Butcher’s Crossing
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams is a later printing edition published by New York Review of Books on January 16, 2007. This novel, written in English and spanning 296 pages, explores the journey of Will Andrews, who, inspired by Emerson, leaves Harvard to seek a deeper connection with nature in the 1870s. Arriving in the small Kansas town of Butcher’s Crossing, he encounters a community of restless men and becomes embroiled in an expedition to hunt buffalo in the Colorado Rockies, leading to a profound transformation.
Readers will find a narrative that delves into themes of adventure and the harsh realities of life in the American West. As Andrews and his companions embark on their quest, they confront the allure of wealth and the consequences of their actions, culminating in a harrowing experience that alters their lives forever. This edition presents a critical examination of the myths surrounding modern America, inviting reflection on the human condition amidst the backdrop of nature and survival.
Official synopsis Publisher
Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky.
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 paradisal 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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