Butcher's Crossing

Feb 16, 2013 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 4 of 5 stars

”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...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Newengland rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished-in-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 hidd...more 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....
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Apr 02, 2008 Sarah Funke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anything that's prefaced by a quotation from Melville's The Confidence Man is ok by me. This one, by the author of Stoner, owes a lot more to Melville than that -- from Transcendental meditations to musings on "white," not to mention the monomania of a man on a hunt (like Gatsby, come to think of it, but broader, and deeper, and colder/wetter, and hotter/thirstier). This is Moby-Dick in the early American west, with many, many buffalo instead of a single whale, and set very very much on land. Wi...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Judy by: Anne Reach

Shelves: 2011-reads, fiction, plains-states

Will Andrews arrives in the small, prairie town of Butcher's Crossing with an inheritance and a compulsion to see the unspoiled western frontier. He signs on with Miller, a veteran buffalo hunter, who longs to return to the Colorado country where he found a beautiful canyon hemming in a large herd of buffalo several years earlier. Amidst the slaughter of thousands of buffalo, Andrews begins to contemplate what his life is about.

The strength of this book is its depiction of the West, its people i...more

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May 16, 2008 L rated it 4 of 5 stars

"He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald. It was a feeling; it was an urge that he had to speak. But whatever he spoke he knew would be but 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,...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Maureen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

i was going to give this book a three because it's written very well, but i just couldn't bring myself to do it. the thing of it is, is that i really found it hard to bear. i normally like visceral storytelling, and certainly i get some very clear descriptions of the insides of buffalo, but i don't feel anything for these characters who go to hunt them. i can't even remember the kid's name, and his yearnings seemed empty even when i knew i was supposed to find something stirring in his gropings...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Barbara Roden rated it 5 of 5 stars

I hesitate to call this a revisionist Western, but it's certainly one for anyone who likes their Old West novels grounded in The Way Things Probably Were, rather than The Way We'd Have Liked Them To Be (more Unforgiven than Destry Rides Again. Right up there, for me, with Blood Meridian and The Englishman's Boy.

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Dec 22, 2007 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers of Americans

This book belongs to the great trilogy of literary American Westerns (the other two being McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" and Hall's "Warlock").

This is the most straight-forward of the above mentioned novels. The story is simple (Will Andrews, a young Harvard Student sneaking a transformative "Natural/"Western" experience, hooks up with 3 men in goes Buffalo hunting in Colorado.

He gets his transformative experience all right. But it turns out that Nature as a whole and man in particular is hard to...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Paolo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Il West. Per chi è cresciuto all'epoca del monopolio televisivo significa lunedì sera, John Wayne, ombre rosse, diligenze, gli indiani cattivi, i bianchi buoni, stelle nella polvere, pistoleri infallibili sotto la luce torrida di un mezzogiorno di fuoco. Poi, grazie a piccoli grandi uomini o uomini chiamati cavallo, il mito del West acquistò una prospettiva diversa, con la macchina da presa manovrata sempre dai vincitori, ma posizionata dalla parte degli sconfitti. E i cavalieri pallidi e solita...more Il West. Per chi è cresciuto all'epoca del monopolio televisivo significa lunedì sera, John Wayne, ombre rosse, diligenze, gli indiani cattivi, i bianchi buoni, stelle nella polvere, pistoleri infallibili sotto la luce torrida di un mezzogiorno di fuoco. Poi, grazie a piccoli grandi uomini o uomini chiamati cavallo, il mito del West acquistò una prospettiva diversa, con la macchina da presa manovrata sempre dai vincitori, ma posizionata dalla parte degli sconfitti. E i cavalieri pallidi e solitari iniziarono a consumare la propria sete di giustizia o vendetta non contro i pellerossa, ma contro altri cavalieri, pallidi come loro. Il West non era la valle dei monumenti e degli eroi dell'infanzia.
Quando nel 1870 arriva a Butcher's Crossing, nel Kansas, da Boston, il ventenne Will Andrews, pur essendo già uno studente di legge di Harvard, assomiglia a quel bambino del lunedì sera. Vuole entrare dentro il mito dell'Ovest, dentro il cuore della terra dei fondatori. Vuole abbandonare i libri e le strade alberate della modernità per cercare e conoscere il vero Paese, annusare e respirare il verde brillante della prateria che dimostra l'esistenza di Dio. I soldi del padre gli concedono il lusso di organizzare una spedizione di caccia di bisonti e assoldare il cacciatore migliore, Miller, un uomo ossessionato dalle sue prede così come Achab è ossessionato dalla sua balena. Miller condurrà Andrews da Butcher's Crossing alle Montagne Rocciose, nel Colorado. Nel ventre letterale della più grande mandria di bisonti mai vista. Gli mostrerà e gli farà toccare con le mani il sangue che esce dal cuore di tenebra del mito della frontiera, un mito dove il bianco accecante della morte, che arriva con la neve che intrappola per tre lunghe stagioni la spedizione sulle montagne, cancella tutte le meraviglie e le illusioni cromatiche che si riflettevano nella vita e nel cielo senza limiti della prateria. Quando tornano a Butcher's Crossing, il mercato delle pelli di bisonti non esiste più. Il cacciatore Miller è una specie estinta, come i bufali che ha sterminato. Il ragazzo Will Andrews è un uomo che sa che non ha più niente da cercare, né nel suo Paese, né nel suo futuro. Quando si rimette in cammino, solo, senza meta, inizia a rotolare dando le spalle al sole che sorge. E voi, alla lista dei monumenti del vostro West, aggiungete il libro di John Williams.(less)

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Mar 20, 2013 Noubia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, nord-america

C’è un momento nella vita in cui ci si scontra con il limite, il dolore, il fallimento. In cui si comprende di non essere al centro del mondo, e che le tracce che lasceremo saranno forse ben poca cosa, una impronta transitoria e lieve, come le orme che lasciamo sul terreno durante una nevicata.
E’ il momento in cui la vanitas e il non-senso ci si manifestano apertamente, senza veli.
La vertigine di questo risveglio, che non esclude l’accettazione della sfida che il vivere comporta, è al centro d...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Justin Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Williams was happy with three of his novels, and wrote four overall. There's more good writing, intellectual effort, emotional depth and social commentary in any one of the three approved novels than in all 18897874006836789308746739489764 items of Rothdike's oeuvre. And yet, this is relegated to cultish status, while even your great-great-grandma Ethel has probably read at least one of the Rabbit series.

