above, much of the narration is on the level of Andrews’ inner perceptions of the outer world. I found the final outcome of Andrews’ journey of self-discovery to be enigmatic, as were the resolution of some other plot lines. I think it would be a wonderful novel for a book club to discuss. The more I reread sections for this review, the more I found.
My final judgment of the novel: its conception is magnificent; the execution is not quite so finely wrought. Williams is at times heavy-handed in his promulgation of the interrelated metaphors and themes, and is prone to the occasional clumsy/awkward sentence when what he’s trying to express needs too many qualifications and nuances. These flaws in execution, to my mind, largely disappeared in his next novel, Stoner. However, I personally found this novel, which I read before Stoner, to be a more interesting story.
At the end, Andrews rides enigmatically into the west.
He gathered the reins firmly in one hand, touched his horse’s flanks with his heels, and rode into the open country. Except for the general direction that he took, he did not know where he was going; but he knew that it would come to him later … He rode forward without hurry. (274)
Now Andrews could see the herd clearly. Against the pale yellow-green of the grass, the dark umber of the buffalo stood out sharply … Many were lying at ease upon the soft valley grass; those were mere humps, like dark rocks, without identity or shape … some were grazing lightly, others stood unmoving, they huge furry heads slumped between their forelegs, which were so matted with long dark fur that their shapes could not be seen. (127)
… without identity or shape … their shapes could not be seen
Butcher’s Crossing is usually classified as a “Western”, I guess because of its setting: in Western Kansas and the mountains of Colorado, in the 1870s. But this background produces, in Williams’ telling, a story that has little resemblance to either “traditional” or more contemporary western literature (from authors like Zane Gray, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy; or novels such as The Ox-Bow Incident or Shane). The story has no cowboys, almost no Indians, no settlers, no ranchers, no gunfights, no sheriffs, no bandits.
So if you’re in the mood for a “Western” novel a la McMurtry or Cormac, look elsewhere. You won’t find it here.
What you will find is a haunting, mysterious story of an Easterner who has come to the American West, for reasons that are not clear to him. It is a short but deep novel, unforgettable, and maybe somewhat disturbing.
Will Andrews has left Harvard in his third year, with his share of an uncle’s bequest, and traveled to the American West, in search of a man who his father knew for a time back in Boston, a man named McDonald. When he manages to track McDonald down in Butcher’s Crossing Kansas, McDonald is engaged in a buffalo hide business, buying from buffalo hunters and reselling to buffalo robe makers in the east. Andrews tells McDonald that his father “admired” him because McDonald was “the only man he ever knew who came out here – who came west, and made a life for himself.” (18)
As they talk, Andrews
paused and let his gaze go past McDonald, away from the town, beyond the ridge of earth that he imagined was the river bank, to the flat yellowish green land that faded into the horizon westward. He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald … What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world that seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year. (21)
But McDonald is simply a stepping stone to the West. Andrews has no interest in a job which McDonald offers him, he’s searching for something else. As he haltingly explains to McDonald, “… I came out here to see as much of the country as I can.” … “I want to get to know it. It’s something that I have to do.” …. “I don’t have anything figured out. I just want to know more about this country.” (22-3)
Besides Andrews and McDonald, there are only four other named characters in the novel; Miller, the buffalo hunter; Charley Hoge, Miller’s sidekick and the hunting party’s wagon driver and cook; Francine, an attractive “whore” in Butcher’s Crossing who is in turn attracted to Andrews; and Schneider, the final member of the hunting party, hired as chief skinner. Oh yes, and one more, probably the most important other than Andrews: Nature. Call her Mother if you want.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and Transcendentalism
Williams has placed two quotations directly following the title page, before we see a word of his own writing. The first of these says:
At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he takes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her.
The quote is from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson titled Nature.
In Emerson’s first published work, also called Nature, but a longer work than the previous essay, Emerson wrote
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life … which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God … I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
In Butcher’s Crossing (p. 45) Williams writes, of Andrews’ recollections of the life he has left:
Sometimes after listening to the droning voices in the chapel and in the classrooms, he had fled the confines of Cambridge to the fields and woods that lay southwestward to it. There in some small solitude, standing on bare ground, he felt his head bathed by the clean air and uplifted into infinite space; the meanness and the constriction he had felt were dissipated in the wildness about him. A phrase from a lecture by Mr. Emerson that he had attended came to him: I become a transparent eyeball. … Through the trees and across the rolling landscape, he had been able to see a hint of the distant horizon to the west; and there, for an instant, he had beheld something as beautiful as his own undiscovered nature.
In the above quotes, the italics highlight phrases that are almost identical. What Williams has done is to modify Emerson’s thoughts, and give him credit through the reference to Andrews’ recollection of the Emerson lecture. And what he has also done, is put front and center a link between his novel, and the New England transcendental vision.
But Williams’ version of this vision is quite different from that of the nineteenth century New England transcendentalists. And the main differences are all on display right here.
1. Emerson’s references to a Universal Being, to God, to “uncontained and immortal beauty” are missing.
2. Emerson’s “wilderness” becomes Williams’ “wildness”. A small change perhaps, but it reminds us of the second quote which Williams prefaced the novel with, from Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man:
Aye, and poets send out the sick spirit to green pastures, like lame horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs. A sort of yarb-doctors in their way, poets have it that for sore hearts, as for sore lungs, nature is the grand cure. But who froze to death my teamster on the prairie? …
3. Emerson’s “tranquil landscape”, becomes for Williams a “rolling landscape”, and Emerson’s “distant horizon” lies specifically, for Williams, “to the west”. Both of these changes link to Andrews journey to Butcher’s Crossing.
4. Finally, Emerson speaks of man’s “own nature”; for Williams/Andrews it is “his own undiscovered nature”, another link to Andrew’s yearning to discover himself.
The Hunting Party
Andrews tells McDonald that he wants to talk to someone who knows buffalo hunting; McDonald tells him to find Miller. This he does, in the saloon. Miller sits with Charley Hoge. Francine is waiting on them.
Miller tells Andrews of a valley in the mountains he discovered ten years prior, filled with buffalo, that he reckons no man has ever seen, except “Maybe some Indians a long time ago, but no man.” Andrews suggests that Miller take a party there now, and agrees to stake the expedition. Miller leaves for Ellsworth to buy a wagon, supplies, and hire a skinner.
