Huck Out West: A Novel by Robert Coover (review)

Here comes another Huckleberry Finn sequel, more noteworthy than most. Readers familiar with Robert Coover from his postmodern novels—including the remarkable western Ghost Town (1998)—will find his latest, Huck Out West, different. I was expecting something akin to Borges's "Pierre Manard, Author of the Quixote," but Coover's work is actually a sequel, not a work of metafiction. Mostly. Coover plays it pretty straight, providing a rip-roaring, funny, and sad adventure tale during which we reencounter Tom Sawyer, Jim, Becky Thatcher, and others. We hear this in the familiar vernacular voice of Huck as narrator, which Coover carries off admirably.

The story centers on the scene of the Black Hills gold rush, the formation of Deadwood, Lakota Sioux conflict, and the actions of "General Hard Ass," recognizable of course as Custer. Huck has spent time as a Pony Express rider, cowboy, horse wrangler for the army, and general frontiersman and outdoors type. He has also spent considerable time among the Lakotas and counts Eeteh, a figure marginalized by his tribe, as his best friend.

Tom Sawyer makes his reentry rather late in the story, and, as in Twain's masterpiece, Tom's literary pretensions—which have taken on a decidedly sinister character—twist the narrative into other forms. Here Coover's metafiction does emerge as Huck, again caught in pangs of conscience, must choose between his old friend Tom's narrative of manifest destiny and Eeteh's coyote trickster tales.

Coover depicts racism and racial violence, fueled by greed, as defining features of US expansion. Just as Twain used Huck's marginal social status and friendship with Jim to explore southern slave culture, Coover's Huck is in a similar ambivalent position with respect to the Lakotas. While not easily assimilated into the tribe, Huck achieves a certain legendary status. Possibly anticipating criticism, Coover includes a scene in which Huck—having told a Coyote story of his own invention—reflects that though he "warn't even a native," his appropriation of Coyote is okay because "don't NOBODY own" the trickster.

Talk of ownership ties back to the matter of slavery. Following the basic idea of Twain's fragmentary "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians," we learn that Jim came out West with Tom and Huck but that Tom sold him back into slavery with the Cherokees. Huck makes contact with Jim later, but the relationship and Jim's fate are left unresolved and unremarked at novel's end.

Other than Tom and Jim, Becky Thatcher, too, reemerges and provides some real surprises. Anyway, you should read it. I predict you'll like it.