My general grumpiness aside, this is amazing. The best comparison is Flaubert, another auth...more Williams was happy with three of his novels, and wrote four overall. There's more good writing, intellectual effort, emotional depth and social commentary in any one of the three approved novels than in all 18897874006836789308746739489764 items of Rothdike's oeuvre. And yet, this is relegated to cultish status, while even your great-great-grandma Ethel has probably read at least one of the Rabbit series.

My general grumpiness aside, this is amazing. The best comparison is Flaubert, another author who wrote, meticulously, a small number of novels that have almost nothing in common with each other except their excellence. Stoner is Williams' 'Bovary,' a novel that relies on the reader being able to empathize with either the main character or the narrator. 'Butcher's' is his 'Sentimental Education': not as well crafted (though still better crafted than anything else you'll come across), but probably appealing to a broader range of people. Also, a bit slow.

He takes on most of the themes you'd expect in a Western: nature, violence, solitude, heroism, and death. But there's more here than in a standard revisionist "it wasn't all cowboys and love stories" western. Rather than worrying away at the Western tradition, Williams uses those themes to worry away at America's soul and it's poorly aligned goals of getting back to our 'natural, authentic selves,' and commercial gain. Getting back to nature (which is a violent, deadly place) will, in the end, drive you mad. And commercial gain will turn you to nihilism. Given those options, it's impressive that Williams manages to give us an unsilly and ambivalent conclusion. A lesser author would have been forced into Sartre territory.

Finally, despite superficial similarities (long horse-riding scenes; long technical descriptions of lost arts), B'sC has nothing important in common with Blood Meridian. BM is a sophisticated, deeply moral satire, that is ultimately concerned with questions of good and evil; it uses its 19th century setting to criticize 20th century life. B'sC has much more in common with Moby Dick, as other reviewers have pointed out: it's not engaged with the westward course of empire, but with the terrifying real-world consequences of the American philosophical tradition, from Emerson to the present.

Definitely one to give to friends who are either flag-wavers or want to 'get back to nature.' (less)

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Feb 02, 2011 Chiseled in Rock rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Butcher’s Crossing” is Louis L’Amour on literary steroids. It’s an epic, hearty, thick-skinned Western in some ways. It’s a coming-of-age character portrait in others. The challenges get rough and they get rougher. The weather is tough and then it gets tougher. Hope is dashed, dreams are illusory. Who should you trust? Is man in charge—or nature? I’m not giving anything away. The foreboding in “Butcher’s Crossing” is palpable. The themes are telegraphed and it’s not hard to discern the bad appl...more “Butcher’s Crossing” is Louis L’Amour on literary steroids. It’s an epic, hearty, thick-skinned Western in some ways. It’s a coming-of-age character portrait in others. The challenges get rough and they get rougher. The weather is tough and then it gets tougher. Hope is dashed, dreams are illusory. Who should you trust? Is man in charge—or nature? I’m not giving anything away. The foreboding in “Butcher’s Crossing” is palpable. The themes are telegraphed and it’s not hard to discern the bad apples from the good true souls.

My sole caution to would-be readers is that this was written in 1960. The style is mid-century “classic,” full-sentence description. There are comparisons out there to Cormac McCarthy but it’s only for the rugged Western setting, not style of prose. Williams’ full-sentence descriptions, as young Will Andrews makes his way West, and then deeper into the Colorado mountains after buffalo, don’t resemble McCarthy’s edgy, dream-like style—at all. With Williams, every moment is clarified butter. There is no confusion about what’s happening and every scene is rich. It practically wafts in on the breeze as you read.

Deep in the mountains: “Andrews’s sense of direction had become numbed by the swirling white vortex of snow. The faint gray-green of the pine trees had blanketed the opposing mountainsides, which had earlier guided them in the general direction of the valley’s mouth, had long been shrouded from the views of all of them; beyond the horses and the figures huddled upon them, Andrews could not see any mark that showed him where they went. The same whiteness met his eyes wherever he looked; he had the sensation that, dizzily, they were circling around and around in a circle that gradually decreased, until they were spinning furiously upon a single point.”

There is plenty of action, yet the pace is slow. The journey from Kansas to Colorado and back is grueling, the trek up the foothills is harrowing, the buffalo slaughter is arduous (and goes on for a long chunk of the middle section of this books), and the return is told at almost the same pace. In this sense, “Butcher’s Crossing” probably more accurately captures the brutal challenge of pushing horses, oxen and carts across the prairie (and up the mountains) than some Western fiction.

“Butcher’s Crossing” is memorable, but it’s no page turner. This is the kind of novel where events accumulate to weigh on a main character and re-cast his soul. The characters are etched from the soil and fit many recognizable “types.” There’s the stoic and ever-optimistic Miller, who heads the buffalo hunting party. There’s the sourpuss buffalo skinner Schneider, who just can’t get along and feuds with Miller over directions, tactics and everything in the game plan. There’s God-fearing Charlie Hoge, who drives the wagon and loves a little whiskey with his coffee. And there’s heart-of-gold prostitute Francine, who takes a liking to young Will Andrews and who is there to see the new man when he returns from the grueling months away in Colorado.

I read this book based on a fine profile of John Williams in the Denver weekly, Westword. The author of that article, Alan Prendergast, said it well: “Every aspect of Andrews’s ordeal, from the tedium and agony of riding horseback for days across empty prairie to the mindless killing and skinning ofthousands of buffalo to the struggle to survive for months in the high country, is presented in vivid, stunning detail. Yet the prose is austere and almost unbearably dispassionate, the tale told crisply and clear-eyed even as it descends into brute slaughter.”