While Miller is gone, Andrews has a few days hanging around the town. He gets on Charley Hoge’s good side when Andrews mentions that his father is a Unitarian minister. He talks with McDonald and Francine. And he spends a lot of time walking to the edge of town and contemplating the rolling land to the west.
… he felt that only during the few days that he had been in Butcher's Crossing had nature been so purely presented to him that its power of compulsion was sufficiently strong to strike through his will, his habit, and his idea … the river he had not seen, but which had assumed in his mind the proportions of a vast boundary that lay between himself and the wildness and freedom that his instinct sought … He felt that ... wherever he would live hereafter, he was leaving the city more and more, withdrawing into the wilderness. He felt that that was the central meaning he could find in all his life … (48-9)
And also, “… he realized that the hunt he had arranged with Miller was only a stratagem, a ruse upon himself …” (48).
Andrews doesn’t really care about the buffalo hunt, nor even “seeing the country” as the typical traveler sees an unfamiliar land. He wants to go into that unexplored country, looking for something that he’s sure he will find, some sort of communion with nature, that will reveal to him something that he doesn’t yet know.
So, starting with Emerson’s exaltation of Nature, Williams has now prepared the ground for a story about a young man seeking self-discovery in a consuming vision of a Nature which, for the author, is neither divine nor benign. Williams will tell the story not in the fields and woods which Emerson knew in the east, but on the vast plains and in the high mountains which he, Williams, knew in the west. Andrews believes he knows what he is seeking. Whether he does know is the question.
New England Transcendentalism
The Hunt and its Aftermath
On the 25th of August the four men leave Butcher’s Crossing, heading west. It’s Part Two of the novel. The reader has three fourths of it still to read. Will Andrews has an unknown portion of his journey to knowledge of himself, of life, the world, and Nature to travel. And the reader of this review is just about finished.
Butchers Crossing is one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had in a long time. The style in which it’s written is unusual, almost dreamlike in numerous passages. As indicated above, much of the narration is on the level of Andrews’ inner perceptions of the outer world. I found the final outcome of Andrews’ journey of self-discovery to be enigmatic, as were the resolution of some other plot lines. I think it would be a wonderful novel for a book club to discuss. The more I reread sections for this review, the more I found.
My final judgment of the novel: its conception is magnificent; the execution is not quite so finely wrought. Williams is at times heavy-handed in his promulgation of the interrelated metaphors and themes, and is prone to the occasional clumsy/awkward sentence when what he’s trying to express needs too many qualifications and nuances. These flaws in execution, to my mind, largely disappeared in his next novel, Stoner. However, I personally found this novel, which I read before Stoner, to be a more interesting story.
At the end, Andrews rides enigmatically into the west.
He gathered the reins firmly in one hand, touched his horse’s flanks with his heels, and rode into the open country. Except for the general direction that he took, he did not know where he was going; but he knew that it would come to him later … He rode forward without hurry. (274)
March 25, 2021
I had read Stoner in 2017, then Augustus earlier this year, in 2021. To finally have read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams makes my little literary expedition complete: I’ve now gone full circle.
While you could argue that reading an author’s production in chronological order has a value all its own, I find that 1) there was no need in this case, as the three novels share no connection, either plotwise or otherwise, and 2) sometimes nothing accentuates contrast better than moving backwards to earlier works, after more mature and powerful books are already on hand to serve as standards. I’m in the middle of something similar with Michael Cunningham: whenever I read one of his books nowadays, my gold standard remains The Hours, a brilliant novel and one against which it proves difficult for other stories to measure up. I’m okay with this. It doesn’t ruin anything for me and merely provides a sense of scale or a point in time. Same goes with John Williams.
In Butcher’s Crossing - which is no Augustus in my opinion but enjoys beautiful, evocative writing in its own right – Will Andrews, a young and privileged Bostonian in search of excitement in the 19th century, doesn’t want a literary expedition like mine. He sets his sights on something grittier instead, something wilder, and heads out west, specifically to Kansas: Andrews wants a taste of the frontier life. Once on location, he ends up funding and taking part in a hunting expedition to Colorado, securing a guide and a small crew. He knows nothing of what he’s getting into but sees a buffalo hunt as a fresh learning experience. While he’s not wrong in this respect, Andrews is still clueless and by the time his adventure is over, he will have matured in ways he had never counted on. His long ride to Kansas on a rickety carriage was only the first of the numerous discomforts the author would throw at Andrews during his manly journey of self-discovery.
For a pampered urbanite more used to attending classes at Harvard than hitting the trails, it has to be said that Will Andrews shows admirable buoyancy and consistent resilience despite the challenges him and his hired crew end up facing. But then, the idealism of youth makes for only one of the various facets of the human experience set under scrutiny by John Williams over the course of this survival story. The more seasoned hunters around Andrews, including the expedition leader, contribute their own substantial weight to every single chapter from the moment they are introduced. Andrews may be the official protagonist in this novel, but Williams dotes his attention on other crew members almost equally. A clever move: as far as I’m concerned, this had the effect of adding a lot of luster to a story that held no specific promise for me other than bearing the author’s name on the cover as an assurance of quality. I had reached for this novel in spite of its topic, not in any way because of it. Just as I was hoping, the book quickly established its worth as a quirky character study, although it wouldn't be unfair to mention that it is also more fast-paced and somewhat simpler than Stoner and Augustus were to become, one day.
Through the eyes of Andrews and his temporary entourage, John Williams makes a few interesting points and airs various views in this book. He plays with the concepts of predator and prey, making a same man sometimes the one, sometimes the other. He reflects on the despair we all harbor but glimpse only on occasion for most of us, when civility and appearances are forcefully pushed aside, revealing something burning deep into our core, a primal fear of some sort, maybe an anger at our lack of control on circumstances. He takes a jab at the folly of human hope and condemns the lies society builds itself upon. Its exquisite writing prevents it from turning into something too grim, but Butcher’s Crossing gives off a faint scent of misanthropy on more than one occasion. Don’t all Williams novels carry a bit of this?
“You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you—that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re too old.”
Despite the above, like a gentleman, Williams still values mutual aid and Butcher’s Crossing also features, tentative as they are, standing on shaky legs, little gems of brotherliness and complicity. It seems that hope is not something so easily discarded, even in the face of a disastrous expedition and the cumulative mistakes of young and old hunters alike.
