NYRB Classics discussion

Butcher's Crossing



Publication Date: January 16, 2007
Pages: 296
Introduction by Michelle Latiolais
Originally published in 1960.

In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus , John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.

It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.

One of my favorite covers. I think that's Albert Bierstadt.

And one of my favorite books :-) . And that is Albert Bierstadt.

I just finished this. It was hard to put down. I read the whole thing in about 6 hours. Good stuff.

One thing that bothers me though is that the back blurb says "Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard...". I couldn't find this exact quote in the text. Emerson is mentioned a couple times, but not the phrase "an original relation to nature."

Another oddity is the writers NYRB finds to write their introductions...who is this person? She was a student of the author, but...has anyone heard of her? Maybe it's just me but I wish they would look harder to find high profile literary critics or academics to write these introductions.

"One thing that bothers me though is that the back blurb says "Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard...". I couldn't find this exact quote in the text. Emerson is mentioned a couple times, but not the phrase 'an original relation to nature.'"

It might be a misquote. In Nature, Emerson calls for "an original relation to the universe."

As to Michelle Latiolais, I hadn't heard of her before this, but she's not just a random student of John Williams. She's a professor at UC Irvine and author. It's been a while since I read her introduction, but I liked her personal knowledge of John Williams, as well; such that, even if her profile isn't that high, I valued her perspective.

Well, that's fair enough.

For me some of the introductions are hits, some are misses.