Mark Stevens(less)

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Dec 07, 2010 Tyler Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: westerns

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In the introduction to the reprint of this novel, Michelle Latiolais proclaims Butcher's Crossing to be a "western masterpiece" in the company of Oakley Hall's Warlock and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. It is hard not to agree with this assessment, yet while Hall and McCarthy are primarily concerned with the nature of violence, Williams casts an even wider net, speaking to our sense of manifest destiny and the desire to subjugate nature to man's financial aims. More important than theme, howe...more In the introduction to the reprint of this novel, Michelle Latiolais proclaims Butcher's Crossing to be a "western masterpiece" in the company of Oakley Hall's Warlock and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. It is hard not to agree with this assessment, yet while Hall and McCarthy are primarily concerned with the nature of violence, Williams casts an even wider net, speaking to our sense of manifest destiny and the desire to subjugate nature to man's financial aims. More important than theme, however, is the incredibly high level of writing Williams brings to bear on this so-called "low-brow" genre. Butcher's Crossing is not just one of the best westerns you will ever read but one of the finest novels period.

The story follows the idealistic young Will Andrews who leaves Harvard when convinced by Ralph Waldo Emerson to forge his identity in his relationship to nature. He heads for Butcher's Crossing, a small Kansas town on the edge of the frontier, where he meets Miller; a hunter with a tale of a hidden valley full of buffalo. With a head full of notions of adventure, Andrews offers to finance the hunting party and the two men, along with a skinner and a camp man, head out for Colorado. After a long hard journey, the men find the fabled valley and are soon hard at work slaughtering the enormous number of buffalo they find there. However they become so intent on the kill that an early mountain snowfall catches them by surprise and they are trapped in the valley until the spring thaw. Not surprisingly, when spring arrives and Andrews can return to Butcher's Crossing he is a changed man. What is surprising is that over the winter the world seems to have changed as much as he has.

Anyone who has read John William's novel Stoner will be familiar with the unadorned but powerful writing. I believe it is the mark of a truly great writer when landscapes we have read about hundreds of times in hundreds of books are described in ways that seem fresh and original. The reader is made to feel that they are experiencing the land for the first time, just as the character Will Andrews is experiencing it, and the descriptions of Andrews' thoughts and feelings are intense enough that the reader will feel a deep empathy towards him.

The coming of age of Andrews paralleles the coming of age of his country. The headstrong folly of youth - the feeling the young have that they can engage in reckless adventure and no harm will become them- may have been a national trait at the time of the great westward expansion. It has been suggested that when this book was written in the early 1960's, Williams intended it as a warning against similar folly as America moved closer to sending troops to Vietnam. Whatever Williams may have intended, the message is one that is always relevent.
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Jul 13, 2010 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Williams, John. BUTCHER’S CROSSING. (1960). ****. Williams (1922-1994) has become one of my favorite authors. It’s unfortunate that this is the last book of his that I can read (aside from his first novel which he ultimately disavowed, and I can't find anyway). I’ve read all of the other three. In this one, the author uses still another genre in which to tell his story. It is a Western. It is set in the 1870s, mostly in Colorado and Kansas. Butcher’s Crossing is a small village in Kansas that sp...more Williams, John. BUTCHER’S CROSSING. (1960). ****. Williams (1922-1994) has become one of my favorite authors. It’s unfortunate that this is the last book of his that I can read (aside from his first novel which he ultimately disavowed, and I can't find anyway). I’ve read all of the other three. In this one, the author uses still another genre in which to tell his story. It is a Western. It is set in the 1870s, mostly in Colorado and Kansas. Butcher’s Crossing is a small village in Kansas that sprang up as a center for buffalo hides, and persisted because the townspeople thought that the railroad would soon come to it. Its inhabitants are typical of the size of the town, its location, and of the times. We soon meet Will Andrews, the erstwhile narrator of the tale. Andrews is from Boston, where his family is fairly well off. He has dropped out of Harvard to come West and, hopefully, find out who he is and what he is made of. Andrews stands out like a sore thumb when he reaches Butcher’s Crossing, but he is on a mission. He introduces himself to Mr. McDonald, the local buffalo hide entrepreneur, and tells him that he would like to go out on a hunt. McDonald, seeing the obvious lack of skills and background that Will presents, learns that he had been at Harvard and offers him, instead, a job as a bookkeeper for his business. Will will not be persuaded, however, and finally gets the name of Mr. Miller, an experienced hunter and mountain man. When the two meet, Andrews offers to pay for an expedition to hunt buffalo. Miller is no fool. He has had a dream now, for years, about returning to a valley that he discovered in Colorado several years ago that contained a vast undiscovered herd of buffalo. Miller then proceeds to hire on the necessary crew: Charles Hoge, a crony of his who is missing his right hand, but can still handle a team of oxen and a wagon with ease, and Schneider, a skinner who is one of the best. Hoge becomes the driver and cook and general gofer for the team. He is a strange character, a little touched in the head, and quick to spout off quotations from the Bible that he carries with him wherever he goes. Schneider is a curmudgeon who is in it only for the money he might make. Miller is the chief, and he, too, is trying to accomplish a dream that he has had for years. They set off for Colorado, and after a series of mishaps on the trails, finally reach this secret valley. Miller was right – there is a vast herd of buffalo there, maybe 5,000 or so. The killing and skinning begin, but the men, especially Miller, get so taken up with this blood sport that they end up staying too long, and are caught by an early Winter in the mountains. This all sounds rather prosaic, but the relationships among these four men during the hunt and during the Winter when they must use all of their energy to survive keeps you glued to the page. After wintering over, the men leave the valley to return to Butcher’s Crossing. The return has its anticipated accidents, but when they arrive back in town they find that it bears no resemblance to the town they left just under a year ago. The changes reflect the effects of the disappearing buffalo pelt market and the railroad’s passage fifty miles south of town. They essentially learn that their commercial venture was useless. How the men handle this news and their subsequent lives rounds off this tale. This is another excellent novel from Williams in the style of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” or “Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Recommended.(less)