While you could argue that reading an author’s production in chronological order has a value all its own, I find that 1) there was no need in this case, as the three novels share no connection, either plotwise or otherwise, and 2) sometimes nothing accentuates contrast better than moving backwards to earlier works, after more mature and powerful books are already on hand to serve as standards. I’m in the middle of something similar with Michael Cunningham: whenever I read one of his books nowadays, my gold standard remains The Hours, a brilliant novel and one against which it proves difficult for other stories to measure up. I’m okay with this. It doesn’t ruin anything for me and merely provides a sense of scale or a point in time. Same goes with John Williams.
In Butcher’s Crossing - which is no Augustus in my opinion but enjoys beautiful, evocative writing in its own right – Will Andrews, a young and privileged Bostonian in search of excitement in the 19th century, doesn’t want a literary expedition like mine. He sets his sights on something grittier instead, something wilder, and heads out west, specifically to Kansas: Andrews wants a taste of the frontier life. Once on location, he ends up funding and taking part in a hunting expedition to Colorado, securing a guide and a small crew. He knows nothing of what he’s getting into but sees a buffalo hunt as a fresh learning experience. While he’s not wrong in this respect, Andrews is still clueless and by the time his adventure is over, he will have matured in ways he had never counted on. His long ride to Kansas on a rickety carriage was only the first of the numerous discomforts the author would throw at Andrews during his manly journey of self-discovery.
For a pampered urbanite more used to attending classes at Harvard than hitting the trails, it has to be said that Will Andrews shows admirable buoyancy and consistent resilience despite the challenges him and his hired crew end up facing. But then, the idealism of youth makes for only one of the various facets of the human experience set under scrutiny by John Williams over the course of this survival story. The more seasoned hunters around Andrews, including the expedition leader, contribute their own substantial weight to every single chapter from the moment they are introduced. Andrews may be the official protagonist in this novel, but Williams dotes his attention on other crew members almost equally. A clever move: as far as I’m concerned, this had the effect of adding a lot of luster to a story that held no specific promise for me other than bearing the author’s name on the cover as an assurance of quality. I had reached for this novel in spite of its topic, not in any way because of it. Just as I was hoping, the book quickly established its worth as a quirky character study, although it wouldn't be unfair to mention that it is also more fast-paced and somewhat simpler than Stoner and Augustus were to become, one day.
Through the eyes of Andrews and his temporary entourage, John Williams makes a few interesting points and airs various views in this book. He plays with the concepts of predator and prey, making a same man sometimes the one, sometimes the other. He reflects on the despair we all harbor but glimpse only on occasion for most of us, when civility and appearances are forcefully pushed aside, revealing something burning deep into our core, a primal fear of some sort, maybe an anger at our lack of control on circumstances. He takes a jab at the folly of human hope and condemns the lies society builds itself upon. Its exquisite writing prevents it from turning into something too grim, but Butcher’s Crossing gives off a faint scent of misanthropy on more than one occasion. Don’t all Williams novels carry a bit of this?
“You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you—that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re too old.”
Despite the above, like a gentleman, Williams still values mutual aid and Butcher’s Crossing also features, tentative as they are, standing on shaky legs, little gems of brotherliness and complicity. It seems that hope is not something so easily discarded, even in the face of a disastrous expedition and the cumulative mistakes of young and old hunters alike.
October 6, 2015
One of the joys of reading chaotically, picking up books from the TBR stack at the whim of the moment and not according to some master plan, is to discover that succesive reads turn out to be related after all. The Great Gatsby is concerned with the Great American Dream - that success is waiting right around the corner for anyone determined enough to reach for it. Butcher's Crossing is about another facet of the Great American Dream, the myth of the pristine land, a Garden of Eden where Man can go to find beauty, peace and dignity.
Will Andrews is a child of the modern world, growing up in Boston around 1870 in a reasonably wealthy family. His imagination is fired up by the discourses of Ralph Waldo Emerson and he decides to leave Harvard and strike West, not in search of wealth or fame, but chasing the meaning of life and spiritual fulfillment.
At the gate of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he takes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her. [Emerson]
His destination is Butcher's Crossing, a dusty settlement on the Kansas frontier, catering to buffalo hunters. The harsh travelling conditions, the gruff locals and the dingy, derelict houses do little to curb his enthusiasm, his eyes ever turning towards the westward prairie. He turns down an offer to join in the profitable business of tanning buffalo hides, prefering to look out for a guide into the wilderness:
It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich, dank dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renew itself, year after year.
His moderate savings enable him to finance a hunting expedition towards a secret location in the the Colorado mountains, a pet project of Miller - a lone wolf hunter with a difficult personality but with 20 years experience in the field. The team is completed with Miller's one handed partner Charley Hoge, a drunken Bible thumper and by a hired hand - a professional skinner of a contrarian disposition, always grumbling and challenging Miller's leadership.
The novel really takes off once the expedition sets out on the trackless prairie, with Williams wonderful prose capturing both the 'true grit' of saddle sores, debilitating tiredness, thirst, mind numbing boredom, and the poetry of the boundless vistas, the sea like quality of being at the center of the universe and moving in a timeless bubble outside the reality of civilized East Coast. Miller is like a force of nature, pushing all of them forward mercilessly, reading the lay of the land, the sun and the winds with consummate skill. What is missing in this landscape is the object of the hunt - the buffalo has already been hunted to near extinction and is present only as mounds of white bones or the occasional wounded stray. Miller's obsession with the herd hidden in his secret mountain valley reminds of Melville and his Captain Ahab chasing another impossible dream.
Miller's dream though turns out to be true, as the heavy bull driven cart comes at last to the high pass opening into a vision of paradise, a veritable Shangri-la hidden from covetous eyes, as perfect a camping place as I ever encountered on my own mountain treks:
A long narrow valley, flat as the top of a table, wound among the mountains. Lush grass grew on the bed of the valley, and waved gently in the breeze as far as the eye could see. A quietness seemed to rise from the valley; it was the quietness, the stillness, the absolute calm of a land where no human foot had touched. Andrews found that despite his exhaustion he was holding his breath; he expelled the air from his lungs as gently as he could, so as not to disturb the silence.
As a sidenote, I'm not familiar with the detailed history of the Colorado territories in the XIX century, but it seems to me Williams is ignoring completely the Native American angle. A single instance of meeting a destitute Indian family scraping a meagre living on the plains makes it seem like the author deliberately ignored their historical presence as outside the scope of his novel - he needed a pristine setting in order to make his point.
