Huck lännen mailla

by Robert Coover, Heikki Karjalainen (Translator)

Robert Cooverin uusin romaani Huck lännen mailla jatkaa Huckleberry Finnin tarinaa siitä, mihin se Mark Twainilta jäi. Huck ratsastaa Pony Expressin lähettinä, taistelee sisällissodassa ja asuu lakota-intiaanien parissa, mutta toisin kuin kaverinsa Tom Sawyer, ei pysty kotiutumaan oikein minnekään.

Mark Twainille ja veijariromaanin perinteelle kunniaa tekevä romaani päivittää Huckleberry Finnin ja Tom Sawyerin uudelle vuosituhannelle. Omaan häpeämättömään tyyliinsä Coover kuvaa ihmisen raadollisuutta niin ettei lukija tiedä, pitäisikö itkeä vai nauraa.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Adventure, American, 21st Century, Audiobook

286 pages, Hardcover

First published January 10, 2017

About the author

Robert Lowell Coover was an American novelist, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. He became a proponent of electronic literature and was a founder of the Electronic Literature Organization.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nearly drownded on the Big River back home, but I didn't. Instead, I come to love the river, though the river never loved me. That's how it was with this horse. Ever so splendid and mighty, but indifferent as running water.
Huck Out West ~~ Robert Coover



I spent August of 2021 revisiting Mark Twain and his Mississippi works. I believe that Twain is the greatest of American writers, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to be the greatest American novel. When Robert Coon wrote a sequel of sorts to Huck Finn, I knew I had to read it. I decided it would be perfect to add to my Twain journey in August. I was not disappointed.

In the final lines of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Huck declares I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before . So naturally, Coon sets the further adventures of Huck and Tom in the territories.

It takes balls, big balls, to extend the lives of characters in an American classic like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Maybe that’s why it’s taken more than 130 years for an author of Robert Coover’s stature to make that effort ~~ and while it’s unlikely that Huck Out West will attain the status of Twain's classic, Coover’s novel is an excellent companion piece to Twain’s novel.



In this lively account, Huck lands a world that’s about as far from civilization as one could find in 19th-century America. Whether Huck is riding for the Pony Express, scouting for both sides in the Civil War or simply trying to survive in the grimly named town of Deadwood Gulch at the start of the Black Hills Gold Rush in the mid-1870s, he demonstrates an engaging ability to live by his wits and a wryly observant eye about the often bizarre events he witnesses.

Coover packs his story with nearly nonstop, visual action that includes hangings, explosions and even a beheading. He remains cleverly true to Twain’s use of the vernacular as Huck finds himself feeling meloncholical or describes another character as start-naked . Much of the humor of the novel lies in trying to sort out the truth from the often exaggerated version of it Huck presents in one of his stretchers .



Fans of Twain’s novel will be pleased that Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Jim make appearances, though Huck remains the star of this story. Through Huck’s friendship with a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe named Eeteh, Coover doesn’t avoid exposing the cruel treatment of the region’s native inhabitants, much of it inflicted here by a murderous George Custer who becomes Huck’s nemesis, earning him the nickname General Hard Ass.



Whether you read Huck Out West as a companion to Twain’s classic novel or as a standalone work, Huck Out West is a big and revealing portrait of the American frontier in a time of dramatic and often heart wrenching transition. I highly recommend this.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...all stories is sad stories, but not all the time."
-- Robert Coover, Huck Out West



I'm usually not a huge fan of reading literary fan fiction, but ye gads -- Robert Coover? So, I picked it up. It wasn't The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it wasn't The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. or The Public Burning either, but it was still fantastic.

It felt like a western lit combination of Larry McMurtry and Charles Portis. In many ways Coover captures the baked-in contradictions and tensions of America captured by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. "We ARE America, client the Bone! This is where the wonderfullest nation the world has ever seen is getting born I BELIEVE that! It'll be GREAT! A new land of freedom and progress and brotherhood!" Well, in this novel Huck is freedom and Tom is the progress and power.

The book reminds me constantly of the brilliance of stories in creating America, from the creation myths of its founding to the later stories told by those settling the West. We are a nation of storytellers and gold seekers. We are a nation of outlaw duos that like binary stars will forever orbit together in myth and legend: Tom & Huck, Kim and Kanye, Brangelina. That doesn't mean there isn't tension, but what is a good American story without a breakup.
________________________________

Some of my favorite lines from this book:

"A river don't make you feel less lonely but it makes you feel there ain't nothing wrong with being lonely."

"Maybe if I went on pretending, she'd go on pretending, and we could live a pretend life like that. Wasn't that how most lives was?"

"Laughing all we have, Hahza. No Great Spirits. Only laughing."

"But paying for sins is like getting the bad luck a body deserves for doing what he oughtn't done, like handling a snake-skin or stealing a dead man's boots."

"Dyin' improves EVERYBODY"

"Did you ever notice, Eeteh says to me one day, how making a world always begins with loneliness? The Great Spirits could invent all the suns and moons and rivers and forests they wanted, but it was never enough. They was still lonely."

"Stuff! I don't know what else humans is GOOD for, Huck"

"A hundred years from now, you and me'll both be dead and forgot and people'll still be killing each other. This is OUR killing time."

"I worked out a long time ago that, no matter what you do or think, you DIE and it's all wiped away. You brain rots and your thoughts, wants, loves, hates, simply aint no more. Others may borrow your thoughts, but you won't know that, you're gone like you never was. What we got is NOW, Huck, and now is forever. Until it ain't. So you can't worry over nothing excepting putting off the end a your story as long as you can, and finishing it with a bang."

"We got to still with our own tribe, even if they ARE all lunatics. If we don't, we'll end up crazier'n any of them."

Huck, EVERYTHING'S a hanging offense. Being ALIVE is. Only thing that matters is who's doing the hanging and who's being hung."

"I do believe it, but I'm prepared to change my mind if it ain't true, or if it's true, but inconvenient."

