Butcher's Crossing
by John Williams · first published 1960
67% recommend33% neutral
In the 1870s, 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 full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. One of these men regales Will with tales of the immense buffalo herds hidden away in the Colorado Rockies and convinces him to join an expedition to track them down. At the end of a grueling journey, the men reach a place of paradisal richness, where they abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter. So caught up in killing buffalo that they l
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John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing is an incredible story about buffalo hunters. If half of it is true it’s tragic. The sheer numbers; the depth of destruction for the profit of a hide. It boggles the mind that we did this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butcher's_Crossing…
on “Ken Burns chronicles the sad fate of the American buffalo” ↗…filthy, but it has been a long time. It remains one of my all-time favorites. If nothing else, I'm indebted to the book for encouraging me to seek out literary westerns such as Warlock by Oakley Hall and Butcher's Crossing by John Williams.
on “Neal Stephenson was prescient about our AI age” ↗If you enjoyed Williams's Augustus, do give Stoner and Butcher's Crossing a read. I "enjoyed" them even more than Augustus. Enjoyed is in quotes because they are both emotionally devastating -- Stoner more so than Butcher's Crossing. I didn't feel like myself for a week…
on “The joy of reading books you don't understand” ↗Some years ago, I gave a family member the NYRB printing of Butcher's Crossing by John Williams. The thank you note said that he had loved the book, but hated the introduction. I told him that I had been vaguely aware that book had an introduction, but hadn't read it and still might…
on “The Case for Never Reading the Book Jacket” ↗