The promised herd of buffalo is here in great numbers, resplendent in their autumn coats, well fed on the bountiful grass and as yet unafraid of the danger humans represent. Young Andrews education turns to a bloody and gruesome page, as the idillic landscape becomes a scene of indiscriminate slaughter and Miller's goal of wiping out the herd completely is revealed as the spirit of the modern world that gets drunk on power and immediate profit without any thought for long term consequences or preservation of resources ['Drill Baby, Drill!']. Miller's unhinged mind is blind to all appeals at reason and moderation, as the gathered skins far outstrip the carrying capacity of their cart. Nature or karma strikes back, and the expedition is trapped in the high mountain valley by an early snowstorm.
Once again, the writing knocked me down as it describes the struggle for survival and the tensions between the four members of the team, the long tedious months of being cooped up in an improvised shelter, the lack of even the most basic comforts. A weary and disillusioned Andrews comes down in the spring and slowly makes his way back to Butcher's Crossing for a big finale in which the falsity, the destructive nature of the American Dream is reaffirmed in an emphatic way.
Young people', McDonald said contemptuously. 'You always think there's something to find out. Well, there's nothing. You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you - that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only the it's too late. You're too old.
This is a bleak revelation, but I have the feeling a necessary one. The lessons have been painful, but Andrews is still young and a small hope exists that he will step into his next adventure with his eyes open. Being more circumspect does not mean giving up altogether. At least this is how I like to look at the outcome.
I am surprised the novel is not better known, it is probably the most literate, thoughtful and brutal analysis of the Western myth I've come across since watching Jeremiah Johnson at the Cinemateque. I can see how modern writers like Larry McMurtry or Cormac mcCarthy may have been influenced in their approach by this definitely unromantic look at the Frontier.
July 26, 2021
“Quietly contemplative” and “Westerns” are not concepts that usually go together hand in hand, but John Williams was never one to write a book that turned out to be what I expected – so I shouldn’t be surprized that his third book, a story about hunting buffaloes in Colorado, is actually more about self-discovery, resilience and obsession than about drinking moonshine whisky and having shootouts in saloons.
Restless and curious to see more of the world than Boston, William Andrews drops out of Harvard and travels all the way to the small frontier town of Butcher’s Crossing, in the hope of joining a buffalo hunt. There he meets a hunter named Miller, who tells him of a hidden valley in Colorado, where the biggest herd of buffalo he has ever seen graze the summer away, and convinces Andrews to finance an four-man expedition there. He agrees, and soon, he is off to this fabled valley with Miller, a skinner named Fred Schneider and Charley Hoge, a man to keep camp and drive the wagon.
As plots go, I can’t say that all that much happens: the small group of men get lost, they hunt, Andrews learns to skin buffalos, they have to weather out a proper Colorado blizzard… But as I mentioned, this not a book about the action-aspect of Western, but much more about the effect that such a strange, savage and dangerous life can have on a man. While “Stoner” and “Augustus” were so unique that I couldn’t really find other books to compare them too, I found myself thinking about “Moby Dick” a lot while reading “Butcher’s Crossing”: Miller reminded me of Captain Ahab and Andrews of Ishmael. Their journey is also more about transformation than it is about the actual hunting, and Williams’ graphic description of the hunting and butchering is as striking as Melville’s long-winded description of whale processing. The difference though, is that the pathos I had so craved from “Moby Dick” is much more palpable in this book: Miller’s obsession with the herd, Charley’s trauma about the blizzard feel incredibly vivid, and a little less allegorical.
Williams doesn’t have a ton of female characters – in any of his books, but now that I’ve read them all, I have to say that his few ladies are truly interesting characters, even if they appear only briefly. In fact, the little glimpse we got of Julia in “Augustus” and Katherine in “Stoner” had only made me more curious about them, and I got the same feeling here about Francine, a saloon prostitute who is so unlike the stereotype of such characters as I’ve encountered them before. Just as with Julia and Katherine, I would have wanted more time with her, to dig at the layers that Williams clearly had in his mind but didn’t put on the page.
I am tempted to dock a star for the simple reason that I am profoundly horrified by some of the subject matter: hunting animals to extinction for hide and letting most of their carcass rot and go to waste is something that upsets me a lot. And I know Williams wrote this before environmental concerns were the big deal they are today, and that yes, the stuff that happens on the page really did happen, but I still find myself shuddering. What saves the star is the prose, that manages to be poetic yet almost surgical at the same time; I can’t describe it, but if you’ve read other books by John Williams, you’ll know what I mean. Maybe my least favorite novel of his, but still a 4 and a half stars.
Restless and curious to see more of the world than Boston, William Andrews drops out of Harvard and travels all the way to the small frontier town of Butcher’s Crossing, in the hope of joining a buffalo hunt. There he meets a hunter named Miller, who tells him of a hidden valley in Colorado, where the biggest herd of buffalo he has ever seen graze the summer away, and convinces Andrews to finance an four-man expedition there. He agrees, and soon, he is off to this fabled valley with Miller, a skinner named Fred Schneider and Charley Hoge, a man to keep camp and drive the wagon.
As plots go, I can’t say that all that much happens: the small group of men get lost, they hunt, Andrews learns to skin buffalos, they have to weather out a proper Colorado blizzard… But as I mentioned, this not a book about the action-aspect of Western, but much more about the effect that such a strange, savage and dangerous life can have on a man. While “Stoner” and “Augustus” were so unique that I couldn’t really find other books to compare them too, I found myself thinking about “Moby Dick” a lot while reading “Butcher’s Crossing”: Miller reminded me of Captain Ahab and Andrews of Ishmael. Their journey is also more about transformation than it is about the actual hunting, and Williams’ graphic description of the hunting and butchering is as striking as Melville’s long-winded description of whale processing. The difference though, is that the pathos I had so craved from “Moby Dick” is much more palpable in this book: Miller’s obsession with the herd, Charley’s trauma about the blizzard feel incredibly vivid, and a little less allegorical.
Williams doesn’t have a ton of female characters – in any of his books, but now that I’ve read them all, I have to say that his few ladies are truly interesting characters, even if they appear only briefly. In fact, the little glimpse we got of Julia in “Augustus” and Katherine in “Stoner” had only made me more curious about them, and I got the same feeling here about Francine, a saloon prostitute who is so unlike the stereotype of such characters as I’ve encountered them before. Just as with Julia and Katherine, I would have wanted more time with her, to dig at the layers that Williams clearly had in his mind but didn’t put on the page.
