{"product_id":"butchers-crossing-9781590171981","title":"Butcher's Crossing","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn his National Book Award-winning novel \u003ci\u003eAugustus\u003c\/i\u003e, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With \u003ci\u003eButcher's Crossing\u003c\/i\u003e, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek \"an original relation to nature,\" drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher's Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher's Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher's Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Williams\u003c\/b\u003e (1922--1994) was born in Texas. He taught for many years at the University of Denver, where he was head of the creative writing program. Williams won the 1973 National Book Award in fiction for \u003ci\u003eAugustus\u003c\/i\u003e. His novel \u003ci\u003eStoner\u003c\/i\u003e is also published as an NYRB Classic. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eMichelle Latiolais\u003c\/b\u003e is an associate professor of English at the UC Irvine. Her novel, \u003ci\u003eEven Now\u003c\/i\u003e, won a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. She has recently published fiction and essays in \u003ci\u003eThe Antioch Review, Santa Monica Review, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eZYZZYVA\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New York Review of Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50586138673426,"sku":"9781590171981","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_4ff8cd41-cfed-4c61-9755-9195fc2421ae.jpg?v=1732041936","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/butchers-crossing-9781590171981","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}