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Well now. If that don't just beat all. One of our greatest American storiers channeling one of our greatest American storiers. And all just for that. All just for the sake of a little stretcher. A little story. Damn but if Coover don't get it all pitch=perfect.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I both liked and disliked this one. I liked the character development, especially because I feel like I hit the nail on the head with my review of The Adventures Huckleberry Finn when I called Tom Sawyer a Wall Street bro (or in today's terms, he could also be a tech bro), and I said Finn could be someone who ends up in Doctors without Borders. Here, Tom is a lawless lawyer, and Finn is a defender of all creatures big and small. I loved how principled Finn was and how he stood up to his friend while still loving him.

I didn't love the writing. I think westerns are hard for me, in general. I don't enjoy the genre, and I find it usually hurts my heart to read about how awful we were to the Indigenous - either in how they were treated or how they were portrayed or both. Chinese too, in this case.

Good companion read for those in middle school or high school reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

I can't recall who recommended this book to me on Goodreads, but thank you for the rec! 3.5 stars rounding up to 4 because of Huck's backbone.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew I had to read this book when I first heard about it in The New Yorker last September while reading an interview with the author, Robert Coover. In that article, Deborah Treisman asked Coover what inspired him to write Huck Out West -- to which he replied

"Twain was a somewhat racist white boy (he belonged to Confederate militias in the early days of the looming conflict) who was changed for the better by his own writing—another phenomenon that many writers have shared, growing into their own best selves. Twain grew up among African-Americans, mostly slaves, and he learned to love them, but Native Americans were another story—a story he actually began, called “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians.” Very early in his narrative, the savages reveal their irredeemably vicious nature by massacring everybody in sight, and, soon after that, probably because it had in effect dead-ended, Twain abandoned the story. I decided to take up his notion of Huck and Tom heading West just before the American Civil War, seeing the horror of the time through Huck’s eyes, while retaining the feel of “A Boy’s Adventure Story."

And this is precisely what he's done with this wonderful novel.

For a downright barebones outline of plot (you seriously do NOT want spoilers at all before reading this novel) you can click here to get to my reading journal. Or not.

Despite the "horror of the time" as narrated by Huck, there are other things to be discovered -- for example, the power of storytelling and myth, and what it actually means to grow up, etc., -- and there are also some genuinely funny moments to be found in this story. What I came away with was reinforced by something I heard in an online interview about the novel on WNYC (which you absolutely shouldn't listen to until after you've finished the book). It's all to do with the bonds between Huck and his Lakota friend Eeteh that transcend their differences, and the image of the two living the "possibilities of human-to-human peace and reconciliation," just as Jim and Huck managed to do a long time ago while floating down the big river. What a lovely thought, especially these days.

I can't recommend it enough, and while not an absolute necessity, it might be a good idea to reacquaint yourself with both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn like I did prior to reading this book. I didn't read Huck Out West as just a modern sequel or to spend time comparing it to Twain's original work -- I don't think that's the point and frankly, it's just a big waste to approach this novel that way.

It is a gorgeous book and one that needs reading right now. Kudos to Mr. Coover.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cowboys and Indians. Generals and Chiefs. Pistols and whiskey. Dynamite and gold. Prospectors and prostitutes. Jim and Eeteh. Huck and Tom.


Reading this was a hell of a lotta fun.

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Tom is always living in a story he's read in a book so he knows what happens next, and sometimes it does. For me it ain't like that. Something happens and then something else happens, and I'm in trouble again.' A while later, 'I ain't nobody.' Huck Finn, yeah THAT one river rat hooligan from back on the Big River is now showed up out west after Lincoln's war to save the union and now there's the push west to conquer the territories makin' way for sivilization by ridding them of heathen savages and discovering gold. His pal and fellow pirate of old Tom Sawyer is his pard. who they both have been riding for the Pony Express before getting split up. Jim, Huck's runaway is there too an Becky Thatcher, Tom's girlfriend and more ... this is some high-falutin imagining, a real "stretcher" in tale telling twixt historical figures/myth in skewering satirist style, a regular Jed Clampett black gold gusher of American folklore writ large. It's a contemporary and existential tale full on abuser of human folly against nature, God and/or spirits and man. It's funny as hell the language pioneer perfect! Coover's got some hillbilly sense alive and kicks like a moonshine wallop! That there's every known hateful tendency on display don't take from the love of all life ornery to survive. Tom and Huck are the symbolic yin & yang of a wide wild country that's being born over the dead spirits of a hungry nation gold fever gone. This book's a yaller nugget and reader you're a damned fool prospector so's the catch is on. Huck's reflection towards the end, 'life don't rarely turn out like you think it might' - Huck, you is jess lucky, dumb luck!

[Carol Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving this book two stars out of respect. Robert Coover is over eighty years old, and he was writing classic short stories like "The Magic Poker" and "The Baby Sitter" when I was still wetting the bed.

Unfortunately, this weak-ass fan-fiction ripoff stinks just like what I used to do in bed. There's a sourness, a stale urine stench of old-man bitterness and self-pity that poisons every page. Huck is back, all right, and he's roaming the Old West. The ghastly violence and greed of the original classic novel is here all right -- the old man all but shoves it down your throat. But what's missing from Huck is Huck. The gentleness is gone, the humor, the interest in learning new things, and most importantly Huck's humility. This Huck talks like a bitter old man, a burned out Sixties reject who can't forgive the world for moving on and living and changing. There's no arc for Huck this time -- his moral superiority isn't earned through slow growth and change, it's just sort of stuck onto him like that phony, scraggly beard that's stuck on his face.

Oddly enough, Coover does a much better job with Tom Sawyer. I never liked Tom in the classic books, but in this book you have to hand it to him for being an incredibly charismatic anti-hero. He's not blind to the brutal mob violence and the sickening crimes against the Indians, but he's also intensely aware of the vital energy of the era and frankly aroused by the furious pace of change. There's something fascinating about the way Coover seems to celebrate Tom almost in spite of himself, while poor Huck never quite seems to captivate him as much as he wants us to believe.