I am tempted to dock a star for the simple reason that I am profoundly horrified by some of the subject matter: hunting animals to extinction for hide and letting most of their carcass rot and go to waste is something that upsets me a lot. And I know Williams wrote this before environmental concerns were the big deal they are today, and that yes, the stuff that happens on the page really did happen, but I still find myself shuddering. What saves the star is the prose, that manages to be poetic yet almost surgical at the same time; I can’t describe it, but if you’ve read other books by John Williams, you’ll know what I mean. Maybe my least favorite novel of his, but still a 4 and a half stars.
September 14, 2018
I started this book thinking I was getting into an adventure/survivalist tale of buffalo hunters in the old west. I turned the last page knowing that, instead, it was an epic tragedy. If you can read this book without having your stomach turned at the senseless slaughter of these animals, you're a stronger person than I am.
"A long, narrow valley, flat as the top of a table, wound among the mountains. Lush grass grew on the bed of the valley, and waved gently in the breeze as far as the eye could see. A quietness seemed to rise from the valley; it was the quietness, the stillness, the absolute calm of a land where no human foot had touched".
Four men go into this valley to kill one of the last of the big herds in the country. They get greedy, get caught in the snows, and stumble out of the valley six months later, leaving behind carnage and destruction. There is much more to this story, of course, and that is where the tragedy lies. It's really too bad that buffalo were such gentle creatures, I was hoping they would turn on the hunters, leaving four dead men instead of thousands of dead buffalo. But no such luck.
This was a complex novel of men and their dreams and motives, and what they are willing to do to achieve them. "Stoner", by the same author, is one of my favorite novels ever, but for those who complained that that book was boring, give this one a try. There's plenty of action here.
"A long, narrow valley, flat as the top of a table, wound among the mountains. Lush grass grew on the bed of the valley, and waved gently in the breeze as far as the eye could see. A quietness seemed to rise from the valley; it was the quietness, the stillness, the absolute calm of a land where no human foot had touched".
Four men go into this valley to kill one of the last of the big herds in the country. They get greedy, get caught in the snows, and stumble out of the valley six months later, leaving behind carnage and destruction. There is much more to this story, of course, and that is where the tragedy lies. It's really too bad that buffalo were such gentle creatures, I was hoping they would turn on the hunters, leaving four dead men instead of thousands of dead buffalo. But no such luck.
This was a complex novel of men and their dreams and motives, and what they are willing to do to achieve them. "Stoner", by the same author, is one of my favorite novels ever, but for those who complained that that book was boring, give this one a try. There's plenty of action here.
September 6, 2021
[4.5] Butcher's Crossing doesn't have much in common with Williams' Stoner except for brilliant writing. The novel encapsulates the late 19th century U.S., on the brink of change, like nothing I've ever read. At its core is the adventures of four men who embark on an arduous hunt for buffalo. Nothing works out as planned. There is carnage and futility and tragedy. A staggering, stunning work of literature.
October 6, 2025
От малък обичам да чета истории свързани дори и бегло с бизоните.
За първи път се сблъсках с тях и безогледното им избиване в творбите на Карл Май и Лизелоте Велскопф-Хенрих.
После попаднах на шедьовъра на Глендън Суортатут - "Благослови животните и децата".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
И ето, че сега се натъкнах отново на тази тема и съм на мнение, че книгата на Джон Уилямс също е много добра.
Има нещо стоунъровско у Уил, но някак по-безцелно, наивно, загатнато... Проблеми, които възникват когато се описва някой, който търси себе си или върховното познание.
Но неизменно присъства сянката на насилието, негови носители са и Милър, опиянен от убийствата, и Шнайдър, дори Чарли и Уил. През цялото време очаквах жестока развръзка...
Безмилостното изтребване на животните ми се видя ужасяващо и нечовешко като поведение, а е било масово и повод за гордост през ония години. Само късметът ни позволява, да е възможно да видим днес на живо тези властелини на прериите.
И на края малко снимки, защото е казано - една сполучлива снимка е по-красноречива от хиляди думи!
Вярно е понякога...
Моята оценка - 4,5*.
P.S. Нямаше да сбъркат от издателството, ако бяха сложили господаря на прериите на корицата...
За първи път се сблъсках с тях и безогледното им избиване в творбите на Карл Май и Лизелоте Велскопф-Хенрих.
После попаднах на шедьовъра на Глендън Суортатут - "Благослови животните и децата".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
И ето, че сега се натъкнах отново на тази тема и съм на мнение, че книгата на Джон Уилямс също е много добра.
Има нещо стоунъровско у Уил, но някак по-безцелно, наивно, загатнато... Проблеми, които възникват когато се описва някой, който търси себе си или върховното познание.
Но неизменно присъства сянката на насилието, негови носители са и Милър, опиянен от убийствата, и Шнайдър, дори Чарли и Уил. През цялото време очаквах жестока развръзка...
Безмилостното изтребване на животните ми се видя ужасяващо и нечовешко като поведение, а е било масово и повод за гордост през ония години. Само късметът ни позволява, да е възможно да видим днес на живо тези властелини на прериите.
И на края малко снимки, защото е казано - една сполучлива снимка е по-красноречива от хиляди думи!
Вярно е понякога...
Моята оценка - 4,5*.
P.S. Нямаше да сбъркат от издателството, ако бяха сложили господаря на прериите на корицата...
August 23, 2010
Penned in 1960, John Williams' BUTCHER'S CROSSING anticipates and in many ways eclipses Cormac McCarthy's western works because it not only nails the rapacious greed of the buffalo hunters it describes, it reaches for more abstract and troubling themes that go to the very essence of man and his place in the world.
Will Andrews, the protagonist, is but a 23-year-old preacher's son when he shows up in Butcher's Crossing with money and a dream in hand. He winds up payrolling a buffalo hunt to a hidden valley known only to a hunter named Miller. Along with his whiskey-swilling, Bible-thumping driver, Charley Hogue, and a sardonic skinner named Schneider, Miller leads Will and the others across the spectacular western landscape to their fates in a land of milk, honey, and blood. Along the way, you are treated to some fine nature writing, such as this:
"For a long time after he had bedded down, Will Andrews listened to the silence around him. For a while the acrid smell of the smothered pine log's burning warmed his nostrils; then the wind shifted and he could no longer smell the smoke or hear the heavy breaths of the sleeping men around him. He turned so that he faced the side of the mountain over which they had traveled. From the darkness that clung about the earth he lifted his gaze and followed the dim outlines of particular trees as they rose from the darkness and gradually gained distinctness against the deep blue cloudless sky that twinkled with the light of the clear stars. Even with an extra blanket on his bedroll, he was chilled; he could see the gray cloud of his breath as he breathed the sharp night air. His eyes closed upon the image of a tall conical pine tree outlined blackly against the luminous sky, and despite the cold he slept soundly until morning."
