Butcher's Crossing

Is this the great American novel? Quite possibly.

Certainly it has all the elements. The mythic journey west, then farther west. Contempt for the natural world. Spoliation of the natural world. Degradation of women. The imperatives of commerce. The slaughter of beasts. Dangerous mysticism. The supremacy of the marketplace. The treachery of the marketplace. The impossibility of ever going home again. Insanity. Brutality. Despair.

What could be more American than that?

John Williams was born in the West in 1922 and died there in 1994. In between, he wrote three novels: Butcher's Crossing, Stoner, and Augustus. Augustus won the National Book Award in 1973. Butcher's Crossing and Stoner vanished from print until rescued this year by the New York Review of Books.

One critic called Butcher's Crossing "the finest western ever written." It's actually better than that.