I haven't read Butcher's Crossing yet, but I know of a number of lit-bloggers who have and who have had strongly positive reactions to it, so I thought I'd pass along this post from my friend Brendon (whose really excellent blog you should be reading anyway):

Apparently this news is nearly two months old, but I just discovered that Sam Mendes has decided to ruin another great underappreciated American novel. This time he’s set his sights on John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing.
[...] I really resent that he’s assumed the title of Grand Prognosticator of the American Condition [...] Mendes’s film [adaptation of Revolutionary Road] traffics in themes of ‘American Life’ but reads like it’s made by a man who has very little insight into or regard for America and Americans. It’s not as tacky as American Beauty, but it seems unwilling to engage with the psychology of its subjects, and that is what worries me so much about this upcoming adaptation.

The link that Brendon provides also notes that the screenwriter will be the guy who added a wholly superfluous Charlize Theron to adapted Cormac McCarthy's The Road.