Now there are some very basic problems with this book. The research sucks. Huck says that when Tom gets him to quit the Pony Express they leave in a big hurry, "without even getting our last paychecks." Huh???? Pony Express Riders were paid by check? Who knew? Maybe Huck could have e-mailed the office and asked them to put the last check in his Pay Pal account! This problem comes up a lot. Coover does the "staring at the stars" routine about fifty times in this novel, without ever once capturing the sense of wonder Huck and Jim feel in the original classic. But the last time he does it, he flashes all the way back to Tom Sawyer days, when Huck, Tom, and Joe Harper are playing pirates and looking up at the stars on Jackson's Island. And it's not enough to ask if the moon laid the stars or if they "just happened." Oh, no! Tom and Joe actually have to debate the Big Bang theory vs. the clockwork universe! No doubt Dr. Stephen Hawking came floating by in his wheelchair to help them settle the argument.

The truth his, this book is not a sequel to HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain. It's more like a ripoff of LITTLE BIG MAN by Thomas Berger, a campus classic from -- guess what? The Sixties!!! This Huck is not a gentle but courageous dreamer, he's a lowlife bottom feeder, and a crab like Jack Crabb. Just like Crabb, he scouts for General George Custer, who's revealed to be -- surprise! A vicious psychopath and a hung up pig from the Establishment. It seemed kind of heavy-handed when Thomas Berger did it fifty years ago. This time around it's really heavy-handed.

At the same time, there's something really irritating about the way Coover feels he has to "update" Huck's attitudes about Native Americans. It's not enough for him to have a Tonto like sidekick named Eeteh, oh no! Huck has to tell stories about Coyote and groove to the funky wisdom of the tribe. It doesn't develop naturally, like Huck's friendship with Jim on the Big River. It's stuffed down your throat as a done deal. And it's painfully insincere, and patently ridiculous if you happen to have read a book called ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain, where he says with brutal frankness that all the tribes are savage and backwards and not one of them is worth saving. He was wrong, of course, but he was honest, and he was honestly reflecting his age. Coover's playing that old Sixties game, the cover-up. It was those Establishment Pigs, see. They hated the Indians, not us!

But the one thing that enraged me the most about this book, aside from lousy characters, lousy research, and flagrant intellectual dishonesty, was the fact that Coover felt like he had to clean up and "update" Mark Twain's Indian hatred, but he felt no need at all to update his outlook on women. The blacks and Native Americans in this book are written according to the specifications of modern political correctness, but the women are the same old nagging scolds and two-faced sluts American male writers have been jacking off to for generations. And it's really interesting how, the one time Huck meets an innocent and attractive young woman who needs his help, who's in danger of being raped and physically abused, she has to turn out to be a scheming slut and a shrieking whore in disguise. Coover is apparently too dumb to make the connection between the rape of Indian women on the frontier, black women on the plantation, and white women well, just about anywhere throughout history. It takes a lot to make me play the woman-as-victim card. I like to leave that to fake, middlebrow feminists like Anna Quindlen. But Coover just pisses me off.

It's like he came into my house and wet the bed on purpose!

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I allow it takes a tremensdous scrotum to stake a claim sich as this one, but Coover done it, an he warn’t never sorry he done it neither. Perhaps it warn’t nothin to do with tes-tic-q-laar proprietarisomeness but more about having a ball hisself. It could have even been on account of his havin’ two members to hide down near the bottom of his taile. But now I reckon I’m getting ahead of myself. So, let me go back now and say some per-liminary things.

Ther’re sevril concerns one need take account of if one is to right a sequil to a work so central to the heart a Ameri-kin letters. I’ll only say a few:

1) Is you settin out to tell it or to right it?: Twain’s original is a problematic work of satire, that requires, in my interpretation, that Huck be skewered on the same barb as all the other characters, even if his liminal status makes him more victim than perpetrator. Coover has to do some fancy footwork to keep Huck both good-hearted and hapless, to keep the spirit of the original while striking out into new Territory.

2) What’s he gun do about all that ugly language that war in use in the time period?

3) How’s he gun tie up all them noose ends with all them privy-ous caricters from Tom-Huck-Whirled?

As fur as answers go, I’ll segest a-body is best to read her their own self. But I will say this book deals with some of the ugliest stuff and it sure do smell like da nation. It dasn't make a body feel good in mos de same ways as the originary, while avoiding growin-up caricatures into characters. Like all satire, its belieavabull without it being realism, but it is equal measures fabulist and meta-fabulist.

This here’s worth yer time and a scrotum-full of yer gold, tho I do segest a-body should re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a’for, jes so’s you can appreciate all the trouble Coover went to in craftin this so skillfulsome.

[Dax · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coover succeeds in channeling his inner Twain. 'Huck Out West' is a fun yarn about the loss of innocence in the American West. It's a quick read that actually has a lot to say. Immensely quotable as well. As some of my other gr friends have noted, Coover's dialogue and characters (really, caricatures) are pitch perfect. I enjoyed the Coyote and Snake metaphors as well. Low 4 stars.

"all stories is sad stories, but not all the time."

[robin friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huckleberry Finn And The Western

Robert Coover's novel "Huck Out West" (2017) is written as a sequel to Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" and places these characters in the middle of a story of the American West. Many years ago, I enjoyed Coover's "The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop.", but I was much less taken with this recent book.

Coover's book begins where Twain's books leave off. It follows the fortunes of Huckleberry Finn and his friend during the Civil War and through 1876. The book is a melange of history and of the adventures of its characters and of the fate of their childhood friendship. Huck is the first-person narrator. The novel shows Huck and Tom as riders for the Pony Express and follows their adventures through the Civil War. The two are present for the hanging of 39 Sioux Indians in Minnesota in 1862. (President Lincoln had meticulously reviewed the records for 300 Indians scheduled to be hanged and commuted the sentences for all but 39.) Huck and Tom soon go their separate ways as Tom returns home to fulfill his ambitions of material, political, and sexual success while Huck remains out West and tries to get by. In the latter sections of the book the two are united while their characters and the differences between them have become much more pronounced than was the case when they were young. Tom is a go-getter, ambitious, and none-- too-- scrupulous while Huck is introspective and tends to go with the flow, try to get by, and maintain his independence.

The book captures a great deal of Western history with its treatment of the early Dakota settlers, the discovery of gold, the large influx of settlers, and the wars with the Sioux. It depicts many historical figures including General George Custer and concludes with the destruction of Custer at the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn.

