book recommendation: butcher's crossing

[buffshel]

Butcher's Crossing; John Williams (fiction/revisionist western)

This is an existential/nihilist western largely about bison slaughter and the misplaced idealisation of the west. Four men set out to harvest bison hides for a steep profit and return from their expedition never-the-same-again: that is the bare-bones plot. Survivalist at times, short, and well-written. I took my time with this one. There were several parts where I had to set it down (whether because of the gruesomeness of it or the absolutely decadent quality of writing--sometimes both).

excerpt

Andrews nodded. He looked at Charley Hoge, and beyond him; he was drowsy with the heat and with the warm effects of the whiskey he had drunk; in his mind were fragments of Miller's talk about the mountain country to which they were going, and those fragments glittered and turned and fell softly in accidental and strange patterns. Like the loose stained bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, they augmented themselves with their turning and found the light from irrelevant and accidental sources.