Français
How to resist a western signed John Williams who puts a buffalo on the front cover ? Have I told you already how this animal fascinates me ? If I had a ranch, I’d have buffalos. So what about this book ? He sure doesn’t care about their fate because this novel tells the story of one of the last massive buffalo hunt that took place in the last quarter of the 1800.
The protagonist is Will Andrews, a young gentleman from Boston who drops out of Harvard and heads west. Towards the wild wild west with Emerson’s motto to seek “an original relation to nature” in his mind. About two weeks later, he washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas so-called town in the middle of nowhere. You can almost drive through the ghost city of Butcher’s Crossing nowadays : one unique road with a barber, a saloon/hotel/brothel – all at one building, a drugstore and that’s pretty much all of it. They believe in the coming of the train railroads. In the meantime, the town’s asleep. The few prostitutes have some rest during the summer, before the hunting season that draws restless men looking for ways to make money show up. They eventually find here ways to waste it : in gambling or buying booze and sex. Andrews wants it all and when he meets Miller, a man who tells him about a secret place where thousands of buffalos are hiding, Andrews is all fired up. The herds are hiding in a beautiful valley, not in Kansas but in the Colorado Rockies. All they need is money to set up an expedition – and Will has enough to finance it. The journey can start.
The four men set up on a long journey – a grueling one – they almost die after travelling a few days with not water left. Charley Hoge, Miller’s aide de camp is a religious man, though he tends to rely much on his whisky bottle lately. He’s nervous because he’s lost a hand a few years back in a snowstorm and they leave in early September. Fred Schneider, in charge of the pelting is also worried but Miller finally brings his team to the paradise : thousands of buffalos are standing there.
Will is amazed by the scenery and the animal itself. Huge but calm. And after the camp is settled, he’s ready to hunt the animals alongside Miller. He can’t believe how easy it is – the buffalo doesn’t know how dangerous these men and their rifles are. They can approach so close – the hunting is so easy and soon Miller loses control and kills thousands of them – an “orgy of slaughter” – no one can stop him, not even Schneider and Will who cannot skin the buffalos soon enough for their pelts (the skins just rot on the dead animals). Miller is so caught up in killing buffalo that he loses all sense of time and winter is coming.
The three men soon realize their fate when the first snow flakes show up – winter soon overtakes them, they’re trapped. Snowed in the valley with thousand of buffalo carcasses…. Another journey starts …
Grueling, right ? But fascinating. John Williams reflects upon the ending of an era and it does it through these men’s way of life. A way of life that was already showing signs of fragility : you couldn’t find buffalos in Kansas already. What did it say about these men ? What was guiding them ? Money ? or something else ? Will Andrews thought he’d come back the same man as before, and when the hooker told him the opposite, he laughed at her. But she knew. Too well.
Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. A must read. John Williams’s novel is brilliant and beautifully written.
A novel that showed the wild West at dusk. Williams dismantled the myths of a country. This western was written in the sixties and Williams died in the early 90’s, at 72. He taught literature in Denver. He won aa National Book Award for another book. His works were forgotten until not long ago and his books were republished and translated in French also. Loved it !