John Williams died when I was 6 years old. I have read all 4 of his novels during my 26th year of breathing. When I try to sell his books to someone, I never know what to say about them, which seems strange because I like them so much. Subtle isn’t the right word because I understand them. Clever isn’t the right word because they are straightforward. Slow isn’t the right word because I read them in hours-long chunks. But, all of these words could be used by someone else to describe them. Maybe I’m being self conscious because they seem so personal to me. Obviously, he is talented (he won the National Book award in 1972), but more than that, his books seems like a private conversation between me and an author that has fallen out of the canon of must-read classics.
All of his books focus on a central character, and makes your heart ache for that person in simple language that says way more than what is on the page. The subjects of the books themselves pluck at main nerves in my psyche. An idiotic kid follows his need to experience the raw, painful beauty found in nature. A farmer’s son has to abandon his parents to chase the true meaning of English literature and all the knowledge it can impart. I cannot recommend Stoner or Butcher’s Crossing enough, and I look forward immensely to his other works. I will let Mr. Williams have the last word.
“He went free upon the plain in the western horizon which seemed to stretch without interruption toward the setting sun, and he could not believe that here were towns and cities in it of enough consequence to disturb him. He felt that wherever he lived, and wherever he would live hereafter, he was leaving the city more and more, withdrawing into the wilderness. He felt that this was the central meaning that he could find in all his life, and it seemed to him then that all the events of this childhood and his youth had led him unknowingly to this moment upon which he posed, as if before flight.”
-Butcher’s Crossing
Written by Daniel
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