Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics)

John Williams' well constructed western novel is minimal in sentiment and takes an even handed approach to the struggles between man and nature. Nature is not evil in Williams' world, like Hemingway he portrays nature as a neutral non-caring force that supports humanity as well as destroys humanity. In this regard, the novel could be compared to the more mythic Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Williams is careful to show that mankind may master many skills when dealing with nature but that a slip or mistake can have fatal non-forgiving consequences. This is an American novel, it speaks of the American national experience in realistic non-romantic passages that take the reader deep into the heart of the North American continent's heart.Williams' writing style is highly organized, there are no tangents or extra flourishes or unnecessary descriptions. Like William James and Nabokov, the story is as tight as a well constructed brick wall, facts and descriptions and experiences all are the precise building blocks for a novel with not a word out of place. I can imagine this novel would be appropriate for a college course on creative writing as an example of a novel that gets to the point, tells the tale, does not digress, makes its points and moves on. The novel is written in three sections and each section is further divided into short chapters. This structure gives the impression that the basic armature and direction of the entire novel was outlined with precision before the first paragraph was written. This is not a criticism; it is an observation that this novel's structure is strong but evident.The great exploration and exploitation of the American west in the 1800s is certainly part of the American myth. The beauty of this novel is that it explores the many themes of exploration and ruthless exploitation of the natural resources in a purely descriptive neutral voice. The great white whale in this novel is the vast power of snow storms in the Rocky Mountains and the untamed roaring rivers and the dry forbidding deserts. Those that hunt the whales in Moby Dick may encounter the great white whale. In Williams' world, those that hunt the buffalo may encounter the consequences of the natural world, the winter in the Rockies.The novel is written from the perspective of a neutral all-seeing narrator but the experiences of young Andrews, a Harvard drop-out, form the journey on which the novel is constructed. Andrews encounters the sage in the person of McDonald, a man who deals with buffalo hide blankets for the European market. Andrews becomes a party to a hunting expedition, which he finances through a small inheritance, with a fascinating charter, Miller, who exemplifies competency and survival instinct in the wild. They are joined by Charley Hoge, a one-armed, camp-cook, wagon driver who seeks protection for a Bible that he can not understand. They are also joined by a wild buffalo skinner, Schneider, a man uncomfortable in the wild and just as uncomfortable among his fellow man.The character of Miller is central to the novel. He is a skilled hunter and very knowledgeable of the wild and survival. He is careful and a leader. He manages and distributes resources, is fair, and controls controversy. The novel however puts Miller to the test for it is Miller's temptation for excess and his pride that put the entire expedition into peril. We witness the fall of the hero here for Williams gradually, chapter after chapter, reveals to us Miller's considerable strengths and abilities, and then as the novel comes to a peak, we now see how the fatal flaws of the hero result in the conditions that bring him down. When the hero is a leader of a tribe, the fatal flaws may bring down the entire tribe. Miller is not the enigmatic Captain Ahab. He is far more present as a fleshy muscular problem-solving pack leader that Ahab. He is more akin to a realistically drawn Ulysses, constantly called upon to offer the solutions that insure survival of the hunting pack. Miller exemplifies the limitations of human cunning and willpower. Some may think that nature seeks revenge against Miller for his excessive slaughter of the buffalo. But Williams' novel presents this peril not as the revenge of a personalized nature but as the simple consequences of excessive human obsession and pride. Williams carefully and beautifully describes the grandeur of nature but he never romanticizes and he never personifies nature. A careful reader will appreciate the considerable control William displays throughout the novel but especially in his resistance to describing nature in any other than natural, realistic, neutral prose.William Andrews, who drops out of Harvard after his third year, seeks the challenge of the west. It is to Williams' credit that Andrews is not a brainless romantic and that he is a fast learning in a world where fast learning is necessary for survival. There is a young pretty prostitute, Francine, and William Andrew's encounters with her before the hunt and after the hunt are testimony to the changes that have been wrought in his personality due to the experiences he had in the winter storms.The character of Charley Hoge is more than a side-kick, for Charley has been touched by nature when he hand froze in a previous expedition and had to be amputated by Miller in the wild. Charley now carries an old Bible which he reads often but understands less. For Charley, the Bible is a talisman against the consequences of nature.Comparisons may be made with Cormac McCarthy's novels but there is an essential distinction. McCarthy sees the evil human being as being more akin to the unfeeling force of nature than to his fellowman. Thus in McCarthy's novels there is often violence of man against man in epic battles not unlike Williams' description of the battle with winder in Butcher's Crossing.This book is exceptional and deserves a wide readership. It is the type of Western novel that is exemplary American literature.