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May 25, 2010 Dwight added it

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William Andrews, a third year Harvard student and son of a Unitarian Church lay minister, for reasons unclear to himself, seeks to experience a freedom and a vigor he found lacking at home in Boston. Under the spell of Emerson and others he heads west and ends up financing and riding along on a buffalo hunt to the Colorado Territory. While Williams highlights the destruction involved as the country moved west, he avoids a simple “innocence lost” tale. Ther...more

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Jul 06, 2009 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
New York: New York Review of Books
$14.95 – 274 pages (1960, reissued 2007)

For those of us who truly love books, the greatest pleasures are often derived from discovering the “neglected classics” – remarkable books that somehow manage to pass under our personal radar. In the great deluge of novels that have flooded this country for the past fifty years, it is not surprising to discover that many distinguished works were published with little or no fanfare - they...more Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
New York: New York Review of Books
$14.95 – 274 pages (1960, reissued 2007)

For those of us who truly love books, the greatest pleasures are often derived from discovering the “neglected classics” – remarkable books that somehow manage to pass under our personal radar. In the great deluge of novels that have flooded this country for the past fifty years, it is not surprising to discover that many distinguished works were published with little or no fanfare - they fade quietly, unnoticed by either the critics or the media.

Well, it is gratifying to learn that somebody noticed John Williams and lifted his three novels (Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner and Augustus) from obscurity. (The New York Review of Books is devoted to finding “lost or missed” classics). Although the Denver-based author of Butcher’s Crossing died in 1994, his works are being reevaluated (and critically acclaimed). Almost fifty years after their publication, his works continue to attract attention. Current critics compare Butcher’s Crossing to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and graduate students are finding the novels of John Williams on their required reading lists.

Butcher’s Crossing is a western. The setting is the 1870’s when Will Andrews arrives in the raw and primitive town of Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas. A Harvard graduate and a fervent admirer of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Andrews is on a spiritual quest. He wants to encounter Nature in its most brutal aspect (“bloody in tooth and claw”) so that he can merge, or “become One” with it.

Essentially, this is the clichéd beginning of a hundred potboilers: the eastern “tenderfoot” confronts a daunting “rites of passage,” but his innate courage and moral principles enables him to survive. He emerges hardened and confident, ready to take his place among the stalwart natives of the rugged west.

However, Will Andrews is destined to encounter a dark and brutal world that bears no resemblance to Emerson’s precepts. His six-month ordeal as a member of a buffalo hunting party not only change his perceptions of the natural world; it also provides him with the dubious opportunity to experience a dark and mindless violence that has much in common with Joseph Conrad’s descent into the heart of darkness.

When Andrews arrives in Butcher’s Crossing, he makes the belated discovery that the great buffalo hunts are virtually over. (The fashion craze in the East for buffalo coats has diminished and customers are complaining about the “smell that they can’t get rid of.”) The surrounding prairie is littered with thousands of bone piles that the local farmers are slowly converting to fertilizer. However, by chance, he meets Miller, a buffalo hunter who tells him of a remote valley in Colorado where an enormous herd grazes peacefully. Using his inheritance, Andrews offers to finance a hunting expedition, on the condition that he is included in the party.

Thus begins a journey into an immense wilderness; yet it is a transitory world that is forever altered by the passage of these men who seem to have a desire to destroy everything they see. In addition to Miller and Andrews, the hunting party includes Charlie Hoge, a one-handed
alcoholic with a penchant for quoting scripture, and Fred Schneider, an angry, taciturn man who glares at world around him with contempt. Hoge is a gifted cook and driver; Schneider is a skinner. Miller promises that they will return with several thousand hides – enough to make
them all wealthy.

The journey is memorable. The author’s ability to describe natural phenomena, a terrifying snow storm, thirst, drought and the immensity of the natural world is remarkable. However, I feel that John Williams’ real purpose is to demolish the “myth of the West.” The author does not describe a primitive world where men are ennobled by travail and hazardous encounters. Instead, he takes his tenderfoot to the brink of an abyss where he glimpses the mindless and destructive violence in his own heart.(less)

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Feb 27, 2013 Steven rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's a shame Clint Eastwood isn't making any more Westerns, because I'd love to get him up on a horse one last time to play Miller, the seasoned, methodical, and utterly insane buffalo hunter leading an ill-fated expedition in Butcher's Crossing. Though he's the most memorable character, Miller isn't the protagonist: that would be Will Andrews, a young Harvard dropout who goes looking for experience on the frontier of 1870s America. It goes without saying that once he joins a group of hunters lo...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars

Above all other things, Butcher's Crossing is procedural. I hesitate to call it descriptive; the novel takes a meditative approach to its characters and the environs, but its attempts at metaphor and poetic imagery fall short, and some descriptions lack specificity. While Williams' prose oftentimes has a cinematic quality that transcends its simplistic clarity, it often veers into vagueness:

“The roaring was intense and hollow in his ears; he looked down from the
point of land that dipped and s...more Above all other things, Butcher's Crossing is procedural. I hesitate to call it descriptive; the novel takes a meditative approach to its characters and the environs, but its attempts at metaphor and poetic imagery fall short, and some descriptions lack specificity. While Williams' prose oftentimes has a cinematic quality that transcends its simplistic clarity, it often veers into vagueness:

“The roaring was intense and hollow in his ears; he looked down from the
point of land that dipped and swayed in his sight, and saw the water. It was
a deep but transparent greenish brown, and it flowed past him in thick ropes
and sheeted wedges, in shapes that changed with an incredible complexity
before his gaze.” (221-222)

The passage above approaches immediacy with its 'thick ropes' , but the occasional absence of concreteness (e.g., what exactly is a 'transparenet greenish-brown', and what am I to surmise from 'incredible complexity') robs it of urgency. Because its thoroughness stays remote, the narrative resorts to outlining procedure. Passages involving setting up camp, pursuing the buffalo, or coping with a devastating snowstorm chronicle the character's actions: we know what they do, and we witness them as if they are in consistent motion. Butcher's Crossing invests itself in routine, and this choice on Williams's part is appropriate and prudent. Since these characters are meant to immerse themselves in nature, the novel stays on physical ground, and its emphasis on action and technique ensures that it stay externalized. There is little thought or dialogue that extends beyond the characters telling each other what's next in the procedure, or how to teach the procedure. Andrews's development is banished to the territory of exposition, of an outside observer summarizing thoughts instead of disclosing them.