Huck is a loner who doesn't fit in. He leaves his community and lives with the Sioux for many years, with an Indian wife and a dear friend, Eeteh, who is also a loner who doesn't fit in with in his Tribe. Huck and Eeteh plan to ride to Mexico in search of freedom and away from the constraints of the ongoing Indian wars and the restrictions of their respective cultures. Eeteh regales Huck with stories taken from the Sioux religion about a figure named Coyote. When Huck meets up with his former friend, Tom is a representative of power, success, and law and order. He and Huck have their serious differences.

I found the story of Huck and Tom and the story of the American West was an ill-fit in this book. The writing too is mixed and does not hang together well. With some clear and effective scenes, the novel is full of bluster, odd word use, and strange events in what is sometimes described by the markedly unhelpful and pedantic term "magic realism" which is neither magical nor realistic. In its "postmodern" style, the tone of the book is sharp and caustic and also relativistic -- while making virtually absolutistic moral criticism of the West and its settlement. As with many Westerns, the book pits the life of freedom and independence against the encroachments of American society and law. The book is highly deflationary and critical of what it sees as values formed by American power structure and by the incoming settlers. The book is written to puncture what it sees as myths that the book believes people hold about the West and about the United States.

The genre of the American Western, while once a staple of the popular novel and of film, has never gone away and has proved adaptable to many uses and to many literary techniques, including the "magic realism" of this book. There still is life remaining in the old genre. In reading "Huck out West" I thought of an earlier genre Western, A.B. Guthrie's 1947 novel, "The Big Sky". Although set in the pre-Civil War West, Guthrie's book has many of the same themes as Coover's, including conflict between cultures, the significance of discovering markedly different religious mythologies and beliefs among different peoples, the need to overcome tribalism and ethnocentricity, and the conflict between freedom and society or, as Huck would put it, "sivilization". The following comment by Huck in Coover's book would not have been out of place in Guthrie's novel.

"Tribes"... They're a powerful curse laid on you when you get born. They ruin you, but you can't get away from them. They're a nightmare a body's got to live with in the daytime." (p. 215)

Guthrie's book is written from the perspective of what once was thought of as secular liberalism and shows a love of country and of the West with all their flaws. While saying many of the same things, Coover's reading of the West and of the United States of which it is part is scathing and rejecting. The tone is snarky and one of mockery.

There are many enjoyable, informative books about the West, both histories and novels. Many books may help the reader see America with a broader and less harsh perspective than might otherwise be the case by following only contemporary skepticism, anger, and irreverence. The West may be explored both through histories and through fiction, while "Huck out West" is an uneasy combination of both. In the sense that "Huck out West" captures the less than flattering view of the United States that many Americans currently share of their country, it is backward-looking and takes a position that may itself be in need of revision. The West and our country deserve better.

Robin Friedman

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here comes “Huck Out West,” by Robert Coover, the literary cult figure who’s been transforming American myth and history for 50 years. Twain’s characters are back, alive again: Huck, Tom, Becky and Jim, along with references to Pap and the Widow and the Judge.

Is this resurrection something to celebrate, like the boys showing up at their own funeral? You may be tempted to sigh, “I been there before,” but you ain’t been here before, not like this anyways. Coover’s novel picks up the story decades later, in the 1870s, around the Black Hills of South Dakota during the gold rush. Huck is a man now, bearded, still living alone and still sounding remarkably like the boy we met in school. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

To watch The Totally Hip Video Book Review, go here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/...

[Chandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

After re-reading Huckleberry Finn as a primer, this book feels, at least in style and language, to be a seamless transition. I have no idea how Coover pulled it off. Having said that, this may be the first "Trumpist" novel of our time, with once-beloved characters taking on insidious mantles in a much-too-realistic pastiche of our present political atmosphere.
I found myself nodding even as I was nauseated by the idea that America's own Tom Sawyer could become a two-faced politician/tyrant masquerading as the people's voice. Coover's genius is that he makes this work so well and reminds us the vast trench between Tom (an opportunist to the last) and Huck (an idealist) that existed even as children. Even if we, as children reading those books, didn't see it that way. I recommend, but not if you're hoping to escape the hopeless garbage of our post-election world.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

For the first two-thirds of its running time, Robert Coover's new Huck Out West can only be called a perfect novel, which is why it came close to being the first book of the year to score a perfect 10 here at CCLaP. Or to be more specific, it succeeds perfectly at what it's aiming to do, which is to read and feel like a long-lost new chapter in the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn saga by Mark Twain, which to remind you consists not only of the original two volumes of "Adventures" themselves, but also two largely forgotten sequels that Twain himself wrote in his elderly years, 1894's Tom Sawyer Abroad (a parody of Jules Verne's fantastical novels) and 1896's Tom Sawyer, Detective (in which Sawyer serves as a Matlock-style combination PI and lawyer, to both defend his uncle when unfairly accused of murder and to figure out who the real killer is).

It's surprisingly difficult to write a contemporary novel in the spirit of Twain's originals, as the hundreds of unread, mediocre attempts filling the dusty back shelves of your local library attest. (With these characters now being in the public domain, much like Sherlock Holmes, there is now a veritable cottage industry of "unauthorized Twain sequels" that now exist.) But if anyone can do it, it would be the now 85-year-old (!) Coover, an obscure but revered figure in the literary world; alum of the University of Chicago during its Mid-Century Modernist artistic height (the same years Saul Bellow and Philip Roth were there), former teacher at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and famed contributor to such countercultural lit mags as The Evergreen Review, Coover has made a long career out of clever pastiches and boldly experimental works, along the way racking up everything from an NEA Grant to a Guggenheim Fellowship to a National Book Award nomination.

It's this pedigree that allows Coover to get Huck Out West so exactly right in tone for the vast majority of its length; not too treacly yet not too mean, funny and irreverent yet with a subtle political agenda running underneath it all, with a delightful relationship with wordplay but never letting that get in the way of telling the story itself. It's a subtle and difficult balance that even Twain himself didn't get right until his 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is why it wasn't until then that he started getting called the "first grand master of the true American literary arts." (His earlier Adventures of Tom Sawyer, from 1876 nearer the beginning of his career, is more a straightforward tale of childhood nostalgia for an idealized frontier that never actually existed, well-written but not containing that dark political edge that made his later work so admired and famous.) And Coover nails it perfectly for the first two-thirds of Huck Out West, setting his own book in the eventful years between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the US Centennial (1876), taking our now twentysomething heroes and depositing them in the middle of "The Territories" (present-day North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, etc); where Huck in particular becomes a sort of Victorian-Age Forrest Gump, in which among other things he serves as a rider for the Pony Express, becomes an honorary member of the Lakota tribe, almost joins up with the Jesse James gang, briefly acts as an Indian scout for a psychopathic George Custer, and is around to witness the gold rush that leads to the formation of the infamous "Wild West" town of Deadwood.