During the first 50 pages or so I was not into it and nearly abandoned the book. I'm very glad I pushed through. Very well written and a real depiction of the west and of the brutal and beautiful sides of nature and of man.

Two of my interests crossed paths and led me to read John Williams' novel, "Butcher's Crossing" (1960). First, I have become interested in literary American westerns, such as those written by A.B. Guthrie including "The Big Sky". Second, I became interested in Williams (1922 -- 1994) through reading his novel "Stoner". These interests in westerns and in Williams coalesced in "Butcher's Crossing"."Butcher's Crossing" is a dark, thoughtful work framed by quotations from Emerson and Melville. The quotations offer competing views of nature and of optimism. The book is set in Butcher's Crossing, a small crossroads in Kansas in the early 1870s. The primary character, Will Andrews, 23, is the son of a well-to-do teacher and Unitarian minister. He has dropped out of Harvard and come west in search of what he perceives as "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." The other primary character is Miller, whom Andrews meets early in his stay. Miller is a tough, hardened buffalo hunter who in the novel is the Ahab to Andrews' Ishmael. Andrews agrees to finance and participate in a buffalo hunt in the wilds of Colorado where Miller has observed large, pristine herds. Two other men participate in the hunt, Miller's friend, Charley Hoge, who has lost a hand, reads the Bible, and is alcoholic and Schneider, profane and cantankerous, but a hunter and expert skinner of buffalo. Two other important characters remain in Butcher's Crossing: Francine, a prostitute, and McDonald, a dealer in hides who had briefly known Andrews' father in Boston and participated in his Unitarian meetings.The story is about the buffalo hunt and its impact, primarily on Andrews. Williams describes the long, dangerous journey to the mountains to find a large, unexploited herd. The center of the book describes in great detail the hunt of the buffalo and the wanton killing led by Miller. Virtually the entire herd is decimated with their bones and carcasses left to rot. The description is raw, harsh, and unforgettable. Williams describes how the four men get caught in a blizzard through their greed and killing and how, under Miller's leadership, they survive a furious winter. Then, the men return to a changed and near-deserted Butcher's Crossing with their labor, risk, and killing going for naught. The callow Andrews has been changed and has a brief, intense relationship with Francine, whom he had spurned before the hunt. The other men meet harsh fates as well through the hunt and the bitter winter and aftermath.This is a darkly pessimistic novel about nature, about greed and lust, and about the dream and danger of searching to find oneself. Andrews comes to see the despair underlying his own life and the lives of those whom he meets in Butcher's Crossing. Near the end of the book, he reflects on his own decision to go west and on his short relationship with Francine:"He could hardly recall, now, the passion that had drawn him to this room and this flesh, as if by a subtle magnetism; nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung."Williams' writing is taut, descriptive, and largely understated. His novel takes some mostly formulaic western scenes and characters and transforms them through his writing and his insight. I don't find a tone of satire or mockery of the standard, formulaic western. Rather, Williams shows how this sometimes hackneyed form can have life and vision. With its questioning of what it sees as the superficial vision of the traditional type of western story, the book works to restate the power of the genre when used creatively. This book is multi-layered, dense, beautiful, and troubling. It rewarded the crossing of my interests in Williams and in the American western and made me want to think more about both.Robin Friedman