I tried to give the novel the benefit of a doubt, because Butcher's Crossing's priority is theme, and it draws inspiration from refuting Emersonian philosophy. Like Stoner, the tone's abstract distance bolsters its form-and-content unity. My struggle with Butcher's Crossing lies between finding this either a shortcoming, or a victory in the name of thematic consistency. As Butcher's Crossing looks at the effects of man returning to his nature, the creature becomes one of primal instinct, not of thought; the book makes it clear that Miller, this story's Ahab (despite the introduction, Williams is not generous enough in his debt to Melville, and Ahab's thirst for revenge evokes more empathy than Miller's aloof greed), can unite and immerse himself in Nature. For Schneider, little more than Miller's foil, this is a struggle. Our protagonist, Andrews, is a negligible bystander except for the occasional aside about (of course) a love interest born from naivete. Charley Hoge represents little more than man's retreat from humanity's dark truths into a comfortable religion. These people are one-dimensional because the character dynamic serves as a simple framework from which to dangle a long-term procedure. Suddenly I realized I was not endorsing Williams's distance, but apologizing for it. In Stoner, I found the distance dazzling: the novel takes on Stoner's persona, and its prose embodies the stoic, presumably incompetent lecturer to disarming effect. Here, it is lofty aspiration exceeding the capabilities of its author. I yearned for the odyssey in Blood Meridian: its rich and efficacious prose, how McCarthy worked miracles out of a barren landscape and a monotonous journey. The key? McCarthy did it with a small brush. Butcher's Crossing feels simultaneously approachable and erudite, whereas Stoner put these shortcomings to work.

Butcher's Crossing often disregards subtlety, using broad expanses of snow as a “vast coldness,” or “going with the flow” down the river. It repeatedly tells us how “one” Miller is with his surroundings, and utilizes repeated monitoring of the characters' facial features to symbolize their dehumanization. These forms of directness become less forgivable in the story's denouement, when Williams, through a series of cartoonish and melodramatic psychological shifts, and a closing summation of Andrews' epiphany, gracelessly shows his hand.

Despite Williams's faults as a prose stylist, I relish the thematic relationship between Butcher's Crossing and Stoner. Stoner focuses on the retreat from the world into the mind, and how the mental life can triumph over the dread of the natural. But Butcher's Crossing takes the opposite direction: Andrews, our protagonist, leaves Harvard College to experience an Emersonian transcendence, to leave a sheltered, mental life and seek a moment in the wilderness where he unites with a deeper, truer sense of identity. He rejects the cerebral for the instinctual, complacency for physicality, and therefore stands in stark opposition to Stoner. In Butcher's Crossing, we see a character escape academia, return to his nature, and become entrenched in ideological and literal failure. In Stoner, we see a man exiled from his physical urges work toward an academic retreat. Both trajectories yield identically tragic results. Taking the works together, I ask: is it possible to ever escape that slow erosion of human dignity, the chipping-away of the heart at the merciless hands of Time? Is the yearn to escape from any domain always to yield disappointment, a long-term bereavement for a sense of self? I suppose for Williams, humanity cannot recover. And I found this revelation staggering, but only when Butcher's Crossing is considered in tandem. Whether or not this was Williams's intent, I am unsure; I cannot tell with Williams if and when I allocate too much credit. But seeing two opposing journeys lead to the exact same place beholds such a charming power that I am tempted to overlook Williams's misfires as a prose stylist, and admire the truth illuminated by this dichotomy.

I adore Butcher's Crossing as an articulately thought-out argument against Emerson's journey into our true selves. Williams's conviction that “the mechanical madness of human behavior suggets man at one with nature – man's nature – to be a horrifying prospect” (xv) is impeccably formulated, and executed with delicate alacrity. It comprises classic Westerns, coming-of-age stories, and Perfect Storm-esque cautionary tales, and manages to make as focused a statement on the measured trials of the spirit as Stoner. Yet the means to that end condemn it to being damnably, frustratingly unfulfilling.
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Allen I had a similar experience with the "descriptive" aspect of the book. Having not read Stoner, I'm curious how they are similar/different in that sense...more
Apr 04, 2011 09:15pm

Luke I've been trying to figure out some way to add to the discussion for a while. It's taken me so long partly because I've been internet-deprived, and pa...more
Apr 11, 2011 02:49pm

Oct 09, 2008 Ben Loory rated it 3 of 5 stars

a good book, well written. it's no "moby-dick in the west," though, as i was led to believe. :)

but still, vivid and well-imagined, with prose scrubbed CLEAN AND BRIGHT AS POLISHED STEEL!!!!!

"He thought of the three or four days that he would have to wait in the place before Miller and the others were ready. He thought of how he might spend them, and he wondered how he might press them into one crumpled bit of time that he could toss away."

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Oct 30, 2009 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Steve by: Rose Gowen

Shelves: fiction, westerns

Butcher’s Crossing is a pretty good western, with loads of frontier life details, such as how to make bullets, kill buffalo, skin buffalo, eat buffalo, etc. These details (along with some wonderful descriptions of landscapes), are the strength of the book, but they are delivered in such a deliberate way that I have to wonder if less would of meant more. The story is about young Harvard (Andrews) type seeking the real West – whatever that is. He bankrolls a buffalo hunt with some standard stock c...more

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Sep 08, 2009 Cynthia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2009

It’s hard to believe we had, at one time, such a place as the the old west for our young people to cut their teeth in! A young man from Boston who’s spent 3 years at Harvard rides a stage coach across country to a deserted 10 horse town in Kansas. He’s literally set down in the middle of nothing. I loved Williams’ description of the ‘town’. The buildings had been hastily put up and the people were barely socialized. The only industry was killing animals to sell to a middle man for the Eastern ma...more It’s hard to believe we had, at one time, such a place as the the old west for our young people to cut their teeth in! A young man from Boston who’s spent 3 years at Harvard rides a stage coach across country to a deserted 10 horse town in Kansas. He’s literally set down in the middle of nothing. I loved Williams’ description of the ‘town’. The buildings had been hastily put up and the people were barely socialized. The only industry was killing animals to sell to a middle man for the Eastern market. Against this backdrop our Emerson besotted Bostonian joins up with a few hardened frontier men who are looking for a bank roll so they can chase their dream of killing buffalo. Our hero, Will Andrews, can’t resist the adventure this Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza tempt him with. They set out and encounter way more than windmills. They head towards the mountains of Colorado.

