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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 paradisiacal 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.
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 paradisiacal 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.
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About the Author:
JOHN WILLIAMS (1922-1994) was born in Texas. The poet and novelist taught at and received his PhD from the University of Missouri in the early 1950s. In 1955 he became the director of the University of Denver's creative writing program, where he became the editor of the University of Denver Quarterly. He remained at Denver until his retirement in 1986. He was a co-winner of the 1973 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Augustus, and he is the author of the highly acclaimed novel Stoner.
Review:
One of the finest books about the elusive nature of the West ever written. . . It's a graceful and brutal story of isolated men gone haywire. --Time Out New York
Harsh and relentless yet muted in tone, Butcher's Crossing paved the way for Cormac McCarthy. It was perhaps the first and best revisionist western. -- New York Times Book Review
One of the finest novels of the West ever to come out of the West. --Sunday Denver Post
Williams didn't write much compared with some novelists, but everything he did was exceedingly fine. . . it's a shame that he's not more often read today. . . But it's great that at least two of his novels (Stoner, Butcher's Crossing) have found their way back into print. --The Denver Post
Reading John Williams even to have done so at the time these novels were written is an exercise in nostalgia, a nostalgia found also in writers like Willa Cather, for whom the West represented a lost redoubt of intellectual dignity. . . writers as talented and right-minded as John Williams are not naturally plentiful. --New York Sun
This story about the hunt of one of the last great buffalo herds becomes a young man's search for the integrity of his own being. . . The characters are defined, the events lively, the place, the smells, the sounds right. And the prose is superb, a rarity in writing about the west. More, John Williams. --< i>The Chicago Tribune
Harsh and relentless yet muted in tone, Butcher's Crossing paved the way for Cormac McCarthy. It was perhaps the first and best revisionist western. -- New York Times Book Review
One of the finest novels of the West ever to come out of the West. --Sunday Denver Post
Williams didn't write much compared with some novelists, but everything he did was exceedingly fine. . . it's a shame that he's not more often read today. . . But it's great that at least two of his novels (Stoner, Butcher's Crossing) have found their way back into print. --The Denver Post
Reading John Williams even to have done so at the time these novels were written is an exercise in nostalgia, a nostalgia found also in writers like Willa Cather, for whom the West represented a lost redoubt of intellectual dignity. . . writers as talented and right-minded as John Williams are not naturally plentiful. --New York Sun
This story about the hunt of one of the last great buffalo herds becomes a young man's search for the integrity of his own being. . . The characters are defined, the events lively, the place, the smells, the sounds right. And the prose is superb, a rarity in writing about the west. More, John Williams. --< i>The Chicago Tribune
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- PublisherGregg Press
- Publication date1978
- ISBN 10 0839824513
- ISBN 13 9780839824510
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages274
- Rating
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Butcher's Crossing
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Gregg Press
(1978)
ISBN 10: 0839824513
ISBN 13: 9780839824510
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.2. Seller Inventory # G0839824513I3N10
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