I grew up in the West, I live in the West, and I hate Westerns--the tired mythologies and sentimental romance, the facile morality tales. About the only one I've ever enjoyed was Blood Meridian. Butcher's Crossing was not, according to its author, intended as a Western though it got lumped into that category early on by critics. Maybe it's supposed to be tale ot existential crisis experienced by its main protagonist, Along the way Williams gives some remarkably detailed and clear-headed renderings of the brutality of Western outdoor life, the grotesqerie of a buffalo hunt, and the caprice of Western economies. In this, the book is an excellent read in Western history. One problem is that Williams' capacity for detail often seems indiscriminate, focusing on minor points and actions to the detriment of narrative flow. I hate to say that there were many times I skipped over entire pages.As far as the protagonist's crisis, it slowly evolves throughout the book but when it comes time to elucidate it at the end, the book falls flat. We're left with the character saying that something's changed, not sure what, then the book wraps up with an ending that would be at home in any cliched old Hollywood Western. Very curious and very disappointing.The book has its interesting moments but it's far from a compelling read.

Williams reaches effortlessly into all our souls and illuminates unvoiced inner tensions and sublimities

Great book. Charles Bukowski describes hes life with a tune of sadness and glory. Like putting on slippers in the morning

This is a western in a unexpected light : one never thought about the unbearable soreness of riding a horse for days on end. This is naturalistic writing, no effects, true in a most naked hopeless way. Butchers Crossing is a compact masterpiece were there are no redundant words, or feelings.

