BUTCHER'S CROSSING BY JOHN WILLIAMS (1960)

Butcher's Crossing was one of the first revisionist Westerns, a reaction against the cliches' and stereotypes of previous treatments, and, as is often the case with such responses, it goes to the opposite extreme, creating stereotypes of its own. Instead of courageous and principled protagonists we find anti-heroes who are violent and without scruples. Instead of good versus bad we find almost all bad, in one way or another.

Williams tells the story of a young Harvard student in the 1870s who, influenced by the writings of Emerson, travels to Butcher's Crossing, Kansas, hoping to discover a relationship to nature and to "find himself" in the Western wilderness. Soon he eagerly agrees to join a buffalo hunter and two companions in a trek to a hidden valley in Colorado where perhaps the last great herd of buffalo can be found. The men almost fail in their endeavor in its early stages when they cannot find water in their ride across the plains, but they persevere and at last reach their goal. That's when things get brutal.

Faced with five thousand buffalo in an enclosed valley, the hunters begin an orgy of killing, taking only the hides, leaving the bodies to rot in place except for the little that they eat. The lust to kill every single buffalo overtakes them to the extent that they lose track of time and become trapped by the winter snows. When they finally make it back to Butcher's Crossing the following spring, they find that both they and the world have changed. Ironically, instead of finding himself in nature, the protagonist has lost himself and no longer knows who he is or who he will become.

This is considered to be an important book, an accomplished book, and I can see that, but I did not enjoy reading it. Instead of detailed descriptions of the natural surroundings Williams provides detailed descriptions of how to track and kill buffalo, how to skin buffalo, how to butcher buffalo. Even the writing style annoyed me, though I can't exactly pinpoint why, except that it does seem to be pretentious and academic. Perhaps it's just that I don't believe looking at a situation entirely from the dark side is good for mental health, at least not for mine.