In a way, then, it's a real shame that Coover finally gets this balance wrong in the last third of the novel, and like many contemporary authors starts tilting too far into 1970s-Postmodernist-style politically-correct "shocking for shock's sake" historical revisionism: by the end of Huck Out West, Tom Sawyer has turned into a racist, wife-beating, crooked-sheriff villain, his estranged wife Becky Thatcher has become a mining-town prostitute to make ends meet, huge chunks of pages are devoted to Native American mythology tales, and the establishment of Deadwood becomes an unending daily horror show of torture and violence worthy of a Cormac McCarthy tale. I mean, I like Cormac McCarthy, don't get me wrong, but I like him precisely because his revisionist Westerns are very explicitly meant to be revisionist, and not even for a moment are you expected to believe that a book like Blood Meridian had actually been written back in the 1800s; but with Cooper's goal here being to trick us into believing that this is a long-lost novel by Twain himself, and largely succeeding in that for the majority of the book's length, that makes it disappointing when he veers into Dances With Wolves territory at the very end.

In another way, though, it's pretty astonishing that the first two-thirds of Huck Out West came out as well as it did, especially considering that most people Coover's age now spend their time watching 16 hours a day of Fox News and screaming about how The Muslims Are Coming To Convert Your Children And Take Your Job. If this is the last book that Coover will ever write -- and let's face it, it might very well be -- then it's a fine capper to a long and fascinating career, with the remarkable thing being not that he got the tone a bit wrong at the end but that he got it so right during all the rest. Although not perfect, it still comes very strongly recommended today, a great example of an author getting the concept of "pastiche" exactly right, and a true reading delight for any fan of Twain's original books on the same subjects.

Out of 10: 9.8

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck floats the idea of heading west. 130 years later Robert Coover has given us that delightful story.

I don't know how much time has passed but Tom Sawyer is balding and Huck Finn has a white beard, or mostly white, so they're considerably older. They've spent the years scouting and riding The Pony Express, but now Tom has gone his own way and Huck is trying to make do.

This book is a western but it retains the spelling idiosyncrasies and enough of the humor to evoke the original. It was definitely not necessary to reread Sawyer and Finn first. This works just as well as a standalone.

Huck has more adventures, occasionally with Tom along, gets in more than a few hair-raising scrapes, tells more than a few "stretchers," and finds both cruelty and friendship out west. All without one single use of the n-word, which is a considerable improvement on the original!

[Krissy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a former English major who has been fortunate enough to study The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the high school, community college, and university levels, I was excited to see that a sequel of sorts was being published, continuing Huck's story "out West." I joined the waiting list at my local library and was fortunate enough to get one of the first copies available in my area! I started reading it the day I got it from the library...and put it down until three days before it was due back.

I was disappointed in this book. Although the dialect used was pretty spot-on, and was a highlight of the book, the story left much to be desired. One of the best points of Twain's Huck book is the episodic nature of the story, many different mini adventures for Huck and Jim (and sometimes Tom) which are very memorable. The floating house, the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, the Duke and the King and the Wilks girls are all sections and scenes that can be easily recalled and are mostly self-contained stories. In Huck Out West, however, there seem to be three main sections: Huck with the wagon train, Huck with the Lakota, and Huck in Deadwood. Each are much more murky in my mind (even though I finished the book today) because they are much less delineated.

Huck's main companion in the book is Eeteh, a Lakota Indian mostly cast-off from his tribe. To me, Eeteh is an extremely poor substitute for Jim (who I was very very happy to see in the book, even if it was only for a few scenes.) Eeteh's main contribution to the book/Huck's life seems to be telling stories of Coyote and Snake. While the stories Eeteh tells are mythical and interesting, for me they seemed like filler and not what I personally wanted to read in a story about Huck Finn. Huck also has a wild horse that he names Ne Tongo, who is a wonderful addition to the story and has a personality all his own (I actually liked Tongo much more than Eeteh and felt that he contributed more to the story!)

The principal issue I had with Huck Out West was the same that I had with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Tom Sawyer always comes along and spoils everything. Just like in Twain's Huck, where Tom comes to "free Jim" (who has already been set free: 130-year old Spoiler Alert!,) Tom arrives in Deadwood, with his photographer in tow, and declares himself Mayor-Governor. Hijinks ensue!! Huck Out West Tom Sawyer has barely matured (if at all) from Twain's Tom, and I suppose that a reader that enjoyed Tom when Twain wrote about him will also be happy to see him back here, but I have never been a reader that was overly fond of Tom. So for me, having to read about Tom Sawyer for the last third of the book was a chore, not a joy.

In conclusion, I guess I expected more of Huck than I was given. I am not the type of person to whom canon is sacred...I love my pastiches and thought that Jon Clinch's book Finn: A Novel, about Huck's Pap was a worthy companion book to Twain's. I desperately wanted to hear about Huck's later life, but this was not the book I wanted to read.

[Miriam Cihodariu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This continuation of stories Mark Twain planned to write himself was very much in line with what we could have expected him to write if he ever got to it. But that includes all the mixed feelings which come with the original authorship.

I liked the Pony Express references and the nods to a very Western social history of the United States. It's all presented in its questionable, sad, racist and convoluted glory.

It's a bit shocking to see your childhood heroes grow up to be murderers (Tom) and prostitutes (Becky) or simply do very disappointing things (like selling Jim into slavery etc.). But I guess it contributes to the grown-up feel of the story.

At other times, the story is over the top - like a parody of a Western. Huck is about the be hanged and Tom saves the day by riding in and shooting the rope by which Huck was already hanging. Come on, really?

