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ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Will Andrews forgoes his Harvard education to experience ‘life’ in the American west. This will not have the same broad appeal as ‘Stoner’; it is still nonetheless an absorbing tale – with some existentialist touches, let’s say if Camus and Larry McMurtry joined forces, then they may have come up with a novel such as this. Greg
John Williams was born on August 29, 1922 in Clarksville, Texas. He served in the United States Army Air Force from 1942 to 1945 in China, Burma and India. The Swallow Press published his first novel, Nothing But the Night, in 1948, as well as his first book of poems, The Broken Landscape, in 1949. Macmillan published Williams' second novel, Butcher's Crossing, in 1960. After recieving his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Denver, and his Ph.D from the University of Missouri, Williams returned in 1954 to the University of Denver where he taught literature and the craft of writing for thirty years. In 1963 Williams received a fellowship to study at Oxford University where where he received a Rockefeller grant enabling him to travel and research in Italy for his last novel, Augustus, published in 1972. John Williams died in Arkansas on March 4, 1994.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Will Andrews forgoes his Harvard education to experience ‘life’ in the American west. This will not have the same broad appeal as ‘Stoner’; it is still nonetheless an absorbing tale – with some existentialist touches, let’s say if Camus and Larry McMurtry joined forces, then they may have come up with a novel such as this. Greg
His Stoner is the book that has garnered the attention, but I prefer this earlier take on the Western genre...it has some gory, visceral passages that are not for the faint-hearted -- Kate Atkinson Irish Times Shorn of sentimentality or decoration, the events and places [Williams] describes begin to feel inescapable, permanent, and rivetingly dramatic. This is language that seems to be carved into stone - into mountains... Stoner showed us a writer who had written a great book. To those of us who didn't know already, Butcher's Crossing reveals John Williams to be more than that: forgotten writer as he was, he was unquestionably also a great one -- Archie Bland Independent Superbly understated -- Rosemary Goring Herald One of the finest books about the elusive nature of the West ever written... It's a graceful and brutal story of isolated men gone haywire Time Out Harsh and relentless yet muted in tone, Butcher's Crossing paved the way for Cormac McCarthy New York Times Book Review