The hunt scenes and the constant personal battles between the fire of Miller and the ice of Schneider give the book its brutal punch and provide the richness from which the theme will grow as the narrative grinds to its relentless conclusion. It's no coincidence that Miller's name is one letter away from "killer." An Ahab of the Mountain Valleys, Miller knows his prey so well that the beasts stand no chance. The blood and gore are smeared upon the entire party, and though Will spends one memorable scene in a freezing cold river trying to scrape it off, it is as much a legacy to each individual as is Lady Macbeth's stained hands.
Of course, despite being master of the bison, even Miller cannot subdue nature, and nature collects her due -- abundantly, , as is her wont, when human folly and greed allow. The simple yet epic depictions of the fall and winter, of how frail these four men are in the face of it, and of their struggle to return with their furred fortunes, are both appalling and gripping.
In addition to the moral issues, Williams plays the coming-of-age card as well, constantly using darkness and light with their ancient, metaphoric grips on our imaginations and fears. Here Will listens to the frightful rantings of a merchant named McDonald:
"'Well, there's nothing,' McDonald said. 'You get born and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you -- that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old.'
'No,' Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. 'That's not the way it is.'"
Let's see: a literary western with great writing, realistic and rich descriptions, epic characterization, deep and disturbing themes, coming-of-age angst, and the audacity to flirt with the meaning of life.
If you've got the patience for the long ride out and the long ride back, you might want to deal in. And if you hate westerns, consider it a morality play set in the west and move them doggies out....
Will Andrews, the protagonist, is but a 23-year-old preacher's son when he shows up in Butcher's Crossing with money and a dream in hand. He winds up payrolling a buffalo hunt to a hidden valley known only to a hunter named Miller. Along with his whiskey-swilling, Bible-thumping driver, Charley Hogue, and a sardonic skinner named Schneider, Miller leads Will and the others across the spectacular western landscape to their fates in a land of milk, honey, and blood. Along the way, you are treated to some fine nature writing, such as this:
"For a long time after he had bedded down, Will Andrews listened to the silence around him. For a while the acrid smell of the smothered pine log's burning warmed his nostrils; then the wind shifted and he could no longer smell the smoke or hear the heavy breaths of the sleeping men around him. He turned so that he faced the side of the mountain over which they had traveled. From the darkness that clung about the earth he lifted his gaze and followed the dim outlines of particular trees as they rose from the darkness and gradually gained distinctness against the deep blue cloudless sky that twinkled with the light of the clear stars. Even with an extra blanket on his bedroll, he was chilled; he could see the gray cloud of his breath as he breathed the sharp night air. His eyes closed upon the image of a tall conical pine tree outlined blackly against the luminous sky, and despite the cold he slept soundly until morning."
The hunt scenes and the constant personal battles between the fire of Miller and the ice of Schneider give the book its brutal punch and provide the richness from which the theme will grow as the narrative grinds to its relentless conclusion. It's no coincidence that Miller's name is one letter away from "killer." An Ahab of the Mountain Valleys, Miller knows his prey so well that the beasts stand no chance. The blood and gore are smeared upon the entire party, and though Will spends one memorable scene in a freezing cold river trying to scrape it off, it is as much a legacy to each individual as is Lady Macbeth's stained hands.
Of course, despite being master of the bison, even Miller cannot subdue nature, and nature collects her due -- abundantly, , as is her wont, when human folly and greed allow. The simple yet epic depictions of the fall and winter, of how frail these four men are in the face of it, and of their struggle to return with their furred fortunes, are both appalling and gripping.
In addition to the moral issues, Williams plays the coming-of-age card as well, constantly using darkness and light with their ancient, metaphoric grips on our imaginations and fears. Here Will listens to the frightful rantings of a merchant named McDonald:
"'Well, there's nothing,' McDonald said. 'You get born and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you -- that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old.'
'No,' Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. 'That's not the way it is.'"
Let's see: a literary western with great writing, realistic and rich descriptions, epic characterization, deep and disturbing themes, coming-of-age angst, and the audacity to flirt with the meaning of life.
If you've got the patience for the long ride out and the long ride back, you might want to deal in. And if you hate westerns, consider it a morality play set in the west and move them doggies out....
October 15, 2015
Wonderful book. Read it. Americana at its best. "Stoner" was a book that made me look into my life as I am. "Butcher's Crossing" took me back to my youth when I wandered, and lived in my tent in the mountains, became lost in a snow storm in the North. But more than anything it took me back to this:
"He could hardly recall, now, the passion that had drawn him to this room and this flesh, as if by a subtle magnetism; nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung."
The "unalterable self", of course is found to be "a nothingness" and we continue. We can continue into the unknown being certain that there is no meaning or we can return to what we know and still be nothing. Just as Stoner accepts his fate 'stoically' (at least the popular view of stoicism), so the young William Andrews accepts his losses and carries on with no sense of regret.
Williams wrote true classics. His sentences often read like the Old Testament, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy's style. Perhaps McCarthy's style with Wallace Stegner's thoughtfulness. Indeed, I should not be surprised to learn that McCarthy had read Butcher's Crossing prior to writing Blood Meridian. There are many commonalities.
Strangely, for myself, this book touched many memories of dreams, of events and of emotions of my youth, as cited above. Even my philosophical beliefs were brought into play. Finally, I think of one of my great grandfathers who rode away from home one day in Montana in the 1890s. He was never heard of again. Such was the nature of the times. Such is the nature of this book.
"He could hardly recall, now, the passion that had drawn him to this room and this flesh, as if by a subtle magnetism; nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung."
The "unalterable self", of course is found to be "a nothingness" and we continue. We can continue into the unknown being certain that there is no meaning or we can return to what we know and still be nothing. Just as Stoner accepts his fate 'stoically' (at least the popular view of stoicism), so the young William Andrews accepts his losses and carries on with no sense of regret.
Williams wrote true classics. His sentences often read like the Old Testament, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy's style. Perhaps McCarthy's style with Wallace Stegner's thoughtfulness. Indeed, I should not be surprised to learn that McCarthy had read Butcher's Crossing prior to writing Blood Meridian. There are many commonalities.
