The last kill

"Butcher's Crossing" is an unconventional Western. Late obituary of the myth of the Wild West, to the endless prairies with millions of bison and their miserable end as a raw material for the leather industry. The novel will be introduced at a time when it was difficult to find at all appreciable values ​​and hunt bison herds.

Butcher's Crossing is a nest in Kansas, where it draws our heroes Will Andrews, a Harvard dropout from a good family who feels oppressed by civilization and looking into the distance, in the truest sense of the word. He wants to find out who he is and what he really wants from life, this should help him in former acquaintance of his father, who settled here as a buffalo hide dealer. The Will would indeed keep the most, so he brings his paperwork in order, but eventually he gives it on to Miller, an experienced hunter. This harbors a dream of the ultimate hunting, since he had come across a huge herd of bison years ago, in a remote valley in the mountains of Colorado, far from any civilization.

The four of them set out on the arduous path that the group survived only thanks to Miller's experience (but in spite of this amazing experience takes risks), and actually see the herd where they suspected Miller. The battles can begin.

"Butcher's Crossing" shows the life of the Wild West frontmen in a vivid way, with full force and with all the dirt, and also with the joy of the first bath after eight months in the same clothes. We see the force with which nature strikes at the townspeople Andrews as he stoically endures all things and never draws the sense of the whole in doubt, assumes itself as Millers hunting always maßlosere trains. The ultimate adventure as a school of life, which can only exist, who is prepared to put its stake.

But John Williams is also a great parable succeeded to the grim thoughtlessness with which the human nature proceeds to body, misguided by an obsessive, exploitative instincts, and is bitterly punished for his thoroughness. The context in which one should make this huge novel, may not be large enough.