I’d never heard of John Williams until I came across a review of his “Stoner” which led me to Butcher’s Crossing. He’s an incredible writer and though the entire book is not to be missed the last third was achingly beautiful. The landscape is intrinsic to the story. It could even be considered one of the main characters. Here’s one of the many passages that I couldn’t help reading over and over. It describes the coming of spring, “The mountainside was a riot of varied shade and hue. The dark green of the pine boughs was lightened to a greenish yellow at the tips, where new growth was starting; scarlet and white buds were beginning to open on the wild-berry bushes; and the pale green of new growth on the slender aspens shimmered above the silver-white bark of their trunks. All about the ground the pale new grass reflected the light of the sun into the shadowed recesses beneath the great pines, and the dark trunks glowed in that light, faintly, as if the light came from the hidden centers of the trees themselves. He thought that if he listened he could hear the sound of growth.” Writing just doesn’t get much better than this in my opinion.
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Mar 26, 2013 Cristina rated it 4 of 5 stars

I bought and read the book (in its Italian translation) because of its magnificient reviews on the back of the cover. When I discovered that they were referring to "Stoner" it was too late!
I read the book without stopping and it does not surprise me that its rights to make a movie have been bought: it is made of images. It has reminded me Sean Penn's movie, "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's novel. A search of the real self hidden by the lies of civilization in the middle of the Wild.
Now...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Lara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, western, fiction

Oh, boy, where do I start. This was excellent.

This is one of those books that unfolds in your head like a movie - you don't read it, you watch it mentally. The imagery is outstanding.

Will Andrews is a Harvard kid and the son of a Unitarian minister in Boston - the perfect child of the Transcendentalist movement. Fired up by Ralph Waldo Emerson's lectures. he comes to Butcher's Crossing because he wants to experience the West, and of course, what better way to do that than to go on a buffalo hunt...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

John Williams' better-known (since its reissue, at least) campus novel Stoner has been widely praised for making a quiet, seemingly uneventful life into riveting fiction. Butcher's Crossing is almost the opposite -- it takes the west of wild frontier towns and buffalo hunts, a setting that seems to guarantee excitement, and shows a reality of violence that is mechanical, hollow, and ultimately banal. The landscape is dramatic, as is the weather, and far more so than the buffalo slaughter the eas...more

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Dec 05, 2010 Mark Stevens rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Butcher’s Crossing” is Louis L’Amour on literary steroids. It’s an epic, hearty, thick-skinned Western in some ways. It’s a coming-of-age character portrait in others. The challenges get rough and they get rougher. The weather is tough and then it gets tougher. Hope is dashed, dreams are illusory. Who should you trust? Is man in charge—or nature? I’m not giving anything away. The foreboding in “Butcher’s Crossing” is palpable. The themes are telegraphed and it’s not hard to discern the bad appl...more “Butcher’s Crossing” is Louis L’Amour on literary steroids. It’s an epic, hearty, thick-skinned Western in some ways. It’s a coming-of-age character portrait in others. The challenges get rough and they get rougher. The weather is tough and then it gets tougher. Hope is dashed, dreams are illusory. Who should you trust? Is man in charge—or nature? I’m not giving anything away. The foreboding in “Butcher’s Crossing” is palpable. The themes are telegraphed and it’s not hard to discern the bad apples from the good true souls.

My sole caution to would-be readers is that this was written in 1960. The style is mid-century “classic,” full-sentence description. There are comparisons out there to Cormac McCarthy but it’s only for the rugged Western setting, not style of prose. Williams’ full-sentence descriptions, as young Will Andrews makes his way West, and then deeper into the Colorado mountains after buffalo, don’t resemble McCarthy’s edgy, dream-like style—at all. With Williams, every moment is clarified butter. There is no confusion about what’s happening and every scene is rich. It practically wafts in on the breeze as you read.

Deep in the mountains: “Andrews’s sense of direction had become numbed by the swirling white vortex of snow. The faint gray-green of the pine trees had blanketed the opposing mountainsides, which had earlier guided them in the general direction of the valley’s mouth, had long been shrouded from the views of all of them; beyond the horses and the figures huddled upon them, Andrews could not see any mark that showed him where they went. The same whiteness met his eyes wherever he looked; he had the sensation that, dizzily, they were circling around and around in a circle that gradually decreased, until they were spinning furiously upon a single point.”

There is plenty of action, yet the pace is slow. The journey from Kansas to Colorado and back is grueling, the trek up the foothills is harrowing, the buffalo slaughter is arduous (and goes on for a long chunk of the middle section of this books), and the return is told at almost the same pace. In this sense, “Butcher’s Crossing” probably more accurately captures the brutal challenge of pushing horses, oxen and carts across the prairie (and up the mountains) than some Western fiction.

“Butcher’s Crossing” is memorable, but it’s no page turner. This is the kind of novel where events accumulate to weigh on a main character and re-cast his soul. The characters are etched from the soil and fit many recognizable “types.” There’s the stoic and ever-optimistic Miller, who heads the buffalo hunting party. There’s the sourpuss buffalo skinner Schneider, who just can’t get along and feuds with Miller over directions, tactics and everything in the game plan. There’s God-fearing Charlie Hoge, who drives the wagon and loves a little whiskey with his coffee. And there’s heart-of-gold prostitute Francine, who takes a liking to young Will Andrews and who is there to see the new man when he returns from the grueling months away in Colorado.

