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John Jerles xpatjohn — Above all other things, Butcher's Crossing is procedural. I hesitate to call it descriptive; the novel takes a meditative approach to its characters and the environs, but its attempts at metaphor and poetic imagery fall short, and some descriptions lack specificity. While Williams' prose oftentimes has a cinematic quality that transcends its simplistic clarity, it often veers into vagueness: “The roaring was intense and hollow in his ears; he looked down from the point of land that dipped and swayed in his sight, and saw the water. It was a deep but transparent greenish brown, and it flowed past him in thick ropes and sheeted wedges, in shapes that changed with an incredible complexity before his gaze.” (221-222) The passage above approaches immediacy with its 'thick ropes' , but the occasional absence of concreteness (e.g., what exactly is a 'transparenet greenish-brown', and what am I to surmise from 'incredible complexity') robs it of urgency. Because its thoroughness stays remote, the narrative resorts to outlining procedure. Passages involving setting up camp, pursuing the buffalo, or coping with a devastating snowstorm chronicle the character's actions: we know what they do, and we witness them as if they are in consistent motion. Butcher's Crossing invests itself in routine, and this choice on Williams's part is appropriate and prudent. Since these characters are meant to immerse themselves in nature, the novel stays on physical ground, and its emphasis on action and technique ensures that it stay externalized. There is little thought or dialogue that extends beyond the characters telling each other what's next in the procedure, or how to teach the procedure. Andrews's development is banished to the territory of exposition, of an outside observer summarizing thoughts instead of disclosing them. I tried to give the novel the benefit of a doubt, because Butcher's Crossing's priority is theme, and it draws inspiration from refuting Emersonian philosophy. Like Stoner, the tone's abstract distance bolsters its form-and-content unity. My struggle with Butcher's Crossing lies between finding this either a shortcoming, or a victory in the name of thematic consistency. As Butcher's Crossing looks at the effects of man returning to his nature, the creature becomes one of primal instinct, not of thought; the book makes it clear that Miller, this story's Ahab (despite the introduction, Williams is not generous enough in his debt to Melville, and Ahab's thirst for revenge evokes more empathy than Miller's aloof greed), can unite and immerse himself in Nature. For Schneider, little more than Miller's foil, this is a struggle. Our protagonist, Andrews, is a negligible bystander except for the occasional aside about (of course) a love interest born from naivete. Charley Hoge represents little more than man's retreat from humanity's dark truths into a comfortable religion. These people are one-dimensional because the character dynamic serves as a simple framework from which to dangle a long-term procedure. Suddenly I realized I was not endorsing Williams's distance, but apologizing for it. In Stoner, I found the distance dazzling: the novel takes on Stoner's persona, and its prose embodies the stoic, presumably incompetent lecturer to disarming effect. Here, it is lofty aspiration exceeding the capabilities of its author. I yearned for the odyssey in Blood Meridian: its rich and efficacious prose, how McCarthy worked miracles out of a barren landscape and a monotonous journey. The key? McCarthy did it with a small brush. Butcher's Crossing feels simultaneously approachable and erudite, whereas Stoner put these shortcomings to work. Butcher's Crossing often disregards subtlety, using broad expanses of snow as a “vast coldness,” or “going with the flow” down the river. It repeatedly tells us how “one” Miller is with his surroundings, and utilizes repeated monitoring of the characters' facial features to symbolize their dehumanization. These forms of directness become less forgivable in the story's denouement, when Williams, through a series of cartoonish and melodramatic psychological shifts, and a closing summation of Andrews' epiphany, gracelessly shows his hand. Despite Williams's faults as a prose stylist, I relish the thematic relationship between Butcher's Crossing and Stoner. Stoner focuses on the retreat from the world into the mind, and how the mental life can triumph over the dread of the natural. But Butcher's Crossing takes the opposite direction: Andrews, our protagonist, leaves Harvard College to experience an Emersonian transcendence, to leave a sheltered, mental life and seek a moment in the wilderness where he unites with a deeper, truer sense of identity. He rejects the cerebral for the instinctual, complacency for physicality, and therefore stands in stark opposition to Stoner. In Butcher's Crossing, we see a character escape academia, return to his nature, and become entrenched in ideological and literal failure. In Stoner, we see a man exiled from his physical urges work toward an academic retreat. Both trajectories yield identically tragic results. Taking the works together, I ask: is it possible to ever escape that slow erosion of human dignity, the chipping-away of the heart at the merciless hands of Time? Is the yearn to escape from any domain always to yield disappointment, a long-term bereavement for a sense of self? I suppose for Williams, humanity cannot recover. And I found this revelation staggering, but only when Butcher's Crossing is considered in tandem. Whether or not this was Williams's intent, I am unsure; I cannot tell with Williams if and when I allocate too much credit. But seeing two opposing journeys lead to the exact same place beholds such a charming power that I am tempted to overlook Williams's misfires as a prose stylist, and admire the truth illuminated by this dichotomy. I adore Butcher's Crossing as an articulately thought-out argument against Emerson's journey into our true selves. Williams's conviction that “the mechanical madness of human behavior suggets man at one with nature – man's nature – to be a horrifying prospect” (xv) is impeccably formulated, and executed with delicate alacrity. It comprises classic Westerns, coming-of-age stories, and Perfect Storm-esque cautionary tales, and manages to make as focused a statement on the measured trials of the spirit as Stoner. Yet the means to that end condemn it to being damnably, frustratingly unfulfilling.

Arnaud Weil arnoo — Läste den svenska översättningen. Älskade verkligen den här boken, man får följa Peggy från att hon är en ung kvinna gift med en flygare i armén, tills hon är en självständig, något äldre kvinna med ett händelserikt liv bakom sig. En bit amerikansk historia och även hur kvinnans roll i samhället har ändrats under årtionden. Läsvärd.