John Williams

John Williams wrote three widely acclaimed novels: *Butcher's Crossing* in 1960, *Stoner* in 1965, and this biography of Augustus in 1972 (with this entry, all of his books have now been reviewed on this site). Williams is an exceptionally talented writer who continually reinvents his style, adapting it to the story and the characters. In this case, the author constructs the plot through letters w

The year is 1873 and Butcherʼs Crossing is a Kansas town, in reality a small settlement of buffalo hunters. Andrews is a twenty-year-old youth; he has abandoned Boston for a vague notion of freedom. > Sometimes, after listening to the hushed voices in church and school, he would pass beyond the borders of Cambridge into the lands and woods lying to the southwest. There, in some solitary place,

The novel chronicles the obscure career of a professor of English literature. William is the only son of a modest farming family. At the cost of great sacrifices, his parents sent him to study agriculture, in the hope that he would one day return with what he had learned to improve the management of the land. At university, the young Stoner falls in love with literature, and with books. Above