I completely dislike what the author did with women - no effort put whatsoever in delivering a bit of empathy or trying to paint them in a more complex light. They're just presented as devious, aggressive whores who are out to get you. Very disappointing.

Any effort into understanding otherness seems to be poured into Indians and especially Huck's friendship with Eeteh, though. By and large, that's a good thing and somewhat redeeming, of course, but it feels overdone at times. Huck's complete spiraling into Indian myth and spirituality is not very believable, for example. But I have to admit that it's beautiful nonetheless. Some of my favorite parts:

'Eeteh went on telling stories. He says he couldn't stop himself, it was a kind of sickness. If it WAS a sickness - him telling stories, me listening - it was a sickness we'd both die of, because wasn't nuther of us going to stop.
[..] I was glad to see them go, and I says so, Eeteh nodded and says all stories is sad stories, but not all the time.'

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical fiction or Western? I'd say simply a lovely blend of the two. I've been pondering for a while exactly what to write about this delightful novel that continues the lives of Huck Finn and his friends after they lit "out for the territory." Tom becomes a lawyer, zealot, and blowhard--even more than in his youth, but Huck retains his endearing naivete. I won't go into the others for fear of spoilers, but there's a military officer patterned on George Armstrong Custer; his name is never mentioned and he's never spoken well of but he's a great addition to the tale. There's plenty of action here, but the pace is relaxed, rather than frantic; characters are colorful, involving, and vividly described; the imaginative story line involves Huck in a number of episodes of American history--he rides with the Pony Express, keeps company with cattle rustles, prospectors, and Indians; real historical figures are interspersed and there's a sense of time and place, although it may not be the west we thought we knew; tone is amusing, nostalgic, evocative; but the language! Coover replicates Twain's spelling and diction, including malapropisms, and even on the audio one can appreciate the language and style. Dark humor and social commentary that would likely please Twain as well.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between a 2 and a 3. What I like is how uncanny Coover is in capturing Twain's dialect through his first-person Huck point of view. What I missed, however, was Twain's dark humor. Coover's book is more dark darkness, a rather unrelenting look at the brutal post-Civil War years out west with cowboys vs. Indians vs. prospectors vs. cut-throats vs. anything that moves.

Weirdly, Coover--whether by choice or by accident--chooses to insert Tom Sawyer to bad effect about 2/3rds through the book. Sawyer is insufferable here. I bit of deus ex machina. A bit of game show host. A bit of smarmy politician. Ugh.

As for plot, not much. Mostly one misadventure after another, featuring one low-life after another, with Huck the ever-innocent just chronicling away for the reader's ever-patient sense of dramatic irony.

So, yeah. An accomplishment of sorts that must've taken Coover no small amount of research and practice to pull off, but the sum of its parts do not add up and probably never could, given the comparisons it sets itself up for. Twain remains uber alles.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title states, the novel takes a fanciful look at what might have happened, after the events of Twain's classic, as Huck and Tom make their merry way west, on the brink of the Civil War. They split up and the story follows Huck through many adventures, as a horse wrangler, in the Black Hills and his bonding with the Lakota Sioux tribe. He eventually teams back up with Tom, Jim and Becky. It sets a lighter tone, but there is plenty of rugged action, so fans of the western genre should enjoy it. I know I did.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year I reread The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to help prepare me for Coover's Huck Out West. Though I enjoyed Twain's book, I didn't know until actually reading Coover's that rereading couldn't really prepare me for the imaginings of myth and new personifications of America to be found in the characters grown up as perhaps only Coover could spin them.

There are, I understand, 3 other continuations of the Huckleberry Finn story. The only other I've read is Greg Matthews's The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which lands Huck and Jim in California during the Gold Rush. Coover doesn't get them that far. There's gold in his story, too, but it's in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. That's the epicenter of the events which catch us up to the man Huck has become after he and Tom Sawyer rode for the Pony Express and after Huck had made a life with the Lakota tribe and a wife named Kiwi who had no nose. This is one of those novels in which historical moments figure and to which the characters are convenient witnesses.

Scattered throughout are reminders of the original Tom and Huck and Jim and the anecdotes about them which have become iconic. Huck himself remains an innocent soul willing and wanting to do what's right, a man who still sees the best in people, white, red, or black. Tom has changed. Tom is one of those characters Coover has used before as, I think, a kind of catalyst. The Tom who persuaded friends through guile to paint a fence for him now persuades with a gun. He's become a mythic figure, a larger-than-life persona who stands for America's imperialist impulse. He can shoot straighter than anyone else, his heroism seems to glow as bright as his white hat and gloves, and when he sleeps he hovers a foot above his cot. His qualities and abilities are magical. But when he takes off his hat his bald spot is noticeable. Called sivilization in the novel, Tom's bent on the destruction of the Indians and the settling of their land. Becky Thatcher's in the Territories, too. Once married to Tom, she's since taken up the oldest profession in the mining towns. And Jim? Jim was sold to the Cherokees because an escaped slave couldn't ride with them in the Pony Express. And lurking most of the time just over the horizon is Huck's nemesis General Hard-Ass who's a stand-in for Custer. We know what happened to him.

I hope this sounds like fun because it is. Part of what makes it fun is the language. I like novels which are verbally agile and risk-taking. I call them language novels. It's probably more correct to call Huck Out West a dialect novel, told as it is in Huck's voice and written in Coover's version of the uneducated drawl of the 19th century west. An example that's representative while not given to some of the style's extremes: "That story turned poorly and we never seen what was left of them afterwards, but ending stories was less important to Tom than beginning them, so we was soon off to other adventures that he thought up or read about in a book or heard tell of. Sometimes they was fun, sometimes they warn't, but for Tom Sawyer they was all as needful as breathing. He couldn't stand a day without it had an adventure in it, and he warn't satisfied until he'd worked in five or six." The passage is deliberately chosen for its use of the word fun. That's early in the novel and serves as a kind of explanation for what they've been doing in the Territories. Two pages from the novel's end the word appears a final time in regard to an Indian folktale regarding Coyote's making a new creature from parts of Jack Rabbit, Porkypine, Mountain Goat, Turkey Vulture, Rainbow Trout, Prairie Dog, and Whooping Crane so Fox's sexual fun wouldn't be ruined. Which is what Coover has done, continued the fun by making a new creature from parts borrowed from Twain. That, I hope, shows the novel is fun from beginning to end.

