This paper examines John Williams`s Butcher`s Crossing in light of the “New Western” that developed in the 1960s. The writers of the New Western, or the “Anti-Western,” appropriate, revise, and ultimately rewrite the traditional Western and the history of the West. In the process of rewriting many postmodern writers broke away from traditional novels and relied on “metafiction,” a literary device that is employed to juxtapose fictional reality with their own reality. But as implied in his statement, “The iconoclasm need not be loud and messy,” Williams was less concerned with genre convention unless he would allow it to control his material, story, or character. What he was more serious about, though, was all the “lies” that the traditional Western, with its enormous popular appeal, had delivered to the public, as if they were what really happened. This is why Williams in Butcher`s Crossing constantly takes issue with Ralph Waldo Emerson`s Transcendentalism and with Frederick Jackson Turner`s Frontier Thesis. In an interview, Williams said that “there`s a very real sense in which `the West` does not, did not ever, exist. It`s a dream of the East.” This paper will show how Williams confirms and dramatizes his statement in Butcher`s Crossing.