John Williams
Butcher's Crossing

If I say Stoner, it is likely that to most sports enthusiasts like me, a Ducati in a nearly 60° lean while kicking out of a curve like a wild horse will come to mind. I must admit that Rossi's disastrous years in red made me appreciate even more the pure talent of the young Australian centaur: the only one capable of taming such a wild beast with so little control. But I don't want to talk about Casey Stoner, rather about John Williams. An American author who passed away two decades ago and who, in recent years, has been unearthed even in Italy and brought to publishing success precisely with "Stoner", published by Fazi Editore. His most famous work, (he wrote only four), written in 1965, featuring a very sad university professor as the protagonist, is devastatingly harsh and melancholic, beautifully rendered by a smooth and dry prose. A work I greatly enjoyed, but I don't feel like reviewing, to instead focus on the lesser and, in my opinion, unfairly underrated, "Butcher's Crossing" (1960).

Andrews is a young student from Boston heading to a remote western town with a substantial sum inherited to seek adventure and nature; everything he could never experience in his urban university life. He is a quiet and reserved young man, but eager for knowledge and determined to achieve personal success. Specifically, with the exorbitant sum at his disposal, he will rely on an expert hunter, Miller by name, to stage a monumental bison hunt together with an experienced skinner and an old one-armed man in the role of the jack-of-all-trades cook. In the 1870s, the winter hides of these massive and powerful animals are still "in fashion" and particularly expensive because most of the great herds have already been massacred. At the end of summer, the four will set out for Colorado where Miller years ago, in a remote and pristine place, had seen a huge herd.

The book enjoys a smooth prose for a very simple and linear plot. The work is filled with naturalist descriptions of the highest level, (in the case of a film adaptation, photography will need to have great importance), and the author sometimes relies on the meticulous photography of minimal details that never end up being excessively pompous or gratuitous. I am reminded of the very first pages of the book capable of immediately projecting us into the dirty, rough, and dusty setting of the West. Andrews and Miller's hunt should not be understood by the reader as a mere attempt to earn money but as a last desperate attempt to give meaning to their lives with a unique experience. Because in 1870 everything is about to change, giving way to the modern age; hunts like the one the two will hastily set up to outrun winter will not be repeatable in the future.

As the book progresses, Miller will become like a sort of Captain Ahab; totally blind in bestial exaltation, too caught up in the struggle and the absurd attempt to want to exterminate alone every single head of a herd of over five thousand bison. The young Andrews will watch impassively the unfolding events that will slip out of his hands; in an intimate way, he will silently enjoy settings, landscapes, and ways of living so distant from the city ones that will progressively harden him and abruptly make him complete the transition from youth to adulthood in a matter of weeks.

Upon returning from this long adventure, everything will be irreparably changed. The protagonists of the story, the world itself for a classic coming-of-age novel that is written so well that it almost reads itself. And even though it’s very different from "Stoner", I recommend it.