NYRB Classics discussion

NYRB Classics book for February 2024

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.

Trevor, could you update the Group Home page? I can't figure out how to do that (or don't have permission to). Thanks in advance!

I read this last month, it’s understated, engaging, and challenges the Transcendentalist philosophy that one finds oneself in nature where one has to rely on intuition and the physical world. William leaves Harvard after hearing Emerson speak which cued me to the impact of Transcendalist thought in the novel.

Also, my family watched the movie with Nicolas Cage the other night. We’re big fans of indie films and I thought we’d enjoy it. We did not. No surprise it was not as good as the book.

I started yesterday and at 25%, agree with everything Wendy said. A nice thing about Williams is how well the parts contribute to the whole so while reading the novel, one feels each sentence building on the predecessor, working toward a conclusion.

This is my second Williams, Stoner, was excellent.

I really enjoyed both Stoner and Butcher's Crossing. They were both beautiful books in their own ways.

I haven’t read Augustus, but I hope to soon.

Butcher's Crossing was also my second Williams' not as good as Stoner, but easily beautiful for different reasons. I do admire how different John Williams' work is, in spite of how small it is.

I agree Stoner was better.

Chapter V is probably one of the best "western" chapters I have ever read and it stirs many different emotions. I do love how well Williams writes his chapters, opening and closing them as is they were self-contained. Some might find this too traditional, but I like approach to chapters.

Haven't read Stoner yet, but it's on my list.

The best "western" I've read was Warlock. Incredible. Then I read Butcher's Crossing. Now I can't decide.

And I've not seen the movie yet. Nor the movie from the 50's (I think) that was based on Warlock.

Not enough hours in the weekend.

Best Western overall for me is Blood Meridian, but that's not an NYRB title, it, Butchers Crossing and Warlock easily make a top 3.

Howard Bloom agreed with you, Christopher. My friend was interested in Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West because she knew what Bloom said about it. I got it for her for this last Christmas, she called me a week later and said she couldn’t read it. She said the violence and the man with the head of an enslaved person in a bag that he referred to as his n—head was too much for her. If she shows more interest in Westerns I’ll get her Butcher’s Crossing.