Strangely, for myself, this book touched many memories of dreams, of events and of emotions of my youth, as cited above. Even my philosophical beliefs were brought into play. Finally, I think of one of my great grandfathers who rode away from home one day in Montana in the 1890s. He was never heard of again. Such was the nature of the times. Such is the nature of this book.
February 2, 2024
There is a historic black and white photo of two bison hunters. One is standing in the foreground, the other several metres above him on a huge pyramid. If you take a closer look, you realise that the pyramid consists entirely of the skulls of killed bison. The photograph symptomatically illustrates man's primitive megalomania, his inherent lust for violence and his insatiable greed for more and more.
"Butcher's Crossing" is the novel to this photograph. It is the story of young Will Andrews, who wants to experience freedom after studying at Harvard. He hopes to achieve this by going on a bison hunt lasting several weeks with three experienced hunters and skinners. They set off from the eponymous location to a secret valley in the mountains, a romantic place of longing in unspoilt nature. But the inhumanity of what they do there reflects human nature in its purest form.
William's novel is both an adventure and a coming-of-age novel that precisely traces the protagonist's initiation. But it is also a parable of man's restlessness, which is only satisfied when he has completely extinguished the bucolic. It is about the loss of innocence, bloodlust, the hubris associated with it and ultimately its nemesis.
The structure of the novel is as simple as it is effective. The secret valley is the axis on which the beginning and end are asymmetrically mirrored. It is the path from innocence to guilt and from guilt to atonement. The Rip van Winkle-like ending reveals what resonates throughout the novel: No one is immune from being erased.
"Butcher's Crossing" was published in 1960, followed 25 years later by "Lonesome Dove" and "Blood Meridian". They are three great western novels that focus on different aspects of that time, but as a trinity they conjure up a comprehensive picture of that lost world. What all three novels have in common, however, is a vehement refusal to glamourise the genre: in their range from the realistic to the mythical, they depict a world that makes you shudder - and that is conserved in these stories like an insect in amber. An insect that is both repulsive and fascinating at the same time.
"Butcher's Crossing" is the novel to this photograph. It is the story of young Will Andrews, who wants to experience freedom after studying at Harvard. He hopes to achieve this by going on a bison hunt lasting several weeks with three experienced hunters and skinners. They set off from the eponymous location to a secret valley in the mountains, a romantic place of longing in unspoilt nature. But the inhumanity of what they do there reflects human nature in its purest form.
William's novel is both an adventure and a coming-of-age novel that precisely traces the protagonist's initiation. But it is also a parable of man's restlessness, which is only satisfied when he has completely extinguished the bucolic. It is about the loss of innocence, bloodlust, the hubris associated with it and ultimately its nemesis.
The structure of the novel is as simple as it is effective. The secret valley is the axis on which the beginning and end are asymmetrically mirrored. It is the path from innocence to guilt and from guilt to atonement. The Rip van Winkle-like ending reveals what resonates throughout the novel: No one is immune from being erased.
"Butcher's Crossing" was published in 1960, followed 25 years later by "Lonesome Dove" and "Blood Meridian". They are three great western novels that focus on different aspects of that time, but as a trinity they conjure up a comprehensive picture of that lost world. What all three novels have in common, however, is a vehement refusal to glamourise the genre: in their range from the realistic to the mythical, they depict a world that makes you shudder - and that is conserved in these stories like an insect in amber. An insect that is both repulsive and fascinating at the same time.
February 9, 2022
Williams' writing is just as strong here as it was in Stoner, and the dialogue is superb. The problem simply comes down to taste and the kinds of stories I enjoy reading. I finished this without issue, but I was never as engaged as I was with Williams' other book because going out into the mountains, hunting, killing and skinning buffalo, is just not in my interest.
I did enjoy the beautiful meditations on wanderlust and Andrews' urge to seek out the wild.
I did enjoy the beautiful meditations on wanderlust and Andrews' urge to seek out the wild.
October 29, 2023
Butcher's Crossing is, in part, a coming-of-age story. Will Andrews, a young man of twenty-three, under the influence of reading Emerson, leaves Harvard and his Boston home and heads for the West and an untamed nature that he hopes will help him to define himself. He is offered a desk-job by Mr. McDonald, an old acquaintance of his father, but he decides instead to throw his lot (and all of his money) into a buffalo hunt with a wily and skilled hunter named Miller; Miller’s side-kick, Charley Hoge, who indulges his Bible and his whiskey bottle in equal measure; and a buffalo skinner named Schneider.
Sometimes after listening to the droning voices in the chapel and in the classrooms, he had fled the confines of Cambridge to the fields and woods that lay southwestward to it. There in some small solitude, standing on bare ground, he felt his head bathed by the clean air and uplifted into infinite space; the meanness and the construction he had felt were dissipated in the wildness about him.
He is green and inexperienced and he is going to have to grow up quickly to survive in this tough world he is entering. McDonald sees this; Miller probably sees it too, but he is a tough himself and believes whatever is green should be purged from a man. The whore, Francine, states it outright–she knows he will not return from this hunt the same young and gentle man, and she says so.
Almost from the moment Miller entered the story, I began to hear echoes of Moby-Dick or, The Whale. The buffalo are Miller’s white whale, and in many ways Andrews is Ishmael, observing and learning, as he is drawn into another man’s obsession. Miller is not going out into the wilderness separate from nature, as Andrews is--he is a part of this vast, complex ecosystem. He is an agent of destruction.
Often, as the group approached out of a hollow a slight rise of land, Miller, no longer outlined against the horizon, seemed to merge into the earth, a figure that accommodated itself to the color and contour of the land upon which it rode. After the first day’s journey, Miller spoke very little, as if hardly aware of the men who rode with him. Like an animal, he sniffed at the land, turning his head this way and that at sounds or scents unperceived by the others; sometimes he lifted his head in the air and did not move for long moments, as if waiting for a sign that did not come.
Williams explores so many themes in this work that one can barely touch upon them in a review. The descriptions of the senseless slaughter of the buffalo are chilling, but what is more chilling is the way in which Will Andrews changes from his initial distress to full acceptance. He has come to find himself, but we fear there is much of the better part of himself that might be lost.
...it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of itself; or it was not that self that he had imagine it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it.