"To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches." - Ralph Waldo EmersonDuring his lifetime, John Williams wrote three novels: “Butcher’s Crossing” (1960), “Stoner” (1965), and “Augustus” (1972). Nearly forty years after it was first published, “Stoner” went on to become a publishing phenomenon having been rediscovered through word-of-mouth publicity. I read it last year and it turned out to be amongst the best that I had read in recent times. Now, it has a cult following that Vintage has tapped by publishing the other two books also. Therefore, I was agog with anticipation when I took up “Butcher’s Crossing” that, for the most part, is as good as “Stoner”, and in some aspects, even superior to it.Will Andrews is a twenty-three year old Harvard drop-out who is stifled by the “droning voices in the chapel and classrooms”. He often escapes from the confines of Cambridge to the fields and woods where he feels more comfortable. Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lecture on nature that he heard, he imagines that his true self lies in the “wilderness” where he feels “…a part and parcel of God, free and uncontained.” [p 48]In a spirit of self-discovery, he sets out to seek this “wilderness” and washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas – a shanty little town that is no more than a few wooden houses with a handful of people, a nondescript hotel, a rundown bar, and a few women engaged in the world’s oldest profession. It is 1873, and the buffalo trade is at its peak. The town is strategically located as a transit point. For years, the hunters in the region have been killing the mighty buffaloes in thousands for their hides to feed the fashion industry. However, relentless trade and mindless culling of the animal, has depleted the stock. Now, the more desirable thick winter hides are accessible only in the higher mountains.Before long, Andrews is persuaded into financing a hunting expedition into the Colorado Rockies by Miller, an experienced hunter. Miller had come across a massive herd of buffalo a few years back in a hidden valley high up in the mountains and has been on the lookout for partners for an expedition that promises immense riches. Miller assembles a team comprising Charles Hoge, an alcoholic who is to be the wagon driver; the practical Fred Schneider, who is going to skin the animals; and Andrews who is going on the ride to seek his “true self”. He is to be the apprentice skinner and the odd job man in the team.The expedition progresses perilously through extremely harsh terrain and inhospitable land. Miller, in order to save journey time, takes them through a waterless, arid region where the team of men and animals nearly perish due to thirst. After weeks of travel they finally arrive in the high valley and find a giant herd of buffalo just as Miller had promised. Then starts the mindless hunting, killing, and skinning of the buffalos described by Williams in graphic detail that is not for the faint hearted. As I read about the carnage unleashed by Miller, my heart went out to the dumb but great beasts, untouched by human race until now, who are unable to react. They just look away vacantly as they are picked up one by one by Miller’s gun.Miller’s relentless and mechanical hunt continues while Schneider and Williams struggle to keep pace with skinning of animals before they freeze and rigor mortis sets in. Slowly, Andrews’s conscience starts troubling him at the wanton murder of the buffalos and he starts sensing the true nature of Miller’s butchery. “During the last hour…he came to see Miller as a mechanism, an automaton, moved by the moving herd; and he came to see Miller’s destruction of the buffalo, not as a lust for blood or a lust for the hides or a lust for what the hides would bring, or even at last the blind lust of fury that toiled darkly within him - he came to see the destruction as a cold, mindless response to the life in which Miller had immersed himself.” [p 159]In the midst of the hunt and his increasing disgust with it, he tries to reason out in his mind his reaction to what is happening around him:“It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood and stench and spilling gut; it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.” [p 176]Now that they have shot enough buffalos, Schneider recommends winding up their hunt. But Miller decides to continue forcing the team to overstay in the valley. Suddenly the weather is upon them and they get snowed in compelling them to spend several harsh months in the valley. But they survive, and after the snow melts, they depart with a huge pile of hides leaving behind an even bigger stock that they plan to pick up a few months later. Unfortunately, their return journey to Butcher’s Crossing is disastrous, even fatal. When they arrive back in the town, the fur market has collapsed in the meantime, and both Miller and Charles Hoge appear to lose their minds. The entire expedition and the hardships that they endured seem pointless. At the close of the novel we see Andrews resume his search for answers to his identity, but this time on his own.In so far as genres go, “Butcher’s Crossing” is a literary western but quite unlike other popular, commercial, and formulaic novels in this genre. I found the book to be quite disruptive, the disruption being achieved by the preponderance of an overarching philosophical theme of “existentialism” running across the plot. Our protagonist, the young William Andrews, is coming of age, is looking for meaning to his life, and is willing to risk his life to validate his identity. He believes this validation lies in “nature”, and that is what he seeks by going on this hazardous expedition.The above existentialism that swathes the book, turns “Butcher’s Crossing” into a treatise on nature, its immense beauty, and on its punishing ferocity. Nature appears almost as a character with a subtle magnetism that drew me in first gradually, then increasingly, and finally insistently so much so that I read with rapt attention, sometimes more than once, Williams’ exquisite description of the landscape, topography, and the general environs. Here is one of his lyrical paeans to nature:“Andrews felt that the mountains drew them onward, and drew them with increasing intensity as they came nearer, as if they were a giant lodestone whose influence increased to the degree that it was more nearly approached. As they came nearer he had again the feeling that he was being absorbed, included in something with which he had had no relation before; but unlike the feeling of absorption he had experienced on the anonymous prairie, this feeling was one which promised, however vaguely, a richness and a fulfilment for which he had not name.” [p 121]When the expedition travels through a water scarce zone, the description of men and animals suffering from thirst is so vivid and stark that I could almost feel my mouth dry up while reading. In a rather riveting passage, Williams describes how Miller uses few dregs of water that is left with the team to moisten the swollen tongues of animals so that they can last for a few more miles before they hit water.The book is also a sharp indictment on man’s rapacious behaviour towards nature’s bounty to satisfy his greed and commercial interests. The industrial scale hunting of buffalos in pursuance of Americas’ expeditious expansion into the West led to the near extinction of the species, glut in the fur market, and the eventual collapse of the industry. Poetic justice, I would say. “You’re no better than the things you kill” says Mr. McDonald, the middleman in Butcher’s Crossing whose business is in ruins after the fur market collapse. He may have been easily talking about the modern man.John Williams’s brilliant prose is marked by a syntactical rigor that is visible in his sentence-level precision. And, it is with this precision that he elevates this book into a new level of consciousness. To me, the book is utterly compelling and convincing, and to read it was an exhilarating experience.I will go with 5 stars.