[T]he wildness and freedom that his instinct sought...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 was the central meaning he could find in all his life, and it, and it seemed to him then that all the events of his childhood and his youth had led him unbeknowingly to this moment upon which he poised, as if before flight...On this side is the city, he thought, and on that the wilderness; and though I must return, even that return is only another means I have of leaving it [the city--ES], more and more. From John Williams, Butcher's Crossing (51-2)*.
He would not return...to his home, to the country that had given him birth, had raised him in the shape he occupied and the condition that he had only begun to recognize, and that had relinquished him to the wilderness in which he had thought to find a truer shape of himself. No he would never return...nor could he recall the force of that other passion which had impelled him halfway across a continent into a wilderness where he had dreamed he could find, as in a vision, his unalterable self. Almost without regret, he could admit now the vanity from which those passions had sprung. (324)
The action of Williams's (1960) Butcher's Crossing takes place within two uncontrollable fields of action: one is the wilderness. The four main protagonists survive drought on the Plains and being trapped by snow in a mountain valley during a harsh winter; but ultimately one, Schneider, dies during the return journey--drowning after a kick to his head by his horse after a floating log unexpectedly, "thrust into the side" (264) of the horse that had been carrying him across a river. (Arguably a second, Charley Hoge, looses his mind; after the journey his eyes are described as "dull and blue, they were like bits of empty sky reflected in a dirty pool; there was nothing behind them, nothing to stop Andrews's haze from going on and on." (308*))
The second is the market economy: "the bottom's dropped out of the whole market; the [buffalo] hide business is finished." (292) From one year to the next the price has dropped by more than 95%. The change is due to both a change in fashion -- "everyone that wants one has a buffalo robe" (293) --, which alters the demand for hides, and oversupply of hides due to over-hunting (and lack of property rights, etc. cf. tragedy of commons). The novel intimates that at least some of the older buffalo hunters could have known that such price-swings are at least possible ("you remember what happened to beaver?" (293)), but failed to learn from history. Moreover, the novel also suggests to the attentive reader that at least with better communication technology, the information that was available in the area of demand ("back east") might have been relayed to those supplying the demand (294). The novel does not explore how to address such fundamental uncertainty about price movement (insurance, options, etc.).
By contrast, Andrews, exemplifies youth inspired by Emerson's new philosophy: "His father had encouraged his reading of Mr Emerson, but had not, to his recollection, insisted that he read the Bible." (47; the novel has an epigraph from Emerson's essay Nature). In particular, the novel is a long meditation on the fate of what happens to those who take The Over-Soul seriously. For, it's really philosophical ideas that drive the novel: in the first quoted passage above, Andrews turns his back on political society (the "city") exemplified by Boston, the city that is most identified with the spirit of the Revolution (recall this post). There is no genuine "freedom" or true "meaning" to be found there.
In fact, the main charge against the polity is not the recent practice of slavery or the horrors of the civil war (which is barely mentioned), or imperfect democracy (etc.), but the form of education it inflicts on its young: "At Harvard College, you don't talk; you just listen." (30; Miller comments "That's reason enough for any man to leave." (30)) One understand (recall) the allure of Thoreau's advocacy of teaching "youths better learn to live... by...trying the experiment of living." (Walden) As the second quoted epigraph to this post also reveals, Williams' Butcher's Crossing is ultimately concerned with the nature of such an experiment of living. In that sense it is a true companion to Stoner, which is also an extensive reflection on the nature of true learning (recall). This experiment is driven not by respect for university authority or the Bible, but (recall) by "instinct."++ Instinct fuels the quest of finding the Emersonian "unalterable self," (or as Emerson would put it 'the over-soul') which is associated with true "freedom and wildness." Andrews's quest is guided by "some nameless force circulated through him;" (48) which is also identified with "a subtle magnetism in nature" (51 & 324). Andrews thinks and acts in Emersonian ideas. For example, Emerson writes,
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.--Emerson (1841), Self Reliance.
