Books, and particularly novels, possess such dynamic and interesting lives. Once written, a novel can become an unexpected best seller, a flop, a bundle of papers scarcely read by a single pair of eyes, or even the subject of censorship. Yet whatever its initial status, its future is anything but set in stone. A book ignored many years ago might find a captive and dedicated audience, years later.
John Williams’ Stoner is such an example. Over the past decade, it has experienced nothing less than a literary resuscitation. After receiving a nonchalant reception upon publication in 1960, it now has a group of ardent admirers. When this kind of thing happens, readers are often inclined to take a look at the author’s oeuvre and wonder, “Any other gems here?”
Unsurprisingly, then, Butcher’s Crossing—the novel Williams wrote prior to Stoner—has also received fresh pairs of eyes. It seems unlikely, though, that it will ignite the kind of enthusiasm that Stoner has stirred up.
It is, at any rate, a novel worth reading.
Far removed from the dry university setting of Stoner, Williams takes us out west to Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas, a place that “could be taken in almost at a glance.” The year is 1873. Will Andrews is the protagonist, a young man with two years of Harvard under his belt, who has decided to ditch the stuffy classrooms and environs of Boston and head out west. It’s there, he hopes, that he’ll be able to embark on a soul-searching journey and “find a truer shape of himself.”
We’ve all experienced the weight of this inner quest on a personal level. And we’ve encountered hundreds, if not thousands, of these stories during the course of our lives.
One that came to mind while reading Butcher’s Crossing was Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, a work of non-fiction about Christopher McCandless and his existential retreat into the Alaskan wilderness. The commonalities of the two protagonists are evident: both are bright and capable men in their early 20s, the product of elite schools, and from solid social and economic backgrounds. Yet both essentially give it all up, turning instead to the sublimity and wonders of nature in an attempt to find a deeper, more meaningful plane of existence.
We know the unfortunate ending to McCandless’ life. Will the fictional life of Will Andrews turn out better?
Upon arriving in Butcher’s Crossing, Andrews talks to a man named J.D. McDonald. McDonald manages teams of buffalo hunters, profiting handsomely from their hard labor while paying them little.
After listening to Andrews’ spiel about what he’s looking for, McDonald directs him to a man named Miller. Though a hunter, Miller doesn’t work for McDonald and wouldn’t dream of it: “I hunt alone or I don’t hunt at all.” Brash and confident, Miller and the reticent Andrews make for an interesting pair of interlocutors. Yet there’s a symbiosis that quickly develops, owing to the fact that Miller is full of riveting stories and Andrews is a dry sponge ready to soak them up.
When Miller relates a trip to Colorado he made some years ago and how he spotted a massive herd of buffalo, Andrews can’t help but ask how much money it would take to get back. “How much money you got?” replies Miller. Andrews plops down a sizable chunk of his savings.
When they set out two weeks later, it’s a group of four: Will Andrews and Miller, plus Bible-carrying, whiskey-drinking Charley Hodge (Miller’s loyal follower), and a buffalo skinner named Schneider.
If you’ve ever gone on a long car trip with other people, you know the inevitability of arguments and tensions popping up along the way, even among good friends. Picture four men with very different personalities and motivations, trekking across hundreds of miles of unforgiving territory. Some tiffs and squabbles might just be around the corner.
Given the small cast of the characters in this novel—and the number of pages we spend with its four principal ones—it’s surprising that they never feel fully three-dimensional. We learn next to nothing about Andrews’ past, for example, only that his father is Unitarian pastor, he’s been greatly inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, as a boy, he would stand on the Massachusetts Bay “until his mind was choked and dizzied at the immensity he gazed upon.”
Given John Willams’ capabilities as a writer, much of this was surely deliberate. What certainly wasn’t deliberate was crafting a novel in such a way that readers ultimately have few reasons to care about what happens to its characters.
On the flip side, this lack of biographical detail can make for some interesting speculations about what motivates and compels these characters to act as they do.
Take the figure of Charley Hoge. He has virtually no autonomous existence outside of Miller: what Miller does, Hoge does. He’ll even go on a second trip to Colorado, despite the fact that he lost his hand and suffered miserably on a previous expedition. What explains this?
As mentioned, Williams is sparse on details concerning a character’s past. But frequently in this novel we come to understand the characters through the basic human drives they appear to encapsulate. Hoge—with his need for whiskey, a leader to follow, and the Bible as means with which to castigate others (rather than as a source of enlightenment)—suggests a kind of need for security, protection, and assurance taken to the extreme.
As for Will Andrews, the protagonist of Butcher’s Crossing, one of the more revealing forays into his mindset also has to do with the Bible—indeed, with how his knowledge of the Bible compares with that of the rough and tumble, uneducated, down-and-out Charley Hoge. “[Andrews] had not, in fact, ever read it with any degree of thoroughness. His father had encouraged his reading of Mr. Emerson, but had not to his recollection insisted that he read the Bible.”
There are a few things to draw from this, but the most striking thing is that Andrews is fully up-to-date on the ideas of a contemporary thinker, yet lacks a familiarity with one of the most foundational texts of Western civilization. One would be far more inclined to forgive Andrews for this naivete, if not for the fact that Andrews is Harvard educated and has come all the way out west in an attempt to find himself. He’s on a quest for knowledge and meaning, yet has made little effort to find out what’s gone on before him, or the kinds of dilemmas that human beings have been confronting for far longer than his twenty-some-odd years. It’s complete folly.
Not only are the characters existentially adrift (due to their short-sighted and hubristic ways), they’re also unable or unwilling to connect with their fellow human beings in ways that might provide a salve to their various longings and woes. This is best demonstrated in a moment late in the novel, after a particularly dramatic event: “We have something to say to each other, Andrews dimly thought, but we don’t know what it is; we have something we ought to say.”
Moments like this make Butcher’s Crossing feel like a truly poignant story, full of power and meaning. Alas, moments like these are outweighed by the litany of passages in which we feel nothing for the characters and instead wonder where the story is going and when it will end. Sadly, these are very different reactions one has compared to the reading experience of Williams’ best novel.
Indeed, whereas Stoner feels exquisitely constructed throughout—each page filled with precision and purpose—Butcher’s Crossing often feels rudderless. Though passages of beautiful prose can sometimes help save the day, this is a novel which simply doesn’t do enough to get readers fully invested in the story.
That’s a major flaw—and also an unfortunate one. With its exploration of existential themes in the context of the American West near the close of the 19th century, the narrative possibilities are ripe. Butcher’s Crossing is a good novel, but far less than the powerful and transformative story it might have been.
Spectatio 
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