Butcher’s Crossing is a coming-of-age story, Will Andrew’s story; but it is also an Odyssey, a journey that is a search for self and for home; and it is strangely, at the same moment, Moby Dick, Miller’s story, a search for the white whale, a struggle to destroy nature or be destroyed by it.
John Williams was a subtle, understated writer, who gave us the incomparable Stoner, a quiet and introverted tale. He was also a writer of epic proportions, penning this boundless adventure tale that is as large as the wilderness it portrays. Vastly different, both are equally stirring, with characters that take hold of your imagination and which you know will now live with you forever.
I am elated that I still have Augustus ahead of me. I intend to savor it.
Sometimes after listening to the droning voices in the chapel and in the classrooms, he had fled the confines of Cambridge to the fields and woods that lay southwestward to it. There in some small solitude, standing on bare ground, he felt his head bathed by the clean air and uplifted into infinite space; the meanness and the construction he had felt were dissipated in the wildness about him.
He is green and inexperienced and he is going to have to grow up quickly to survive in this tough world he is entering. McDonald sees this; Miller probably sees it too, but he is a tough himself and believes whatever is green should be purged from a man. The whore, Francine, states it outright–she knows he will not return from this hunt the same young and gentle man, and she says so.
Almost from the moment Miller entered the story, I began to hear echoes of Moby-Dick or, The Whale. The buffalo are Miller’s white whale, and in many ways Andrews is Ishmael, observing and learning, as he is drawn into another man’s obsession. Miller is not going out into the wilderness separate from nature, as Andrews is--he is a part of this vast, complex ecosystem. He is an agent of destruction.
Often, as the group approached out of a hollow a slight rise of land, Miller, no longer outlined against the horizon, seemed to merge into the earth, a figure that accommodated itself to the color and contour of the land upon which it rode. After the first day’s journey, Miller spoke very little, as if hardly aware of the men who rode with him. Like an animal, he sniffed at the land, turning his head this way and that at sounds or scents unperceived by the others; sometimes he lifted his head in the air and did not move for long moments, as if waiting for a sign that did not come.
Williams explores so many themes in this work that one can barely touch upon them in a review. The descriptions of the senseless slaughter of the buffalo are chilling, but what is more chilling is the way in which Will Andrews changes from his initial distress to full acceptance. He has come to find himself, but we fear there is much of the better part of himself that might be lost.
...it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of itself; or it was not that self that he had imagine it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it.
Butcher’s Crossing is a coming-of-age story, Will Andrew’s story; but it is also an Odyssey, a journey that is a search for self and for home; and it is strangely, at the same moment, Moby Dick, Miller’s story, a search for the white whale, a struggle to destroy nature or be destroyed by it.
John Williams was a subtle, understated writer, who gave us the incomparable Stoner, a quiet and introverted tale. He was also a writer of epic proportions, penning this boundless adventure tale that is as large as the wilderness it portrays. Vastly different, both are equally stirring, with characters that take hold of your imagination and which you know will now live with you forever.
I am elated that I still have Augustus ahead of me. I intend to savor it.
October 20, 2016
5★
In his third year at Harvard, Will Andrews leaves his studies to go west. After hearing a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson his quest is to find and experience his “unadulterated self.” The year is 1873 as he arrives in Butcher’s Crossing Colorado. He decides to fund a buffalo hunt as a way “to see as much of the country as I can. . . I want to get to know it.” I picture that scene in Dances With Wolves when the character played by Kevin Costner relates that he wants to see the West before it is all gone, and then later when he and his tribal friends come upon the scene of buffalo slaughtered for their hide and left to rot. As Michelle Latiolais writes in her excellent introduction, "Andrews seeks the wilderness so the he can be 'a part and parcel of God, free and unconfined’; what he will later encounter in nature is more akin to the malice of an Old Testament God.”
Later as he participates in the greedy slaughter of five thousand bison he “did not know who he was, or where he went.”
John Williams, author of another favorite of mine Stoner, gives us a harrowing, unadulterated, and unromanticized vision of unchecked United States westward expansion, pillaging, and slaughter. This is not the glorified version of How The West Was Won which so many still cling to today and it's a part of our collective soul as a nation. It was a tough read. I’m always saddened by the epic tragedy of what happened to our native tribes and the animal they so desperately depended upon. But I’m pleased that this masterful writer gave us this authentic American western novel.
To end on a positive note, as I was nearing the conclusion (so grateful for the timing here), a 90 second video by The Nature Conservancy popped up in my newsfeed about continuing efforts to reestablish these magnificent beasts to the plains. This is in recognition of President Obama’s signing of bipartisan legislation naming the bison America’s 1st national mammal on May 9, 2016 (link below). Perhaps this will insure that they never appear on the extinct species list.
https://www.facebook.com/GetHistoryNo...
In his third year at Harvard, Will Andrews leaves his studies to go west. After hearing a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson his quest is to find and experience his “unadulterated self.” The year is 1873 as he arrives in Butcher’s Crossing Colorado. He decides to fund a buffalo hunt as a way “to see as much of the country as I can. . . I want to get to know it.” I picture that scene in Dances With Wolves when the character played by Kevin Costner relates that he wants to see the West before it is all gone, and then later when he and his tribal friends come upon the scene of buffalo slaughtered for their hide and left to rot. As Michelle Latiolais writes in her excellent introduction, "Andrews seeks the wilderness so the he can be 'a part and parcel of God, free and unconfined’; what he will later encounter in nature is more akin to the malice of an Old Testament God.”
Later as he participates in the greedy slaughter of five thousand bison he “did not know who he was, or where he went.”
John Williams, author of another favorite of mine Stoner, gives us a harrowing, unadulterated, and unromanticized vision of unchecked United States westward expansion, pillaging, and slaughter. This is not the glorified version of How The West Was Won which so many still cling to today and it's a part of our collective soul as a nation. It was a tough read. I’m always saddened by the epic tragedy of what happened to our native tribes and the animal they so desperately depended upon. But I’m pleased that this masterful writer gave us this authentic American western novel.
To end on a positive note, as I was nearing the conclusion (so grateful for the timing here), a 90 second video by The Nature Conservancy popped up in my newsfeed about continuing efforts to reestablish these magnificent beasts to the plains. This is in recognition of President Obama’s signing of bipartisan legislation naming the bison America’s 1st national mammal on May 9, 2016 (link below). Perhaps this will insure that they never appear on the extinct species list.
https://www.facebook.com/GetHistoryNo...
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