Paperback, 352 pages
English language
Published Dec. 5, 2013 by Vintage.
Will Andrews is no academic. He longs for wildness, freedom, hope and vigour. He leaves Harvard and sets out for the West to discover a new way of living.
In a small town called Butcher's Crossing he meets a hunter with a story of a lost herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley, just waiting to be taken by a team of men brave and crazy enough to find them. Will makes up his mind to be one of those men, but the journey, the killing, harsh conditions and sheer hard luck will test his mind and body to their limits.
Why everyone goes nuts for "Stoner". This is his best work.
John Williams superb prose re-examines the Westerner genre in this tale about a young man heading west to find himself. The action centers around a buffalo hunt instead of a big showdown at the corral. Will, the young man searchers to find meaning in the nothingness, the waste.
The river crossing scene gave me flashbacks to As I Lay Dying.
The slaughter of the buffaloes takes on more of a destruction of our earth and global warming and its blood lust reminded me of Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ.
I was impressed by the detail of life on the hunt and out west and this quite a different book from William's Stoner, but both are amazing reads.
quite good. reviews I have found do not compare it to heart of darkness.