[William Koon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recent nostalgic fictional explorations of the American West include both Days Without End by Sebastian Barry and News of the World by Paulette Jiles. Both are enjoyable, both well done. However, the recreation of the West is indeed a slippery slope and was never done better than Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man. (His sequel was far less satisfying.)

Now here comes a real humdinger. And one I would have never read except for the author, Robert Coover. Coover’s assured hand created two seminal novels of the later twentieth century with The Origin of the Brunists and The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. He has continued his idiosyncratic style and subject matter. But back to the truth: here he creates the life of Huck Finn after he “lights out for the territories.”

We are indeed living in the days of miracles and wonder with novels being created out of thin air and Shakespeare such as what Anne Tyler and Margaret Atwood have been commissioned. I left them gingerly alone although I admire both writers immensely. I am reminded of another very successful “literary based” work, McEwan’s Nutshell when I read Huck Goes West. It does have hints of Ragtime and Zelig, but the author plays, fast, loose, and fairly with his subject. You shouldn’t mess with mother Bill. And you shouldn’t mess with Twain.

But mess with him, Coover does. Huck lives a varied life, is even married for awhile to a noseless Indian woman. He is nearly hanged but rescued at the last moment by ---Tom Sawyer, who reminds us of some very opportunistic current politicians. Also, gaining on Huck all the time is his nemesis Long Hair, just as the posse pursues Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

As with the McEwan, the more you know Huck Finn, the more you’ll enjoy this work. He alludes, refers to, borrows, steals, purloins sections, words, phases, episodes, characters. And some of our favorites return to haunt us: Pap, Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, Colonel Sherborne, and JIM! I will not bore with the plot or the correlations. Dive in. Hang on for an enjoyable literary trip. Coover’s language is divine. He captures Huck so purely, that I am sure Twain is looking from somewhere in admiration and awe.

[Leggo Quando Voglio · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Se volevo fermarmi mi avrei fermato, ma non ne avevo proprio mica voglia."

Huck Finn nel West è un romanzo di Robert Coover pubblicato, qui in Italia, da NN Editore.

Il libro può essere considerato un seguito dei due celebri romanzi di Mark Twain: Le avventure di Huckleberry Finn e Le avventure di Tom Sawyer.
Ovviamente non si tratta di un seguito "ufficiale" ma di una creazione dell'autore che ha deciso di ispirarsi alle due figure letterarie per creare un romanzo completamente diverso ma ad essi collegato.
I collegamenti, oltre per la presenza di alcuni dei personaggi dei due libri, sono dati da alcuni riferimenti delle storie raccontate negli stessi. Per la comprensione del testo non è fondamentale aver letto i due classici e, a meno che non si voglia nessun tipo di anticipazione sulle loro storie, è assolutamente fruibile anche separatamente. L'unico svantaggio di questa scelta potrebbe essere il non poter notare ogni riferimento ai due testi precedenti.

Ve l'ho segnalato come seguito "non ufficiale" per evitare che le aspettative si focalizzassero su un testo in qualche modo simile alle opere a cui si riferisce: mentre "Le avventure di..." sono due romanzi di formazione scritti in modo classico, Huck Finn nel West è più simile ad un western e ha un linguaggio sicuramente più sperimentale e complesso.
Nella prefazione del traduttore, Riccardo Duranti, ci vengono spiegate alcune scelte di traduzione che fanno comprendere la complessità dello stile e della sua resa in italiano: il racconto è in prima persona e il narratore è Huck Finn stesso, ormai diventato uomo ma non particolarmente colto e, perciò, ciò che racconta è volutamente sgrammaticato (il traduttore ad esempio racconta di aver volutamente eliminato ogni congiuntivo) e storpiato ("gnente" al posto di "niente" ad esempio).

Il resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/libr...

[Jeff Buddle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huck's back! Robert Coover picks up Twain's yarn some years after Huck lit out for the Territory to escape Aunt Sally's attempt at sivilizing him. And, thanks to Coover's genius, it really seems to be Huck: the same cadences, slang, words 'n phrases. Huck's implicit wisdom is here too. Most of Huck's contemporaries perceive that America is busy being born, but Huck sees it more as the promise of America dying.

Huck's still an innocent. He can't understand why all the killing of the Native Americans, why all the hate? He befriends a young Lakota in the same way he befriended Jim. He doesn't perceive his own resistance to the slaughter as some inherent good; he instead sees it as some kind of unique quirk in his personality. All that is sivilization, and you can hang it.

America, of course, does do a fine job at killing its independent thinkers, especially if they threaten the status quo, so Huck runs against some powerful enemies in this novel and he does, in fact, nearly get himself hanged. But, this being Huck Finn, fate --or somebody-- steps in to save him.

Besides Huck, there are a handful of characters from Twain here, some notable ones. But it's Tom Sawyer who features most prominently. Tom's become something of an opportunist, a smooth talking shark eager to milk the idiots of the old west, separating them from their filthy lucre in any way possible. In Huck's mind, Tom's gone sivilized, with all the violence, greed and selfishness that such a state represents. In Tom, we may have a mirror of at least one current politician, a man only in the game for his own gain.

Coover's magnificent here. "Huck Out West" is episodic in the same way as Twain, sharp in its humor, smart in its satire. You can imagine this as the book Twain would have written. It's a page turner, an adventure, deeply literary, and 100% great.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one gave me a lot of trouble in the beginning- dialect that was hard to read, and jumping around. Also: animal deaths. (Trigger warning: there are a fair amount of animals killed in this book. Not from natural causes. You are now more warned than I was. ) But I stuck with it, and found that the book gave me a lot to think about and I ended up enjoying it much more than I thought I would. In the same way that I liked the show Deadwood more than I thought I would- it was a bit violent, grim and crude, but fairly entertaining. And I like westerns.

