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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.… (more)
A young man, Will Andrews, decides to leave his studies at Harvard, in the 1870s, to go have an experience at Butcher's Crossing, a town with a hide buyer. He asks around and finds Miller who seems like a charlatan, promising a paradise of buffaloes in a hidden valley between two peaks in Colorado. The novel's themes start to sink in when you see the relationship between these men is flimsy and strictly professional while they're trying to survive a long stretch without water. They reach the valley and the blind determination and the blood thirst of Miller leave them to hold for the whole winter. These men can't really win against nature, they end up torn apart physically and psychologically since they discover the futlity of everything they worked so hard to earn. The protagonist holds himself to a void the whole novel, never really sure where he's going or why. It's interesting the reflections John Williams have about becoming pure instinct to survive and holding yourself with the memories of your humanity and civilized self. That civilization and progress is what ends up betraying them at the end. Ain't that some shit!!
"Me ruin you?" McDonald laughed. "You ruin yourself, you and your kind. Every day of your life, everything you do. Nobody can tell you what to do. No. You go your own way, stinking the land up with what you kill. You flood the market with hides and ruin the market, and then you come crying to me that I've ruined you." Mcdonald's voice became anguished. "If you'd just listened - all of you. You're no better than the things you kill."( )
A young man is inspired by the words of Waldo Emerson and heads west. The tale that ensues is one of both a grueling journey and the wonders of nature that are found in the west. The young man, Will Andrews, experiences the slaughter of buffalo and a difficult winter before returning to the world of Butcher's Crossing. John Williams excels as an author. ( )
In this book, Williams presents a young man on a quest for self discovery through the old west. He faces winter of brutal hardship and unbearable boredom. His return to civilzation finds him unable to truly connect with others. ( )
A young Harvard graduate searches for meaning in the white, white snow of the Colorado mountains in 1873. He is joined by three seasoned - in buffalo hunting or whiskey - men who are each also searching (for God, for money, for power). But in the end, only the search for meaning allows for any hope of salvation...
The writing is fluid and vivid, the characters are well drawn and the plot pulls you along while allowing plenty of wide open spaces of meditation. ( )
Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
»Es giebt Tage …, wo jedes Ding, welches Leben in sich hat, ein Zeichen der Zufriedenheit von sich giebt, und das Vieh, das hingestreckt liegt, große und ruhige Gedanken zu haben scheint. Nach diesem Halcyon kann man mit ziemlicher Gewißheit bei jenem reinen October-Wetter aussehen, welches wir mit dem Namen des indischen Sommers bezeichnen. Der unendlich lange Tag ruht schlafend auf den breiten Hügeln und den warmen weiten Feldern. Alle seine sonnigen Stunden durchlebt zu haben, scheint langes Leben genug. Die einsamen Orte scheinen nicht ganz einsam. Beim Eintritt in den Wald ist der erstaunte Weltling gezwungen, seine großen und kleinen, weisen und thörichten Dinge, auf die er Werth in der Stadt legte, dahinten zu lassen. Der Knappsack der Gewohnheit fällt von seinem Rücken mit dem ersten Schritt, den er in diesen Bereich hinein thut. Hier ist ein Gottesfurcht, die unsere Religion beschämt, und Realität, die unsere Helden in Mißcredit setzt. Hier finden wir, daß die Natur der Umstand ist, der jeden andern Umstand klein für uns macht, und daß sie einem Gotte gleich alle Menschen richtet, die zu ihr kommen.« Ralph Waldo Emerson, ›Nature‹, in: Essays, Second Series. Boston 1845, a.d. Amerikanischen von G. Fabricius, Hannover 1858
»Ja, und die Dichter schicken das kranke Gemüt auf die grünen Auen, wie man lahme Pferde unbeschlagen auf den Rasen schickt, damit ihre Hufe nachwachsen. Die Dichter, die auf ihre Art auch so was wie Kräuterdoktors sind, die meinen ja, die Natur ist die große Heilerin von Herzeleid und Lungenweh. Und wer hat meinen Fuhrmann in der Prärie zu Tode erfroren? Und wer hat den Wilden Peter zum Idioten gemacht?« Herman Melville, Maskeraden oder Vertrauen gegen Vertrauen, a.d. Amerikanischen von Christa Schuenke, Berlin 1999
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Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Hij reed verder zonder haast, en voelde achter zich de zon langzaam opkomen en de lucht tastbaar worden.
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.
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"Me ruin you?" McDonald laughed. "You ruin yourself, you and your kind. Every day of your life, everything you do. Nobody can tell you what to do. No. You go your own way, stinking the land up with what you kill. You flood the market with hides and ruin the market, and then you come crying to me that I've ruined you." Mcdonald's voice became anguished. "If you'd just listened - all of you. You're no better than the things you kill." (