But, during the destruction of the buffaloes, Andrews learns that hunting is not an instantiation of Emersonian ideas: "That [buffalo] self was murdered; in that murder he had felt that the destruction of something within him [Andrews], and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away." (176) For in the hunt, man is revealed as an automaton:
During the last hour of the stand he came to see Miller as a mechanism, an automaton, moved by the moving herd; and he came to see Miller's destruction of the buffalo, not as a lust for blood or a lust for the hides or a lust for what the hides would bring, or even at last the blind lust of fury that toiled darkly within him -- he came to see the destruction as a cold, mindless response to the life in which Miller had immersed himself...[Andrews] looked upon himself, and did not know who he was, or where he went. (159)
It is to Andrews's credit that he belatedly (and at great cost to animal life) recognizes that (modern) hunting is not a true form of freedom; one becomes machine-like. Williams does not trust his reader enough because he repeats the point later in the novel as he has Miller himself report: "all a man can do is not think about them, just plow into them, kill them when he can, and not try figure anything out." (197) So, the danger in applying Emersonian ideas by way of hunting is that these lead to a form of nihilism--that is machine-like un-thinking-ness.
In fact, if the novel is framed by action under uncertainty, it thematizes a variety of nihilisms. For, in bankruptcy, the capitalist, McDonald,++ expresses another form of nihilism to Andrews: "there is nothing...you get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you -- that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else." (296) This form of nihilism -- let's call it the diagnosis of social deception -- produces a "vague terror," but is rejected: "that's not the way it is." Andrews rejects it not because he does not accept the diagnosis of social life as social deception. He does not return to the city, after all. In fact, it's pretty clear that Andrews thinks that one can see through the lies well before one is ready to die; even before he goes out on the hunt he knows that his temporary returns to the city are all further means of leaving it (recall the quote from 52).
In fact, Andrews had already embraced the social deception view early in the novel: "He saw her [Francine] as a poor, ignorant victim of her time and place, betrayed by certain artificialities of conduct, thrust from a great mechanical world upon this bare plateau of existence that fronted the wilderness." (66) He later recognizes that this position only had given him a false sense of superiority, and provides cover to his fear of intimacy and his shame at himself. So, paradoxically, while the diagnosis of social deception is true it produces vanity, which is, in a way, a far worse social evil. It is, thus, a useless diagnosis if and only if one wishes to stay in society--the only place where intimacy and love can flourish. Not unlike Stoner in Williams' Stoner (recall this post), Andrews is also revealed as ultimately unwilling to choose connectedness, and love.**
Andrews chooses the isolation of the wildnerness. There "he felt himself to be like the land, without identity or shape." (87) This feeling survives the experiment in hunting: "He thought of himself now as a vague shape that did nothing, that had no identity." (237) That is to say, Andrews ultimately chooses a third form of nihilism -- let's call it Emersonian -- not the "nothingness" he associates with the people around him, but that is best captured, I think, by this passage: "Above him, before him, the land was shrouded and unknown; he could not see it or know where they went. But his view of the other country, the level country behind him, touched upon what he was to see; and he felt a sense of peace." (129)
That is to say, Williams's novel shows that Emersonian philosophy is indeed capable of guiding the young toward a certain form of "divine unity," (in Emerson's essay there are plenty of shades of Spinoza), which Williams reveals as a form of metaphysical indeterminateness. But it is ultimately incapable of being reconciled with the demands and needs of social life; Emerson's philosophy is revealed as a beautiful, even necessary, form of escapism. We can admire it, and even be inspired to follow its trail, but if we do so, we have to do it alone.
*The page-numbers refer to the 2014 Vintage edition (not the version linked at Google in this post).
++The unmediated Bible is shown not to be able to save Charley Hoge. Andrews's father, a man of a more Enlightened Church, can't bring himself to teach the Bible to his son. However, his frequent admiration of McDonald, a man that was willing to "make a life for himself," (14) does influence his son enough to provide the spark to go out West (even though Andrews clearly rejects McDonald's particular life of trade and bookkeeping from the start).
**Stoner is revealed as incapable of such a choice; Andrews as unwilling. Soon I'll write about Williams's version Augustus, who becomes emperor of the world, but is less free than the poets that serve him.
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