It really made me reflect on my memories of Tom Sawyer, and reevaluate him. (We always thought he was so clever for manipulating the kids into painting that fence- but was he, instead, a budding sociopathic con-man? Not saying I agree- just saying there's an argument to be made!) It also made me think of the legacy of Manifest Destiny, and the troubling ways in which some of the events were rationalized and how that mirrors contemporary logic. I think it would be a mistake to read this like historical fiction- yes, there are some historical events, but if you think too hard about realism and accuracy, etc- you will find flaws. Instead, it was more like literary historical fiction where the characters were caricatured to the point of absurdity, if that makes sense. But unfortunately, some mindsets are timeless and universal- so this doesn't have to be restricted to an antebellum Western US setting.

It made for a good discussion, even thought the group was split about 50/50 like/dislike.

[Snakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coover did an amazing job in my view mimicking the vernacular and speech of the Twain books. And on top of that his storytelling was just as fascinating, entertaining, and as nonstop as the classic adventures. Really enjoyed this sequel.

[Jeff Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

As luck has it, I managed just today to post my first review on Goodreads of my favorite author's latest novel.

It happens to be February 4. And so Happy Birthday, Bob Coover!

You durn well deserve it for this one.

As a rule I resist describing story unless a particular point figures into my comments of appreciation (or depreciation). So I won't do it here, but just thank the surrounding reviews that get the job done.

Instead I'm compelled—after a single reading, on the heels of a recent read of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—to lay out the following points.

1. Huck Out West isn't a more-or-less reprise of Twain's story or an obvious deconstruction in the usual sense--it both continues and enlarges Twain's concept and vision. It uses his themes, respects the core of his characters, and takes Huck pretty much where Twain would have had to as the innocent young chronicler lights out into the largely Dakotas “Territory”. But Coover is Coover, and so he finally infuses Twain's caustically witty, tolerant, knowing misanthropy with the sense of life and philosophy he's been building all his own literary career (while also managing more generosity to Native Americans than Twain would have unless a longer life's experience fixed that for him). America's history, especially in this rough rapacious period rising to its centennial, is of course a kind of story that growed to men boys like Tom Sawyer make hay of... and fatal story-making is that nightmare from which Coover has always been trying to awake us. A grim and hilarious bravo! to all of this.

2. A prime part of the book's enlargement is Coover's Huck voice, carrying through beautifully on the colorful patois that Twain gives him. But not just that. It doesn't sound like you can't tell the difference. First, it's got Coover's own voice in harmony (just as was present in the multifarious voices of Brunist Day of Wrath). And that's thrilling in its register, not a criticism. Perfect imitation is like a Brit actor doing a great 'merican dialect and nothing more in a meretricious movie; or a man building a toothpick frigate in a bottle, which, without larger artistic skill and intent, is a mere freakish talent. But then, Coover gives you the palpable Huck as if his years in Territory began stretching the midland-southernisms towards a more westward ho! the twang, upping the ante with a riotous bouquet of portmanteau phonetic malapropistical verbiage (let's all muddytate deliciously on that, dear reader, and smell the mutant roses!)... and as if, perhaps, he's writing the way Twain might have if he'd lived beyond 1910 and had experienced the next century's evolving American culture and language that were his calling. We can never know that, but this seems a compelling fancy. A beguiling hat trick that's apt.

3. Finally: One luxurious reading charms me enough to assert this. Huck Out West is another late-career masterpiece for Coover (along with Brunist Day of Wrath, but that must wait on a separate review here). It also should enter the canon as full companion to Twain, a literary transmutation riding shotgun as it were, though I've no sense that there's still enough zeitgeist commitment to the notion of “canon” to expect that it will arrive (except virtually for those who care). Twain's book took the better part of half a century to be canonized... who knows anymore, whether such communal pronouncements take as long or longer or are ever even made in places where they're heeded? Regardless, if you're young enough you may live to find out if I'm right and then I could have said, “You heard it here first, gentle Good-reader...”. Or may not quite first: I get the sense from Garth Risk Hallberg's back-jacket blurb (“A giant stands on the shoulders of a giant...”) that maybe he's thinking along the same lines as I am.

That's enough from me right now. It's Robert Coover's birthday, but we got the swell gift. Soon enough it'll be time to have the pleasure of reading Huck Out West all over again. Manifest Dust-in-yer-eye!

[Megargee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Huck Out West purports to continue the narrative of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After they leave the Big River and go west to the Territories we see them grow up along with the United States in the mid-19th century. The author, 85 year old Robert Couver, has a following in avant garde post-modernist literary circles, and his tale can be interpreted symbolically with Tom and Huck representing different aspects of America and exploring themes of racism, freedom, and exploitation. Like Twain, Coover has Huck write in the vernacular, and I am assured by other reviewers that the more you are acquainted with The (original) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the more you will appreciate this tale. Indeed. one reader went so far as to reread Twain's book to prepare herself for Coover's version.
I did not. Not being into literary criticism, I was reading Huck Out West for the story, which I found difficult to follow. After a while I realized that if the characters were named Bob, Buck and Betsy instead of Tom, Huck, and Becky and if the novel didn't purport to be a followup to Twain's works, I wouldn't be reading it or worrying about its deeper significance. Since I wasn't enjoying the exercise --- the ubiquitous violence was a turn off --- I quit and went on to a more enjoyable item on my WTR list.

[Jay Gertzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huck, grown up and still looking for peace and a way out of the struggle for power that Tom represents, finds that Tom represents all that America will become. Tom is his "pard," even more important to him than his simpatico Native American best friend, Eetah. Tom sells Jim and Becky both--to a slave trader and a house of prostitution. He likes and respects Indians, and when he's rich and powerful, it will be the kind of power that lets him build a museum to honor the tribes--after America kills them all to get their land. One of Tom's great thrills is seeing a mass hanging of Native Americans. In his white hat and charismatic outfits, he is loved everywhere. He's Barnum; he's the Chevy commercials, and the ads about the honor of joining the troops fighting the bad guys in oil rich countries overseas.. "Life by itself ain't enough for Tom," Huck asserts. "He makes up adventures he reads out of books, though he ain't scrupulous about the consequences." Disney-fication of the Old Wild West can't come soon enough for him to tout it.
As for Huck, he just likes looking at timeless rivers and trying to get through life without the damned human race tugging at him. He's Tom's opposite--so why is Tom his pard? He's an innocent, and paying for it.

[Daryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly a delight, and also pretty dark.