Customer Reviews

Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If such a thing as the Great American Novel can be said to exist, it would very likely encompass the country's 19th Century westward expansion. After all, it was this irresistible land grab - with its ruthless expulsion and genocide of native Americans, its hunting to exinction of buffalo, and its struggles against Nature in search of the better life - that defined America's cultural personality and self-image for the following 150 - 200 years. The rootless but ever-hopeful individualist, the lonely conqueror of Nature, the rugged Marlboro Man begat the robber barons and industrialists, the real estate, oil, and hedge fund tycoons, the Internet entrepreneurs, and even the self-righteous, Iraq-invading neoconservatives.

Amazingly, John Williams's utterly brilliant BUTCHER'S CROSSING - perhaps, indeed, THE Great American Novel - appears to have gone largely unnoticed among the general reading public. Published in 1960, five years before the author's equally impressive STONER and 25 years before Cormac McCarthy's deservedly renowned BLOOD MERIDIAN, BUTCHER'S CROSSING encapsulates many of the American West's mythologies. Yet Williams is hardly a romantic in his interpretation. He presents the opening West as harsh and brutal, populated by socially challenged obsessives who view the land and everything in it as their private domains, seized by choice and held by force of will and gun.

Williams's ostensible hero is William Andrews, fresh from three years at Harvard and seeking an adventure in the West with a childlike enthusiasm and understanding. His mind filled by a romantic, Emerson-inspired view of Nature and his pockets filled with an inheritance from his uncle, Andrews heads for the decidedly uninspired, six-building town of Butcher's Crossing, Kansas. Within a matter of days, greenhorn Will has met the local buffalo hide trader McDonald and a long-time buffalo hunter named Miller. The traditional hunting grounds in Kansas have already been depleted to the point where only small herds of a few hundred animals can be found. However, Miller had discovered a hidden mountain valley in Colorado nine years earlier teeming with buffalo and has been waiting for enough money to finance the expedition. In return for accompanying the party as an apprentice hide skinner, Andrews underwrites the hunt. Miller recruits his neurotic sidekick, the Bible-beating Charley Hoge as the wagon man and a taciturn German named Schneider as their skinner. While Miller is away purchasing the necessary supplies, Will meets a prostitute named Francine. She falls for his soft hands and not yet hardened heart, but the immature Will is frightened off by her aggressive sexuality.

The bulk of BUTCHER'S CROSSING concerns the journey to find the buffalo, Miller's rediscovery of his Shangri-la valley, the hunt itself, the life-threatening storms the group endures, and finally, the difficult return trip to Butcher's Crossing to sell their hides. Along the way, Williams's book becomes a classic coming of age story, a discourse on ecology and species survival, and the story of an irrational, Ahab-like obsession that nearly ends in the men's destruction. In the end, Williams levies his own ironic form of judgment against Miller and McDonald for their repeated violations of Nature. Despite reconciling his feelings for Francine on his return to town, Andrews's future in the West is left deliberately uncertain. Perhaps he has finally learned to live with and respect Nature and will eventually find his rightful place. Or perhaps he, too, will be punished for his sins, forever banished to wandering the wilds alone, scarred by the real-life education he so enthusiastically sought from Miller.

Throughout the book, Williams's writing is sparse and direct, unsparing in its treatment of the men's deprivations and the bloodiness of the hunt. His characters are distinctive and memorable; although we never see deeply inside them, we know them for the archetypes they are. Dialog is limited and short, as these are men of few words. The overall effect of the writing remarkably prefigures that of Cormac McCarthy without the density and compound, run-on sentences, resulting in a highly readable and deeply engaging page turner. Fans of McCarthy will certainly appreciate Williams's accomplishment here, but I believe BUTCHER'S CROSSING merits a much wider audience. This is a magnificent but regrettably under-recognized work of literature that feels timeless in its writing style and enduring in its themes.

I "discovered" this book when I ordered a new copy of Williams' other novel, STONER. I'd never heard of Butcher's Crossing, but man, this is one helluva good read about the last of the buffalo hunters, but also an example of literary fiction at its finest. You hardly expect a Harvard man to be hunting the buff, but that's what you get here, as well as what he thinks about it all. There are probably many comparisons that could be made here. One other book I thought of while reading this one is THE MOTHERS by Vardis Fisher, an excellent novel about the Donner Party. The truth is though, John Williams is a one-of-a-kind author who, were there any justice in this world, should have been as well known as Updike, Roth and Bellow. This book is well worth your time. - Tim Bazzett, author of the Reed City Boy trilogy and Love, War & Polio