I read this book based on a fine profile of John Williams in the Denver weekly, Westword. The author of that article, Alan Prendergast, said it well: “Every aspect of Andrews’s ordeal, from the tedium and agony of riding horseback for days across empty prairie to the mindless killing and skinning ofthousands of buffalo to the struggle to survive for months in the high country, is presented in vivid, stunning detail. Yet the prose is austere and almost unbearably dispassionate, the tale told crisply and clear-eyed even as it descends into brute slaughter.”
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Apr 12, 2013 Sakura87 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autori-nordamericani, esimiosconosciuto-challenge, non-in-libreria, novecento, western, storico

Secondo romanzo dell'autore americano John Edward Williams, più conosciuto per il successivo Stoner (di cui tutti parlano ma che nessuno sembra aver letto), Butcher's Crossing vede finalmente la luce in Italia dopo più di cinquant'anni dalla sua pubblicazione originale. E' stato talvolta indicato, non a torto, come uno degli antecedenti più prossimi di temi cari a Cormac McCarthy: la lotta tra l'uomo e la natura selvaggia, la perfezione dei grandi spazi dell'incontaminato, la violenza e il decad...more Secondo romanzo dell'autore americano John Edward Williams, più conosciuto per il successivo Stoner (di cui tutti parlano ma che nessuno sembra aver letto), Butcher's Crossing vede finalmente la luce in Italia dopo più di cinquant'anni dalla sua pubblicazione originale. E' stato talvolta indicato, non a torto, come uno degli antecedenti più prossimi di temi cari a Cormac McCarthy: la lotta tra l'uomo e la natura selvaggia, la perfezione dei grandi spazi dell'incontaminato, la violenza e il decadimento. In un certo senso, si potrebbe dire che Butcher's Crossing mostra il passaggio verso l'era moderna dei territori di frontiera, gli stessi che McCarthy mostrerà nel loro declino.
Ambientato intorno al 1870, il romanzo costituisce dunque un vivido spaccato della vita di frontiera: Butcher's Crossing è un ammasso di case al limitare della prateria, la cui principale fonte di reddito è il commercio delle pellicce di bisonte, in attesa dell'imminente costruzione della ferrovia.

«Bastava un solo sguardo, o quasi, per contemplare tutta Butcher’s Crossing. Un gruppo di sei baracche di legno era tagliato in due da una stradina sterrata e poco oltre, su entrambi i lati, c’erano alcune tende sparse. Il carro ne superò una sulla sinistra, eretta in modo approssimativo, di color grigio militare, con i due lati arrotolati verso l’alto e una tavola appesa a un lembo del tetto, su cui era scritto alla meglio, in caratteri rossi «Joe Long-Barbiere». Sul lato opposto della strada c’era un edificio basso, quasi quadrato, senza finestre, con un pezzo di tela a mo’ di porta. Davanti alle assi di legno grezzo della costruzione c’era un’insegna più curata dell’altra, con su scritto, in nero, «Bradley-Tessuti». Di fronte all’edificio successivo, una lunga struttura rettangolare a due piani, la diligenza si fermò. Dall’interno proveniva un basso, continuo mormorio di voci, unito al tintinnio costante dei bicchieri che sbattevano l’uno contro l’altro. Una lunga tettoia schermava l’ingresso, ma sopra alla porta, nell’ombra, si distingueva un’insegna dai caratteri elaborati, rossi con i bordi neri, che diceva: «Jackson’s Saloon».»

Tale è lo scenario che si offre agli occhi di Andrews Willis, giovane studente di Harvard in cerca di «quella natura selvaggia [...] forma di libertà e bellezza, di speranza e vigore che gli sembrava alla base di tutte le cose più intime della sua vita, che pure non erano né libere, né belle, né piene di speranza o vigore. Ciò che cercava era l’origine e la salvezza del suo mondo, un mondo che sembrava sempre ritrarsi spaventato dalle sue stesse origini, piuttosto che ricercarle come la prateria lì intorno, che affondava le sue radici fibrose nella nera e fertile umidità della terra, nella natura selvaggia, rinnovandosi proprio in questo modo, anno dopo anno.» Il villaggio polveroso, la prateria sterminata, il miraggio di terre ancor più estreme e della vita da cacciatore operano in lui una vera e propria trasfigurazione: dimentico degli agi di Boston, decide d'impulso di investire i suoi risparmi in una spedizione che tutti in paese gli sconsigliano. Miller, cacciatore veterano, aspetta da dieci anni l'occasione della sua vita, una battuta di caccia ai danni di una colossale mandria di bufali avvistata in una valle tra le montagne del Colorado.
I prati del Kansas lasciano ben presto posto al deserto, alle altezze vertiginose del Colorado, al verde eden da esse protetto e in cui penetra infine l'uomo. La natura incontaminata accoglie e ingloba Willis e i suoi compagni: Miller, l'uomo di ferro, roso dall'ossessione del cacciatore; Charlie, il conciatore monco dedito al whiskey e alla bibbia; Schneider, lo scuoiatore mercenario.
Willis, a un passo dal trovare quella verità che di cui è alla ricerca, contempla con occhi vergini la maestosità del paesaggio che lo circonda, rendendosi complice della carneficina compiuta da Miller. La natura selvaggia finirà per trasformare gli uomini che vi sono penetrati: Miller vi si contrapporrà con un'esaltazione ai limiti della follia, restando vittima della sua stessa fame di sangue; Charlie, resosi complice di Miller, verrà privato del senno; Schneider, il pensiero sempre rivolto alla civiltà, finirà per essere il capro espiatorio della vendetta del Creato. Solo Willis, che vi si è assoggettato senza compromessi, trarrà infine una risposta alla sua ricerca di un senso, fornendo dunque la chiave di volta di Butcher's Crossing: la sua essenza di bildungsroman.
Punto di forza del romanzo è la suggestiva ambientazione, che Williams restituisce con un magistrale talento evocativo: ma tale è la forza descrittiva, dei personaggi come dei paesaggi, che purtroppo finisce per annullare qualsiasi altro elemento. Butcher’s Crossing è come un film dalla fotografia superba che manca di una trama; come un documentario mozzafiato di terre estreme in un tempo ormai passato; come un arazzo di quasi quattrocento pagine: splendido da contemplare, ma privo di movimento.

