"As the spirit of experimentation swirled around him in the 1960s and '70s, John Williams, working in relative obscurity as an English professor, wrote finely crafted novels distinguished by precise form, powerful but restrained prose, and close attention to physical detail and its symbolic import. His three major works Butcher's Crossing (1960), Stoner (1965), and the National Book Award-winning Augustus (1972) have come to be recognized as masterpieces...