This is the third of John Williams' major novels I have read, although it preceded his other two significant novels, "Stoner" and "Augustus." Williams is just amazing: this novel (purportedly about a buffalo hunt in Colorado in the late 19th century) is entirely different from "Stoner" (set in an academic setting in early to mid 20th century Missouri), which in turn is entirely different from "Augustus" which focuses upon the first real Roman emperor. Yet, each novel speaks with an authenticity that is truly unique. As is true with the author's other two novels, there is more at issue here than just a buffalo hunt. His carefully structured narrative raises issues of the closing of the frontier, man v. nature, loyalty and honor, and the dynamics of human interaction. His style is also different from "Stoner," which was as lean a novel as I have read; here there is much more description, dialogue, and setting the stage. This very fine New York Review of Books edition (which also published "Stoner") is well crafted and has a helpful introduction my Michelle Latiolais, a former student of Williams. Amongst other things we learn that Williams in effect smoked himself to death, dying from emphysema. What a loss. We also learn from her introduction that some consider this book "the finest western ever written." Well, I guess it is sort of a western, though the characters don't wear funny hats and carry six-shooters; I prefer to think of it as a great novel set in the west rather than necessarily a "western." A truly magnificant work of literary craftsmanship and a great reading experience.

I loved "Stoner" and after reading many of the reviews of this novel decided I needed to further explore the writing of John Williams. The writing is excellent; the description of the land, the buffalo, the stench of the killings, the snow, pine trees and the physical description of the men. However, that's it. I never felt any connection to the characters themselves. I just got bogged down in all the detail, the endless description of the miseries these men endured only to have everything lost. Someone suggested this novel could be Camus writing a "western" - that pretty much sums it up. However, Camus left me pretty cold; this does the same. I'm not sure what food for thought this provides beyond life is hard, meaningless, and so what?

"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 of thousands 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."

Poetic prose. Intense descriptions that almost threaten you enough with its unbearable inevitibility to stop your reading--see the buffalo massacre. Existential scenery and action throughout. A minimalist style that sculpts the story neatly. Butcher's Crossing is in the American vein of Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales--see The Priarie-; lifts the "Western" story telling above Oakly Hall and Cormack McCarthy, taking it to a new level--as Jarmusch did in his Western film Dead Man and beyond Eastwood's High Plains Drifter; Butcher's Crossing is a cowboy novel Camus would have written had he located The Stranger in America rather than Africa. Yet this is a great American novel regardless of setting that explores the energies and desires, drives and values that propel American society. The ending is as difficult to bear as the buffalo hunt--the metaphor of both and the novel overall leaves you inspired and disturbed. One of the best books I have ever read from an almost anonymous American novelist.

Last note: John Williams' other novels, Stoner and Augustus are equally amazing works of writing, literature and art.

John Williams should be required reading for every student of literature, at least. For people who love to read great writing, he is mandatory.

The novel is set around a Harvard graduate's search for self-understanding and initiation into manhood through participation in a buffalo hunt during the 1880's. While the setting and subject matter are clearly "Western" in nature, the novel shares few other similarities with traditional stories of the West. There are no encounters with Indians or shoot-outs with rival Cowboys. Instead, Williams' story brings to life the brutal nature of the hunt, the drab and barren existence of life in a Colorado boom-town and the mix of beauty and terrible ferocity of nature with an almost naturalistic approach similar to that of Zola.

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 in the Colorado mountains, "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.

If you're considering reading "Butcher's Crossing", chances are you might have already read and enjoyed "Stoner" and/or "Augustus" by the same author, John Williams. Such was the case for me. It was the awesome writing in those two books that recommended Williams' story of 1870s western America, though "...Crossing" could have been written by a completely different author for all the literary and historic distance from First Century BC Rome and mid 20th Century America. What they all have in common is the author's remarkable eye for character, background and, above all, the perfect use of language to evoke place and mood.

"Butcher's Crossing" is, on one level, the pursuit of "the meaning of life" by a young man (Will Andrews) from a comfortable if repressed East Coast background. Andrews, like many an American of the period, is drawn to the idea of finding a more interesting reality and future on the Western frontier. His adventure begins with arrival in the Kansas outback village of Butcher's Crossing. The small tent settlement lives off the hunting of buffalo on the near by plains. Andrews falls in with an experienced hunter who takes him and two companions to a mountainous area of the Colorado Territory where there are still large herds of "unharvested" buffalo and where he believes that a great fortune is to be made through a mass slaughter of the animals. The bulk of the story is about what the four men encounter on the hunt and in its aftermath. This is ultimately a saga of tragedy and disappointment for three of the men, but a major shift in life path for the fourth.

The narrative in this book is amazing and will not leave any reader unmoved. Author Williams' language brings the reality of each vignette into sharp relief and forces a reaction to it. The methodical killing of the buffalo described in naturalistic, graphic language is perhaps the most affecting part of the story for 21st Century sensibilities, but every conversation between characters, every step along the trail, every description of living through a mountain winter puts the reader in the moment.

Wonderful book. A 4+ on the Amazon scale.

Williams' prose has the crystalline quality that I associate with the best evocations of the American West, shared with McGuane and Stegner (or Connell in his nonfiction book on Custer, Son of the Morning Star). It also highlights the dark underbelly of the usually romanticized push into the West - wastrel exploitation of the West's seemingly endless natural bounty. The portrayal of being snowed in for the winter is terrifying.