Recensione pubblicata anche su http://www.lastambergadeilettori.com/...(less)

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Feb 05, 2013 Scott Foshee rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Butcher's Crossing" Is a Magnificent and Criminally Under Recognized Novel

One of the most satisfying things about reading for me lies in the discovery of lost gems.

It is a joy to find the work of John Williams, an exquisite yet largely unknown American novelist whose works are currently in the process of being rediscovered. The first John Williams book I read was the terrific "Stoner," about a nondescript small college professor in the Midwest in the first half of the 20th century. "Butcher's...more "Butcher's Crossing" Is a Magnificent and Criminally Under Recognized Novel

One of the most satisfying things about reading for me lies in the discovery of lost gems.

It is a joy to find the work of John Williams, an exquisite yet largely unknown American novelist whose works are currently in the process of being rediscovered. The first John Williams book I read was the terrific "Stoner," about a nondescript small college professor in the Midwest in the first half of the 20th century. "Butcher's Crossing" is the second book of his that I devoured, Williams' only western, set in 1870's Kansas and Colorado. The subject matter of the two books is vastly different, and here Williams' fiercely intelligent, brutal, and understated writing style brings to life what the New York Times Book Review called "perhaps the first and best revisionist western." "Butcher's Crossing" paved the way for Cormac McCarthy ("Blood Meridian," "All the Pretty Horses," "The Road") and others writing in the genera favoring realism over romanticism in the American West. Instead of promoting the popular western mythology and "false ideals of manhood," the revisionist western portrays the Old West more realistically. In the view of noted Italian director Sergio Leone, the revisionist western recognizes the American West as "a dirty place filled with morally ambivalent figures."

William Andrews drops out of Harvard University in the 1870's and heads west full of the naturalistic idealism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Andrews is caught up in Emerson's idea of truth and beauty in nature, and believes he can find what he is looking for on the American frontier. He ends up in the backwater town of Butcher's Crossing Kansas, a "hide town" that is the base of operations for buffalo hunters in the area. The buffalo are dwindling in Kansas, but Andrews hooks up with veteran buffalo man Miller, who tells tales of one last untouched heard of thousands in a hidden valley in the mountains of the Colorado territory. Andrews finances Miller's expedition and they take off late in the year (August) to make their fortunes along with one-handed Bible-thumping alcoholic cook Charley Hoge and petulant skinner Fred Schneider. They very nearly die of thirst on the way, but finally find the valley Miller remembers from years before, complete with buffalo as far as the eye can see.

Miller begins to kill the buffalo while Andrews helps Schneider with the dirty business of skinning the hides. The days turn into weeks and the heard shrinks more and more until the stacks of bailed hides far exceed the party's capacity to haul them out in their single wagon. Still Miller kills, obsessed with wiping out every last head. They stay too long, get trapped in the valley by a blinding blizzard and end up having to wait until spring to make their escape. During the long months of isolation they all begin to change, and one of the fascinating things to watch is Andrews' consciousness of his own transformation, even as he is powerless to stop it. Far from the idealized west, Andrews gradually realizes that it is a terrifying place with the road to progress paved in blood.

"Butcher's Crossing" has many similarities to "Moby Dick." Miller is an obsessive Ahab-like figure bent on the complete destruction of either the heard or himself. We have Andrews' subtle coming of age and disturbing transformation (like Ishmael) from greenhorn to desensitized butcher of animal carcasses. There are also the author's unsparing descriptions of the environment surrounding the men, how it changes them, and how the men change the ecology of the environment itself.

Time Out New York said that "Butcher's Crossing" is "a graceful and brutal story of isolated men gone haywire." In her introduction to the edition Michelle Latiolais writes, "John Williams' unflinching attention in `Butcher's Crossing' to the mechanical madness of human behavior suggests man at one with nature -- man's nature -- to be a horrifying prospect."

"Butcher's Crossing" is a magnificent and criminally under recognized novel. Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" is often cited as one of the best American novels (I agreed when I read and reviewed it last year), but "Butcher's Crossing," written in 1960, predates it by 25 years and deserves at least as much recognition. Author John Williams is a true master and his works deserve a much wider readership. Very highly recommended.

SPECIAL NOTE: I just found out that director Sam Mendes ("Revolutionary Road") is currently adapting "Butcher's Crossing" for film. Joe Penhall, who adapted Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" for film, reportedly is working on the script.
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Nov 28, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, nyrb

This book, for me, was more about the writing than anything else. I read it about three years ago, after finishing one of Williams’ other books, Stoner. Stoner is a powerful book but very different, both in tone and content, from Butcher’s Crossing. What the books share, however, is a master-craftsman’s concern with language. Williams eliminates all superfluities from his narratives, and while his novels occasionally adopt a philosophical tone, such instances generally serve an indirect and tenu...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Joanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thank you, thank you to my pal Ron for suggesting I read this wonderful piece of literature. I was captivated immediately. This is a story of the "wild west" and a young man's quest to find his place in the world. The prose is a joy. Oh how wonderful to read the descriptions, feel the emotions, experience the hardships. I lingered over the words and reread the phrases and paragraphs. Will Andrews leaves Boston, Harvard and Emerson behind and heads out west where he bankrolls a buffalo hunt. The...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Cormac McCarthy without the excess.

A cleanly-told story of a kid going out west looking for adventure and taking his place in the process of systematic destruction of everything that drew him out there in the first place, including his own romantic notions. Still, there's no hint of modernity-- there aren't even any machines in the book, unless you count guns. Humans remain frail and very vulnerable. Most of the pages are devoted to their overcoming fairly simple obstacles-- crossing a dry stret...more

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